Let me start by saying I don’t think they’d do anything with the potential wasp nest of a brain fart I’m going to throw out there, as:

A) don’t think it’s really that kind of show B) I think it would mess up an awful lot of storyline C) I think it would change the feel of the show

That being said random thought I had the other day, is Michael definitely dead?

It might be years of seeing shows that follow the ‘if you haven’t seen the body’ misdirection, but then I thought with some of the family’s various less than legal connections and one would assume a closed casket funeral (due to the nature of his suicide), could he have faked his own death?

Like I said, overall, I don’t think it’s a route they would go down, plus with the episode Fishes and then Tina says at one point (I can’t seem to find the actual quote so excuse the paraphrasing) ‘I loved that boy with all my heart, but he was a mess’, I feel establishes why him being actually dead is probably the more likely outcome of his breaking point.

However I t’s a random thought I decided to throw out there, more to see if it was just me that thought it.