Photograph via Mark Schafer, HBO
On October 13th, Lena Dunham took to social media to share some of the most exciting news I have heard all year: Girls will be revived as a 5-episode reboot, with production starting in summer 2027. The announcement came in the form of a mock Zoom call where Dunham asks her old co-stars and friends whether they’re in. They are. Then, the real question: can they still call it Girls?
What we Know:
We know almost nothing beyond the imminent return, which only heightens my excitement and suspense. We know we’ll get a five-episode run with some of our most beloved characters, but HBO hasn’t set a release date. Lena Dunham will return as Hannah Horvath, alongside the rest of the girls. Allison Williams will play Marnie, Jemima Kirke will play Jessa, Zosia Mamet will play Shoshanna, and Andrew Rannells will play Elijah. Judd Apatow will also return as executive producer.
A Voice of a Generation:
Girls premiered in 2012, eight years after Sex and the City ended, and quickly became something of a millennial cultural touchstone. HBO hired Dunham when she was only 23, after a short pitch following her breakout homemade film Tiny Furniture, which won the Narrative Feature Jury Award at South by Southwest in 2010.
In the pilot episode of Girls, Hannah (Lena Dunham) is a couple of years postgrad in New York City when her parents cut her off financially. Reeling, she gets high on opium tea and shows up at their hotel room with her manuscript, determined to win back their support. “I think I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation,” she says. The line has remained iconic since.
Why I Love It:
Girls is one of my favorite shows of all time, certainly in my top five. Dunham creates the most honest, embarrassing, self-deprecating, infuriating, and lovable characters. Hannah is selfish, somewhat narcissistic, and certain of her own talent; Marnie wants a life that looks right, probably more than one that feels right; Jessa leaves before she can be left; and Shoshanna narrates every neurotic anxiety out loud for the world to hear. You will fall in love with the characters for the same reasons you want to throttle them, and that’s the show’s beauty. It’s a raunchy, explicit comedy, but more than that, it’s an honest portrayal of what it feels like to be young, scared, and ambitious: unsure, striving, flailing, failing, and living. It’s a political and existential work of art about what it means to be a young woman who wants more than she can yet name. Not that she doesn’t try. Hannah and her friends are forever trying to languagize it, to carve it out for themselves. And it’s political in the plainest way: it lets women be unlikable, puts real bodies on screen, and shows sex as awkward and unflattering as it often can be.
Before It Was Cool (Again):
Girls was made with a kind of candor that makes some people avert their eyes, even condemn it, and, in its time, plenty of critics did. The conversation fixated, tiresomely, on Dunham’s nudity and the show’s crassness. Meanwhile, the show only grew, and the women watching seemed to find something in it, possibly themselves. Fourteen years after its debut, it’s having something of a second life. Gen Z has found it, and the explicitness that once made some critics flinch seems to be part of the appeal. Girls seems to transcend generations and political climates alike. What Hannah wants, and how badly she goes about getting it, hasn’t dated. I watched it for the first time in 2021, and I’ve championed the rewatch since.
Why You Should Watch
If you haven’t already, you have until Summer 2027 to watch all six seasons on HBO Max before the revival airs. Join me in sitting on the edge of my seat to hear the voice of my generation speak again.
