Emmanuel Macron vows to win Emily In Paris back from Rome

Let’s take a short break from thinking about the devastating conflicts rising around the world to shine a light on a new skirmish brewing right in the heart of Europe: the battle for Emily In Paris. Now, non-EIP-heads might be thinking, “But she’s literally in Paris! It’s in the title!” What you may not know is that in her latest season, Emily did something truly shocking: she left Paris. We’ll let that sink in for a second. Not only did the character leap out of her own comfort zone to sojourn to Rome in her fifth season, but the show also fundamentally altered its previously rigid borders. If Emily can go to Rome, she can go anywhere. She doesn’t even have to stay in Europe! Season six might as well be titled Emily In Tokyo or Emily In Newfoundland. It’s chaos.

But French President Emmanuel Macron isn’t just going to roll over and let Emily stamp her passport wherever she pleases. “We will fight hard. And we will ask them to remain in Paris!” he told Variety about his fight for the soul of the ever-important series. “Emily In Paris in Rome doesn’t make sense.” He has a point, of course. Even though The A.V. Club‘s Saloni Gajjar called Emily’s Roman holiday “a much-needed break from the routine… [that] gets brownie points for simply trying to shake things up” in her review of the season, it’s hard to relocate a character whose primary personality trait is the city she’s currently in.

Macron has other lieutenants in this fight. His wife Brigitte actually had a cameo in season four of EIP, which made the president “super proud” on a personal level, but was also “good for the image of France.” “Emily In Paris is super positive in terms of attractiveness for the country. For my own business, it’s a very good initiative,” he explained. The stakes are higher than we mere civilians could possibly imagine. 

In the meantime, Macron is working with European public broadcaster Arte to create some sort of Netflix-esque streaming service that will be “on a much different scale but on a Franco-German, European level.” This writer is excited to boot up a VPN and tune into Emily Gets French Citizenship And Decides She Never Wants To Leave on the new streamer whenever that inevitably drops.