Just in case you were wondering how The Goldbergs season 10 is going to handle the exit of Jeff Garlin, we now have a clear answer — though we know that a lot of people won’t be happy about it.

According to a new report coming in from Entertainment Weekly, the plan is to kill off Murray Goldberg. The story will jump forward several months, which means that it will not be set in the immediate aftermath of his passing. Here is some of what showrunner Alex Barnow had to say on the subject to the aforementioned website:

“This is going to be a family that has not reconciled the fact that their father’s gone but has sort of moved on and has dealt with a lot of that … We’re starting with optimism about [Erica’s] baby coming and looking forward to the future. It’s an opportunity for this interesting emotional basis for the way people are behaving.”

So why go this route? It’s most likely because the writers saw no other viable, realistic option if they wanted to keep the show going. Jeff Garlin exited the show last season after an investigation into allegations of improper behavior on set. It wouldn’t make sense story-wise to have Murray abandon his family or never show up on-screen; meanwhile, you couldn’t do some of the tricks the writers did at the end of last season permanently. We still feel bad for them with a lot of that, as they were trying to compensate for a last-minute change in the cast they weren’t quite prepared for.

Of course, we do still think there are going to be questions about whether or not we needed a season 10 of The Goldbergs, given that parts of last season did offer some closure. It does still perform well on ABC, though, and we’re sure that everyone involved wants to go out on a different note than everything that happened with Garlin behind the scenes.

What do you think about The Goldbergs reportedly killing off Jeff Garlin’s character of Murray?

Be sure to share right now in the comments! Once you do just that, come back for some other updates. (Photo: ABC.)