Mourning and Melancholia: Conflicting Approaches to Reviving Gilmore Girls One Season at a Time

Abstract

In 2016, the canceled CW television series Gilmore Girls was revived on Netflix as four 90-minute “mini-movies” called Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Factors contributing to the original series ending, including creator conflicts about its final year, have led to continued series devotion and, consequently, Netflix’s revival that aimed to court the show’s built-in audience as well as a new generation of viewers. To revive a show that caters to established fans and also appeals to potential new fans requires a blend of self-referentiality and narrative continuation. I argue that while established fans were catered to through A Year in the Life’s reinstatement of original creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s intended series ending, Netflix simultaneously catered to new viewers through streaming features like archive-access and by co-opting the very ending that established fans desired.