NEW YORK — Charlie Harper lives — at least, he lived until the final moments of Thursday’s series finale of “Two and a Half Men.”

If you don’t want to know what happened next, stop reading now.

A baby grand piano fell on the millionaire playboy as he made a momentous return to his Malibu beach house, clearly finishing him off four years after his presumed death with the firing of Charlie Sheen, who had played him.

It was a kookie, sly twist, followed a moment later by a second piano falling on the show’s co-creator, Chuck Lorre, who had only a split-second to gloat that he had pulled a fast one on viewers: Charlie Sheen hadn’t, as widely expected, made a conciliatory return to the show after all as it ended its 12-season run. Portrayed by a body double, Charlie Harper was only seen from behind as he met his startling, presumably final, demise.

Sheen, of course, had been dumped from the CBS sitcom four years ago after scandalous behavior and stormy feuding with Lorre, and from the first moments of the finale the viewer was set up not only to expect the return of Charlie Harper, but of Sheen in the role.

Quickly evidence mounted that Harper hadn’t really fallen to his death in front of a Paris subway train, as had been reported by the crazy one-night-stand-turned-wife Rose (Melanie Lynskey), who had been holding him hostage for four years in a dungeon underneath her house.

Rose revealed that Charlie had escaped a few days earlier and was on the loose, threatening revenge on his brother Alan (series veteran Jon Cryer) and Walden, the subsequent owner of the house (Ashton Kutcher, who joined the show after Sheen left).

The pair reported the possible danger Charlie posed to an LAPD lieutenant played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of the show’s cameo performances. Bewildered, he recapped the case (and in the process, the series’ wacky 12 seasons) and advised them to wrap “this whole thing up. This whole thing has been going on waaaay too long.”