Rainn Wilson details how Dwight Schrute would have handled the pandemic on The Office

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it shut down offices all across the globe…And had The Office still been on the air, Dunder Mifflin would have seen the same fate. But as vaccines became available and cases dropped, many headed back to the workplace–and certainly the most eager one to get back to the office would be Dwight K. Schrute. After all, you can only rewatch The Crow so many times…

Rainn Wilson recently came up with an idea of how Dwight would be tasked to reunite the Scranton branch office. “I think it would be: He gets the call from corporate to get everyone back in the office and everyone is resistant…So, one at a time, Dwight has to kidnap every Office cast member and bring them into Dunder Mifflin in some kind of obscure and somewhat inappropriate way.” Entertainment Weekly also noted that Wilson had some other ideas prior: “You’ve got Dwight fighting the pandemic. You’ve got Dwight building his own vaccine, his own antibodies. Maybe doing secret tests on people in the office.”

“It would’ve been so much fun to film The Office during the pandemic,” he said. “If we had pandemic episodes, that would’ve been amazing…The Office writers were so great–they would’ve been able to spin that in some beautiful ways.” The term “beautiful” doesn’t often get mentioned alongside the name Dwight Schrute, but having him wrangle everybody up to force them back into the office (and not work from home) would be a memorable moment for sure. While we’ll never get to see Dwight kidnap his office mates and the likelihood of a true reunion is slim, with enough imagination you could create the scene yourself with the incredible The Office Lego set.

It might be surprising to know that, unlike fellow cast members Mindy Kaling, Paul Lieberstein and B.J. Novak, Rainn Wilson never wrote an episode of The Office, although he did direct three during later seasons. While that trio of actors were originally hired as writers, one would have thought producers would let Wilson go crazy with the pen at least once. Then we’d really see Dwight run wild!

What sort of antics would Dwight get into during the pandemic on The Office? How many times do you think he watched Battlestar Galactica?