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Netflix is reportedly set to revive Gilmore Girls for a 4-episode limited series

One last winter, spring, summer and fall...

Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, ready for another close-up.
Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, ready for another close-up.
Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel, ready for another close-up.
The WB / The CW
Caroline Framke
Caroline Framke wrote about culture, which usually means television. Also seen @ The A.V. Club, The Atlantic, Complex, Flavorwire, NPR, the fridge to get more seltzer.

The power of the nostalgia machine just might be real: The dearly departed WB series Gilmore Girls is heavily rumored to be getting ready to ride again — and this time, it will be streaming.

While Netflix is not commenting yet, TV Line reports that Netflix has made a deal with Warner Bros to bring the series back for four 90-minute episodes, or, essentially, four movies. According to Michael Ausiello, the revival will take place over one year, with each episode following Lorelei, Rory, and their motormouthed friends through a different season. (We hear Stars Hollow is lovely in the autumn.)

TV Line further reports that “all the major stars” are set to return, specifically Lauren Graham (Lorelai), Alexis Bledel (Rory), Scott Patterson (Luke), and Kelly Bishop (Emily). (Edward Herrmann, who played Richard, died in December 2014.) There is no word yet on Keiko Agena (Lane), Liza Weil (Paris, now on How to Get Away with Murder), or Melissa McCarthy (Sookie, now on everything).

A Gilmore Girls revival might give the series a chance to redo its ending, which many found disappointing. Creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her writer-director husband Daniel Palladino had left the series in 2006, citing contract disputes with Warner Brothers, the studio that produced the series (and aired it on its subsidiary network The WB for six of its seven seasons).

The seventh and final season subsequently went on without them, and the ending Sherman-Palladino had apparently always envisioned never came to be. (You should only ask a Gilmore Girls fanatic what he or she thinks “those last four words” are if you’re ready to lose hours of your life.)

Fans slammed the final season for feeling out of character, and even Graham admitted that she missed Sherman-Palladino’s touch: “I wish she had been more involved this year, because I was playing a piece of her that is so specifically her. I missed her writing,” she told TV Guide.

Since the series went off the air in 2007, there have been petitions dedicated to getting more episodes, a popular podcast chronicling every episode, and even a packed reunion event at this year’s Television Festival in Austin, where Sherman-Palladino dropped sly hints about future possibilities.

So commissioning more stories for the Gilmores would be a smart move for Netflix, which relies on harnessing the fervent passion of internet fandom into dedicated viewers. (See also: Fuller House, a Full House sequel series starring a widowed D.J. and her sons, and no, I did not make it up for a punchline.)

Updated to reflect new reports saying each episode will be a season of the year.

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