Amy Sherman-Palladino is back to write the much-anticipated Gilmore Girls revival, which will be airing on Netflix in four parts. Most of the original cast is back, and they have announced a slew of new roles as well. We are elated that we get to spend more time in Stars Hollow with this beloved cast of characters, but because we are the way we are, we also have a lot of opinions about where some of these characters should be.
While we trust Sherman-Palladino to do these characters justice, we’ve also had ten years to wonder about what happened to these characters after the finale. We can’t wait to see what they have in store for us, but in the meantime, here’s what we’d love to see.
Rory Gilmore
While Rory lived a charmed life during the seven years we followed her through high school and college, we’re actually hoping she got a good dose of reality after graduating. She had it easy for her whole life, and her college experience showed us that she actually had a very bad time coping with rejection and competition, if she ever actually had to encounter it. Too often, she found herself at the receiving end of lucky breaks and bailouts from her family. We hope to see her happy, hard-working, and having shed the bubble in which she grew up. It would honestly be nice to see her fall on her face and have to figure it out on her own. Throughout the show, Rory was also self-absorbed; she was only a good friend to others when it was convenient for her. She took Lane in particular for granted, especially in the final seasons, when it was hard to believe they were still friends at all. In sum, we would love to see her grow up and learn to manage her own life and be a better friend.
Lorelai Gilmore
We have a lot of hopes for Lorelai, mainly that any drama revolving around her does not have to do with her relationships. Having suffered through what felt like a forced and unnecessary divide between Luke and Lorelai in seasons 6 and 7, we hope that their getting together in the series finale was the final time, and that they’ve been together this whole time. We’re also hoping she’s still the Lorelai that spoke her mind, rather than the Lorelai we saw in the later seasons who bottled her feelings up. The inconsistent writing on the show hurt Lorelai’s character more than most, and we’re hoping that the revival is a return to form for her character.
Emily Gilmore
Dealing with the passing of Edward Hermann’s Richard Gilmore is undoubtedly a part of the revival, as we already know from interviews with the cast and crew going into the revival. His absence from the show will be a great loss, and we know that Emily, after a lifetime of marriage to Richard, will be dealing with enormous change in her world. We hope to see her pull through it with dignity and her chin up, the way we’ve seen her cope with things throughout the show.
Luke Danes
As Luke’s diner is a central location to Stars Hollow and to Gilmore Girls, we can only hope that Luke hasn’t given up on it. Considering how he values the diner not only as his source of income but also for what the location meant for his father, we doubt he’d have closed up shop. Honestly, it’s likely it hasn’t changed at all–Luke’s averse to change, and it would take some serious effort to make him change anything about the diner at all. We do hope he’s not too overwhelmed with the plans for the Luke/Lorelai wedding we’re desperately hoping to see.
Paris Geller
Paris wouldn’t be Paris if she wasn’t working three times as hard as everyone around her. Her alpha personality and her drive for perfection make her someone that would not be satisfied as anything but the boss of whatever it is that she’s doing. We can see her as a cutthroat, high-powered lawyer, or as an eminently successful medical professional. Whatever she’s doing, we hope she’s made a name for herself and a fortune to go with it. If anyone is going to crash right through the glass ceiling, it’s Paris Geller.
Dean Forrester
Dean is a great opportunity to showcase “the one that never left Stars Hollow.” There is precedent for folks staying in Stars Hollow their entire lives, namely Luke Danes, and we think that Dean is the type of character that absolutely could have ended up dwelling there his entire life. Any movement he may have had toward going to college and leaving the small-town life was largely driven by Rory, not by his own self-motivation. It would not be difficult to believe he worked hard to move up the ranks of existing Stars Hollow companies. We could see him as a foreman for the construction company that he worked for in later seasons, or having worked his way up to being the manager at Doose’s Market.
Jess Mariano
We lucked out a bit with Jess, in that the show itself gave us a glimpse of what “Jess as a grown up” looked like. When he left Rory to go find his father, he was kind of a jerk. He was selfish, he had a chip on his shoulder, and he didn’t communicate with her. He just left her without an explanation. But years later when we saw him return, he had matured into a pretty cool person. He had written a book and joined a publishing house, settled his debts with Luke, and seems to have his act together. Moreover, he reappeared in Rory’s life at a moment where he was able to give her the honest truth that she needed to hear but was not hearing from the other people in her life. The show also revealed at this point that they still have chemistry, and the feelings between them were not lost when he took off years before. We’re hoping that Jess is still writing and publishing. Jess returning to Stars Hollow isn’t hard to believe since his uncle lives there, and we’re hoping that this time, the timing is right for him and Rory.
Logan Huntzberger
Logan seemed like the kind of guy who was used to living life a certain way and who would only suffer a job if he found himself unable to pay for his lifestyle with his family’s fortune. Assuming his father Mitchum hasn’t cut him off for being a directionless drain on his earnings, we figure Logan is still up to his high-end theme parties and yacht club lifestyle. But if he’s been forced to get his act together, we can see him trying to start up a new social media platform or dating app.
We’re also all hoping that the otherwise-hard-to-fathom return of his best friend Finn indicates that the two of them have realized they love one another and are living happily together in New York or L.A.
Sookie St. James
We loved Sookie, and unfortunately due to Melissa McCarthy’s schedule (allegedly), she won’t be in the revival. Hopefully, her absence from Stars Hollow is because she’s on a national cookbook tour or hosting her own version of MasterChef while Jackson stays home with their children.
Lane Kim
If anything, we hope Hep Alien is still together. Lane will surely have grown into motherhood–we can’t wait to see if she’s more like Lorelai or her own mother–but one thing is for sure. She’s too funky to have settled down into anything resembling a boring life. Hopefully Lane is still drumming, and we can’t wait to see what Kwan and Steve have grown up to be. We can at least anticipate an interesting Kim family dynamic, as Mrs. Kim is also slated to return for the revival.
Michel Gerard
We presume that Michel is still working at the Dragonfly, treating incoming calls and guests with his same barely-caring accented drawl, hiding his fondness for Lorelai and Stars Hollow under a hard candy shell of contempt. We know he’s a softy on the inside.
Christopher Hayden
We hope he’s treating Gigi better than he treated Rory as a father, and that his presence on the revival is minimal at best. Christopher is The Worst, and we hope that if we have to look at him at all, we see him be cordial, kind to our beloved characters, and with minimal effect on their day-to-day. Let him visit and say hello to his daughter without upending everything the way he tends to do, and then let him leave because he has to go support Gigi as she debuts as the lead in her school play or something.
Taylor, Kirk, Miss Patty, Babette, Gypsy…
The citizens of Stars Hollow, we hope, are still there and doing the things they’ve always done to make Stars Hollow what it is. The only difference we’d be comfortable with is if Taylor has finally retired (though, what would he do with himself?) and if Miss Patty or Kirk has taken his place as the town’s de-facto leader. Part of the fun of Stars Hollow was the mystery of how Kirk was able to hold seemingly every part-time job in the town and still have time to do things like film movies, so we’d love to see that continue. And what would Stars Hollow really be if we didn’t hear Babette shouting for Morey at least once?
What else would we like to see?
There’s so much that makes Gilmore Girls what it is to us, but above all things, we want to see: Rory and Lorelai order far too much food for a movie night, a town hall meeting that goes completely awry, Stars Hollow decorated from top to bottom for Christmas, snow in the winter for Lorelai, Rory being a better friend to those that care about her, Grant Lee Phillips back as the town troubadour, ASP’s infamous “last four words,” and for the end credits to read “A Film By Kirk.” It’s probable that we only get a few of these things, but we can dream!