If you, like us, spent the evening of Friday, November 25, snuggled up on the sofa watching Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life with copious and voluminous hoards of snacks, good. You’re our people. And we have some thoughts about the Netflix reboot that we want to discuss with you.
But first, the obligatory warning: there are spoiler in this story. Lots of spoilers. This is your last chance to get out before the spoilers start. Read on at your own peril!
1. First things first: those last four words.
“Mum?” “Yeah?” “I’m pregnant.”
There’s been endless speculation about what the last four words of Gilmore Girls would be, especially considering the lore that surrounds them (showrunner Amy Sherman Palladino had planned the words since the beginning of the show, only to have her grand master plan disassembled when she was ousted from the series after the sixth season). Did they disappoint or did they meet expectations?
For us, they met expectations and then some. This is Gilmore Girls coming full circle: Rory following in the footsteps of her mother, pregnant and alone, with a father looking likely to be only nominally in her life. This is a theory that is supported by the fact that Rory takes a trip to see Christopher, alone, in one of the last scenes of the series. It’s the first time that Christopher shows up in the Netflix reboot, and in his slick suit in his swanky office, it’s clear that Christopher represents every man who takes the easy path in life. Rory’s sole reason for visiting her dad was to find out whether he was okay with taking a backseat in her life. Many fans – and us included – are taking that to mean that Rory wants to know whether she can go this alone. And the answer? Hell yes. After all, Rory is Lorelai. And where she leads…
2. Which leads us to… The father
We’re team Jess here at marie claire, which meant that the resurgence of Logan throughout the Netflix reboot was met with more than a few rolling eyes. It’s pretty clear, if a little heavy-handed, that Logan is the father of Rory’s unborn child. The two have had a ‘friends with benefits’ situation (despite Logan’s engagement to a woman his family thinks highly of) and they spend a special night together engineered by their pals in the Life and Death Brigade. Logan’s role as father of Rory’s baby is something that we all have to come to terms with. (Let’s be real, she’s not pregnant with the Wookie’s baby, is she?)
But… There’s a fan theory that is going to tickle the Jess fans of the world, us included. What if Logan is the Christopher stand-in – the charming, moneyed man who takes the easy way out, marrying the girl his family loves, rather than Rory who he loves – and will take a backseat in Rory’s life moving forward? Which means… What if Jess is the Luke stand-in, the one that Rory is destined to end up with, after years of tip-toeing around the chemistry, once both have fully grown into themselves? Jess would become a father figure to Rory’s child, just as Luke has been to Rory – printing her New Yorker essay all over the menus at the Diner.
After all, we all know that Jess and Rory are meant to be together. It’s written in the stars (Hollow). Sure, they had a rocky start, but Jess was a troubled boy back then. Once he got it together he became the most important figure in Rory’s adult life: calling her out on her bratty behaviour in the fifth season when she had dropped out of Yale, telling her to make up with her mother after they had stopped talking to each other, inspiring her to reinvigorate her passion for journalism. In turn, it was Rory who set Jess on the path that allowed him to self-publish his novella and become so heavily involved in Philadelphia’s booming arts scene (yes, really).
In the Netflix reboot, nothing has changed. Who is the one person, out of everyone, to take Rory by the shoulders, shaker her around a little bit, and set her on the right path when it comes to her career? Who believes in her potential as a writer, and who tells her not only that she has to write a book, but that the book has to be about her relationship with her mother? Jess. That’s who. Case closed.
2a. Rory’s book
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how perfect it is that Rory ends this Netflix reboot having written a memoir about her life? Let’s be honest, Rory’s storylines were not great in the series. She’s very badly behaved when it came to the boyfriend she kept forgetting about (What was his name again, Paul?) She was incredibly selfish when it came to her relationship with Lorelai. She got embroiled in a relationship with Logan that, quite frankly, she was better than. She wasn’t a good friend to Paris, who was going through a tough time in her marriage. And let’s not even start on her stasis at work, her severely under-prepared job interview – as if Rory wouldn’t have been preparing for months for that catch-up – and her general lack of desire to hustle in the name of her freelance career.
But that book? Hell yes. We are here for that book. That is exactly what Rory needed to do. And let’s not even pretend that the best exchange in the whole series wasn’t Lorelai’s suggestion “drop the ‘The’. Just: Gilmore Girls. It’s cleaner.”
Finally: Will there be more?
That’s the question on everyone’s lips after the open-ended way the series finished. We didn’t even get the chance to hear Lorelai’s reaction, so swift was the ‘roll credits’. There’s definitely scope for more episodes: will Sookie return to her kitchen? Will Michel leave the Dragonfly? Will Logan be involved in Rory’s life? Will Rory move back to Stars Hollow?
Amy Sherman Palladino, the show’s creator, has left the door resolutely and firmly open.
“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. And the whole thought about, ‘Is there more, is there more, is there more?’ — this has to go out into the universe now. We’ve got to put this to bed,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “And then whatever happens, happens.”
