Following the wishes of all right-thinking people everywhere, Gilmore Girls is returning to Netflix soon for a series of four 90-minutes episodes, meaning creator Amy Sherman-Palladino will finally get to end the series with the four words she always intended to be the closing lines. (Look, we can have the argument about season six—a.k.a. the season where Rory and Lorelai wouldn’t have acted like that—some other time, but regardless of your thoughts, surely we can all agree it deserves a better sendoff than the subsequent final season.)
And now that Melissa McCarthy is on board and basically the entire crew is back together (R.I.P. Edward Herrmann), Netflix can stop teasing us with casting announcements and start teasing us with images from the upcoming show. So let’s do what any diehard Gilmore Girls fan would do: Pour a cup of coffee, throw on our “Babette ate oatmeal!” T-shirt, and overthink the hell out of these low-key, minimally revealing images the streaming service has unveiled. Oy, with the poodles already!
Here’s the immortal Emily Gilmore (Kelly Bishop), looking like it’s two weeks prior to the last time we saw her, because she is a bronzed marble bust of perfection. Look into those eyes: She sees something everyone else is missing, and probably has a witty rejoinder for the person currently talking to her. It’s a bold assertion, but we’re going to make it anyway.
Speaking of Babette, here she is alongside Miss Patty, in charge of what appears to be auditions for the town’s presentation of Stars Hollow: The Musical. So that’s exciting in and of itself, but it buries the lede on the true story hiding in plain sight: Rory managed to access a time machine, and has spent the past nine years repeatedly living through the Summer of Love. Also, the small child behind her is probably Taylor Doose after having some work done.
Ah, the old kitchen table. Wait a minute, that’s not the table of yesteryear, is it? Clearly, this proves that Lorelai and Rory have murdered an elderly couple in Stars Hollow and moved into their house, remaking it in the image of their old residence. The Chinese take-out boxes, on the other hand, probably made the trip with them.
It’s good to see that Friday night dinners continue after all this time, much like any very normal and not at all dysfunctional family held together by neuroses and baling wire. Here, Emily is obviously responding to Rory’s request to “just keep the whiskey coming until I can’t feel feelings,” with a curt but loving, “I hear that.” Also, Emily has gotten some new glassware. Respect.
Town meeting! Called to order, no doubt, by the new small-child version of Taylor, the residents of Stars Hollow are busily deciding on a new issue affecting their little burg. It’s not totally locked in, but from the expressions on everyone’s faces, we’re 90 percent certain they’re about to vote on transforming the gazebo in the town square into a life-or-death Thunderdome battleground. “Two men enter, one Taylor leaves,” Doose intones slowly, staring at Luke.
Luke and Lorelai are back together, meaning balance has been restored to the universe. Although, according to a new Entertainment Weekly profile, they’re still not married, perhaps because Luke isn’t even capable of changing his wardrobe after all these years. If a backwards baseball cap falls in the woods, and no one is around, does it make it incumbent upon us to tell Luke that no one over the age of, say, 24 should wear their hat like that? Look, just give us some of those chocolate pancakes and you can wear whatever you want, Luke.
Here’s the final, and most intriguing, shot of these advance pictures. Rory looks to have parlayed that gig following around Barack Obama into a teaching job—which, frankly, we didn’t see coming. Sure, she could put on puppet shows with the best of them, but Rory always wanted to be the one breaking news, not telling kids about Jane Eyre. We’re not entirely comfortable with the narrative implied by this shot, because we have no wish to end this revival by having Rory Gilmore reenact the end of the Pearl Jam “Jeremy” video. Things can still turn around, Rory! Hang in there!
A premiere date has yet to be announced.