Fans of the beloved series "Gilmore Girls" received an early Christmas gift last Monday: four 90-minute episodes, hopefully, chock-full of Friday night dinners, giant cups of coffee at Luke’s Diner, and pop culture references only creator Amy Sherman-Palladino fully understands.
The show originally ended in 2007 after a seven-season run. However, it is rumored that new episodes will be available for streaming on Netflix sometime in 2016. Palladino herself, along with her husband Daniel Palladino, will be writing the episodes, a sigh of relief for fans put off by the lifeless season seven of the series in which the Palladinos left the writing team over a dispute with the CW network.
Equally exciting, according to TVLine, show front-runners Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Kelly Bishop and Scott Patterson are all in talks to reprise their roles for the miniseries.
Although Palladino pledged, “If it [The "Gilmore" reboot] ever happens, I promise we'll do it correctly," at the ATX Festival in Austin, Texas, last June, fans’ heads were still reeling with questions at the thought of a revival in the near future.
Here are 10 questions all die-hard “gillies” must have thought about when hearing the news that their favorite fast-talking mother and daughter duo will return to the small screen.
Note: This article contains spoilers!
1. What about Richard? On Dec. 31, 2014, Emmy-nominated actor and "Gilmore’s" beloved patriarch Edward Herrmann died after his battle with brain cancer. Herrmann portrayed Lorelai’s father, Richard Gilmore. Fans have to wonder -- how can the show go on with such a gaping hole in the Gilmore clan? How devastated must Rory be to have lost her grandfather? Will the show open with a tearful goodbye to the main male presence on the show? Should we all stock up on tissue boxes for a Richard Gilmore funeral? So many questions left unanswered! What we do know is "Gilmore Girls" could never be the same without Herrmann’s brilliant portrayal of the manipulative scheming grandfather with a heart of gold.
2. Will Friday night dinners ever be the same? Now that Rory is all grown up and out of college, she hopefully has no need for her grandparents’ help financially. Does that mean that the Friday night dinner contract is over? But what is "Gilmore Girls" without Emily, Lorelai and Rory bickering over salmon puffs? Can we make a guess as to how many maids Emily has gone through since the show last aired? I say at least 100. Even with the head of the table empty, we need our fix of Hartford high-society. As Lorelai would say, “Gin Martini please!”
3. Will Sookie Return? There was another notable absence at the ATX "Gilmore Girls" reunion last June: Melissa McCarthy. After her performance in the 2011 hit "Bridesmaids," the rest of the world discovered what "Gilmore Girls" fans have known all along: McCarthy is a comedic genius. Now that she’s blowing up the big screen with blockbusters like "Ghostbusters 2," will the A-list actress have time to return to the small screen for a "Gilmore" reunion? What would a revival look like without Lorelai’s partner in crime and renowned Dragonfly Inn chef, Sookie St. James? If she doesn’t return, how can we revel in more heated arguments about vegetables between Sookie and her husband Jackson? The show could emulate the "Arrested Development" Netflix revival in 2013 and film in a way that accommodates all the actors’ busy schedules. Even a tiny McCarthy cameo would suffice!
4. Will we finally get a Luke and Lorelai wedding? Fans were left unsatisfied when the promise of a June 3 wedding between the show’s matron and her long-term beau was yanked away from them in the dwindling sixth and seventh seasons. Will we finally get to see Lorelai walk down the aisle? Will Luke be waiting for her at the altar bearing his finest backwards baseball cap? Maybe the two will get married on June 3 after all, just eight or nine years later.
5. Will there be flashbacks? Another major question about the revival is the format. We know that the reboot is not being called season 8 rather a series of mini-movies. These four 90-minute stories are bound to produce something very different from the traditional hour-long episodes we are used to watching. Will the mini series just start rolling in present day, or will we be caught up on the past eight years that we’ve missed in Stars Hollow?
6. Babies all grown up? Where "Gilmore" left off, there were a lot of babies in the mix. In the revival, will we get to see Christopher’s daughter, Gigi, as an adolescent? How are Sookie and Jackson dealing with a house full of teenagers? Are Lane and Zach’s twins rock-and-rollers like their parents, or would they rather study the bible with Mrs. Kim? Will the revival provide any of these answers?
7. Did Rory make it as a journalist? Half of Rory’s storyline throughout the series begged the question, does she have what it takes to be a journalist? When we last saw her, she had snagged a job working for an online newspaper covering the presidential election, but has her career continued to flourish from there? Much like "Arrested Development," the show ended right before the giant recession in 2008. Did this put a damper on Rory’s journalistic aspirations? Was Mitchum Huntzberger right? Does Rory "just not have it”?
8. Will the infamous April Nardini (or god forbid Anna Nardini) return to the show? Anyone who stuck around for the last two seasons of "Gilmore Girls" knows that the name “April Nardini” can only cause trouble. The reveal of Luke’s unknown daughter led to the eventual downfall of Lorelai and his relationship. Even the actress who played Nardini, Vanessa Marano, agrees with the fans’ disdain of April. As a long-time fan of the show, she was also enraged when April’s presence broke off the engagement. Will the revival revisit Luke’s relationship with his estranged daughter, now a grown woman, or will it leave the trouble, making Nardinis out of the story all together?
9. Team Dean? Team Jess? Team Logan? Team neither? From the looks of the previous series finale, Rory finally had the good sense to leave all her previous and current boyfriends in the dust for the real love of her life: her career. While we should all be happy for her, it’s hard to resist bringing back all the boyfriend drama when you have the names Jared Padalecki, Milo Ventimiglia and Matt Czuchry’s attached to it. After all, all three of these actors did appear at the ATX reunion and seemed willing to reprise their roles one more time for a revival. Maybe Rory will end up with someone completely different or even single, but wouldn’t it still be fun to see what these guys have been up to in the past eight years? Is Jess a famous author yet? Did Dean ever make it out of Stars Hollow? Has Logan returned to the east coast?
10. What are those final four words? Ever since Amy-Sherman Palladino announced that she always had the finale planned out, even down to the final four words, we’ve all been dying to know those words. Fans were robbed of the finale originally intended for the show and now this is finally their chance to find out exactly how Palladino wanted to say goodbye to the Gilmore girls. Will her final words have changed because of the large time gap? Lets hope that "Gilmore Girls" continues to be timeless and that Palladino’s original plan for the girls can’t be shaken by network battles or an 8-year hiatus.
