Gilmore Girls Reboot: What You Need To Know

Calling all Lorelei and Rory fans! Have you heard? Gilmore Girls, aka the best show ever made, is coming back! We get to live vicariously through our favorite girls in Starshollow once again! As a true GG fanatic, I am beyond ecstatic about this announcement. It has been rumored for quite a few months that a relaunch of the show was in the works (ever since the giant GG reunion at the ATX Festival this past summer). And on Friday (January 29), Lauren Graham (Lorelei Gilmore) tweeted confirmation that in fact, there will be a series reboot on Netflix! That same day, the cast had their first table-read and on Monday of the next week, they had their second one. Last Tuesday was their first day of filming. This all seemed to happen so fast, although not for Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino (and her husband, director and executive producer Daniel Palladino), who said in an interview with US Weekly that she has been pitching and working on this for years.

So which of our favorite characters are set to come back? The most important three (the Gilmore Girls): Lauren Graham (Lorelei), Alexis Bledel (Rory), and Kelly Bishop (Emily) are definitely a go. Other cast members: Scott Patterson (Luke Danes), Keiko Agena (Lane Kim), Yanic Truesdale (Michel),  Sean Gunn (Kirk Gleason), and most recently, Liza Weil (Paris Geller) are also revisiting their characters again. Blatantly missing is the late Edward Herrmann, who played patriarch Richard Gilmore. It will be very interesting on how they write in his passing and how they plan to honor not only Herrmann, but also the beloved character of Richard in the episodes.I have a feeling that Richard’s passing will be how they start off the new season. Also missing from the current cast line up are Rory’s past love interests: Matt Czuchry (Logan Huntzberger), Milo Ventimiglia (Jess Mariano), and Jared Padalecki (Dean Forester). Word on the street is their contracts are still under negotiation (plus they all have prior commitments to three separate shows at the moment). The biggest casting mystery right now is the mega-famous Melissa McCarthy. Will she come back to Starshollow to reprise her role that jumpstarted her stardom (Sookie St. James)?  Sherman-Palladino mentioned in an interview with TV Line that she knows Melissa is so busy nowadays (you know, with blockbuster movies like Ghostbusters) so she did not write an actual story-line for Sookie. Amy did say that if Melissa’s team called her up and said she is free for a few days, she would be more than happy to write her a scene and get Sookie that cameo role that we all crave! However, McCarthy recently tweeted that she (nor Sookie) was not actually invited to rejoin Gilmore Girls. I don’t know how that can be, but someone needs to work this out so a Sookie and Lorelei reunion can happen!

There has been no premier date set for the show, but other details have been released. Such as: it’s not going to be a normal Netflix season (13 ep, 60 minutes each), it will actually be four episodes, 90 minutes each. So essentially four separate movies. It has not yet been determined if all four episodes will be released
on Netflix at the same time, or if they will be spread out (Sherman-Palladino once at least a day or two separating each episode release). However we do know that each episode is named after a season: Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall (a nod to Carole King, the woman who sings the well-known theme song Where You Lead).  The first episode will be in the Winter and the last will be taking place in the Fall.

As for spoilers, the only plot-line we know of is that much like the series premier, all three Gilmore Girls will be going through some sort of change. We do not know how many years has past since the Season 7 finale and the first episode of the reboot, but Amy says that we will get to “catch up” with the characters and see what they’ve been doing. She also has mentioned that Rory is not married, but dating.

All of this new information and I still have so many questions. Are Luke and Lorelei still together? Did Rory return to Starshollow? Did she stay on the Obama campaign for his second term? What is Emily going to do without Richard? How is Christopher and Gigi doing? How old is Lane and Zack’s twins? And most importantly, Is Lorelei still extremely addicted to coffee?

I guess the only thing we can do now is wait until the new season is released, but until then, I’ll leave you with the first picture of the cast on set for the reboot to hold you over!