The Gilmore Girls are Back!

William DeMuria, Pop Culture Editor, Writer

Where you lead, I will follow…

The Gilmore Girls are back! All of your favorites from the original series have returned for a four episode event, exclusively streaming on Netflix.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is a continuation of the Gilmore Girls series, which ran for seven seasons on The WB and ended in 2007. The original series follows a single mother, Lorelai, and her daughter, Rory, as they go through the challenges of life together in the fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut. The show also focuses on the mother/daughter duo’s relationship with Lorelai’s wealthy parents, whom she has not had the best relationship over the years, and Rory’s often complicated love life.

A Year in the Life, on the other hand, is set nine years after the original series ended, with Rory now in her thirties. This miniseries centers on all three generations of the Gilmore Girls at a crossroads in their life. After Lorelai’s father’s death, her mother, Emily, must cope with her new life as a widow. Lorelai is also now in a happy, long-term relationship with coffee shop owner Luke, yet she still feels the sense that something is missing in her life. Finally, Rory, a Yale graduate, attempts to discover the future she wants for herself after her career doesn’t go as planned, all while trying to figure out her equally as complex love life. Together, the Gilmores must rely on each other as they go through four seasons of change together.

It’s safe to say that fans of Gilmore Girls have been waiting for a revival of the show such as this for quite some time. For the first six seasons of the original series, Amy Sherman Palladino and Dan Palladino, the creators of the show, were the executive producers. However, after a contract dispute, they left the show before the beginning of its seventh and final season, and many fans felt that they did not receive the ending that they had hoped for. Fans, such as Kelly Garcia, are glad that they now have the chance to get some closure for the gilmore girls. “When I watched the seventh season of the show, I never really felt that it ended properly. Now that I have this revival, I’m so happy that I can finally get some resolution to these characters and their stories,” said Garcia.

SPOILER ALERT! Do not read ahead if you have not seen the final episode of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, or have yet to hear the final four words.

Ever since the original series was airing, Amy Sherman Palladino has been teasing the final four words of the series that she has claimed to have had planned since the show’s conception. However, when Palladino left the series, the final four words were never revealed, and fans have been left wondering for a decade what they were. Despite this, Palladino is returning as the executive producer for this miniseries and revealed that the final four words will finally be said. What are these final four words, you may be wondering? Well, here they are:

Rory: Mom?

Lorelai: Yeah…

Rory: I’m pregnant.

Though the final four words came as a shock to many, Alexis Bledel, who plays the role of Rory in the series, has insisted that this was the ending that Palladino had hoped for since the very beginning. “It is very much what Amy wanted. If anyone knows her storytelling they’ll maybe know what to expect,” shared Bledel. Despite many fans feeling that they were left with a cliffhanger, Palladino remained satisfied that she was able to share the final four words with the fans after years of anticipation. “We really had a very specific journey in our minds, and we fulfilled the journey. So to us, this is the piece that we wanted to do,” said Palladino at an event for the new miniseries.

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life consists of four 90-minute episodes, entitled “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer,” and “Fall,” with each episode following the gilmore girls through one of the four seasons in the year. “These four are the story we wanted to tell,” Palladino explained while discussing A Year in the Life. “These four were not set up to be anything other than what they are. Again, in the world of family, in the world of life, it’s never-ending.”

After waiting all of this time, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is finally streaming on Netflix! So turn on your TV and watch Lorelai and Rory go through a year of change, and drinking coffee.