Alas, Silicon Valley fans, this is the end—until next year, anyway. The HBO comedy’s Season 4 finale followed a distinctly Silicon Valley template—certain disaster, fended off by an absurdist third-act twist—but also ushered in a new era: a world without Erlich Bachman. Is this really goodbye, or more of an opium-hazed “see you later”? An incredibly candid T.J. Miller has the answer, and bad news for Bachman fans: “I will never be on Silicon Valley again.”

Viewers already knew that T.J. Miller would exit the show after this season. The question was simply how the comedy would write him off. Two weeks ago, it almost seemed that Bachman could be killed off, after he set fire to his palapa. (Keenan Feldspar might be an “adorable little wombat,” but he also screwed Erlich over big time.) Although Erlich skirted death, his final fate is only a little less dark: he bid the show farewell from an opium den, where Gavin Belson paid a man enough money to house him for five years.

As the finale drew to a close, fans probably found it hard to believe that this would be the last we’d see of Erlich, especially because characters on this series don’t tend to stay gone forever. (Think Russ Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos), whose random reappearances are a consistent delight.) But in his brutally honest chat with The Hollywood Reporter, Miller nixed that idea: “I was incredibly busy. People joke about it, but I’m the hardest-working man in show business, maybe.” And when HBO offered him a reduced role in Season 5, Miller replied that he wanted to leave the show altogether, forever.

Video: Silicon Valley’s TJ Miller Does His Best . . .

Though scheduling played a role in his decision, it wasn’t the only factor; Miller also cited the show’s cyclical nature, which he said was the one thing “everybody sort of criticizes” about the comedy. Another topic that came up more than once? Silicon Valley executive producer Alec Berg, whom the actor addressed with repeated disdain, saying at one point, “I didn’t talk to Alec [about changing his role] because I don’t like Alec.” (We’ve reached out to Berg for comment, and will update this post accordingly.)

“The only thing that you can talk down about the show and about Alec Berg, the showrunner for the first couple years, is that it’s cyclical,” Miller said. “If they fail, then they succeed, and then if they succeed, they fail. It’s over and over. That’s an old type of sitcom. That’s Seinfeld, where Alec Berg used to work. It’s recycling, it’s network. This is HBO. And so I thought, what if suddenly the whole thing changed?”

Even more surprisingly, Miller quietly digs at Thomas Middleditch in the interview—someone Miller has worked with closely for years, even before their HBO jaunt. (They did an improv show called Practice Scaring a Bear together.) Despite calling Middleditch “amazing” and “one of the funniest people of all,” Miller had some harsh words for his co-star. “I’m not an actor; I’m a comedian. And I don’t know how the fuck I hoodwinked Hollywood into giving me a career in this. But I’m not sitting here saying, ‘I need more lines. I’m not funny enough.’ I’m not Thomas Middleditch,” he said at one point. At another, when asked about how his exit squares with his status as a fan favorite, Miller once again mentioned Middleditch: “I want to step aside. Thomas Middleditch has always wanted to be a star. He’s always wanted to be the star of the show.”

And then, there’s the response that folded both Middleditch and Berg into one thought: when asked whether he felt like his character deserved more closure than he got, Miller offered an answer that can only be described as blunt:

I think that HBO and Alec Berg, specifically, kind of thought—and I guess apparently Thomas Middleditch—I guess they thought, “Alright, maybe this is the end of the character. But like everything in the show, we’ll sort of solve this and then it’s back to normal.” And they just didn’t imagine that I would be in a position of being like, “I think that’s it.”. . . I don’t know how smart [Alec] is. He went to Harvard, and we all know those kids are fucking idiots. That Crimson trash. Those comedy writers in Hollywood are fucking Harvard graduates, and that’s why they’re smug as a bug. . . . I think that in television you usually have one element that is very challenging, very frustrating. It’s an obstacle, right? So you’re doing the best work that you can do. Alec was that for me, and I think I was that for Alec. And a very good article was written that says that Erlich in the show is just this constant annoyance to Richard. . . . And I think in some ways, that is analogous to real life. I think in some ways Thomas Middleditch is . . . we have a contrarian relationship, like a big brother-little brother relationship. And this is also an opportunity for me to be like, “Let me just step off, dude. Like, just do your fucking thing. You’re amazing.”

If you want to know how Middleditch feels about all this, his recent interview with Vanity Fair might provide an answer: when speaking to Katey Rich about Zach Woods’s performance as Jared, and how real-life relationships have influenced the show’s dynamic, Middleditch noted that “especially amongst the people that are still on the show,” the Pied Piper team’s dynamic has been influenced by real life.

If there’s one thing we know about Erlich Bachman, it’s that he can annoy his way out of almost any room—even an opium den. The actor, however, seems categorically uninterested in taking any such opportunity to return to Silicon Valley. “I would love to work with them forever. It’s just that I will never be on Silicon Valley again,” he said. “That character, as you have seen, disappeared into the ether. And he did it at a time when no one was sick of him, when he had worn thin but not worn out. And even my father, when I told him that I was leaving was like, ‘Yeah, we watched three or four episodes in a row and it’s kind of one-note. I think it’s a good idea.’”

This post has been updated.