Why a Revival of ‘Girls’ Is Such an Exciting Idea
The return of ‘Girls’ as a five-episode limited series won’t be interesting just because Hannah Horvath does or doesn’t change. It will also be a litmus test for how we’re doing at home. After all, Lena Dunham has at times tried to distance herself from her best-known creation. At the height […]
"Girls" coming back for a five-episode limited run won't be interesting just because of whether or not Hannah Horvath changes. This will be a litmus test for how we have it at home.
After all, Lena Dunham has at times tried to differentiate herself from her most famous creation. At the height of HBO's "Girls," a machine that happened to be a pretty good TV show, journalists wrote about and addressed Dunham as if she were literally the narcissistic writer she portrayed on screen. There seemed to be a general consensus that Dunham probably couldn't understand the ways in which Horvath was flawed and annoying—despite Dunham writing her. And in the years since "Girls" ended in 2017, Dunham has tried to step out of the show's shadow with new work, in part because of the medical and substance issues she chronicled in her recent memoir, "Famesick." Related Stories Bela Bajaria on Netflix's Epic Local-Language TV Show: 'There's No Roadmap' Netflix's 'A Different World' Is a Bold, Fun and Timely Reboot That Focuses on the Uniqueness of Gen Z: TV Review
As shown by "Famesick" and her 2025 Netflix series "Too Much" — a sad and surprisingly mature tale of trying to overcome romantic disappointment — Dunham is in a different place now, and maybe her audience is, too. His book was greeted with warm nostalgia and an appreciation of Dunham's shaky understanding of himself and the web of misunderstandings that surrounded him. Popular in Variety
So — while it's obviously too early to even speculate about what "Girls" will look like in the late 2020s, aside from its cast, with Dunham, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and Andrew Runnels all confirmed to return — there's hope that it might cut through some of the clutter the show presents. It's also reasonable to assume that "Girls" 2 could more fully reflect Dunham's vision than the show we now remember: Part of the tension and drama of "Fame" is its portrayal of "Girls" as the product of a series of compromises with Dunham's then-creative partner, Jenny Conner, who brought the film's main talent to director Jenny Conner. "Small furniture" How to make a TV with a normal structure. Judd Apatow is returning as an executive producer on this "Girls" iteration, but Conner is not.
The Dunham-Konner breakup — which Dunham's side of "Famesick" barely recreated — gives the idea of a "Girls" revival an intriguingly meta aspect. Wherever Hannah is now, it's probably being written by someone who's just working on her own terms. (Along with the writers, Dunham is credited as a writer on every episode of "Too Much," which wasn't the case for the first six seasons of "Girls.") And the information Dunham shared about her inner life felt like a renaissance. We now know that Hannah's series finale — separated from many of her friends and raising a child as a single mother — was written while Dunham was physically ill and addicted to drugs. Setting the show at what appears to be a happier, more stable moment in her life — including with a new perspective on parenthood, as Dunham, who has written about her grief after having a hysterectomy, is now a mother — allows Hannah a deeper, richer ending.
Or... not an end, but a stopping point. As this news proves once again, nothing on TV is ever truly final — does anyone believe, for example, that we'll never really see Carrie Bradshaw again? But Carrie's example shows a sense of the potential and problems of reviving "Girls". It was heartwarming for fans of that show to meet Carrey and friends on the streets of New York in the 2008 sequel and the 2020 HBO Max revival "And Just Like It." (I use "streets of New York" advisedly—note that I avoid mentioning the words "Abu Dhabi.") And these new projects allowed Michael Patrick King to experiment with how "Sex and the City" characters navigate the passages of life that grow into late middle age. A radical project. It was a pile of narrative contrivances - again with Aidan! - and opportunities to comment on changing social mores.
All in all, though, it was invigorating to see Carrie Bradshaw come out of her moments and into the contemporary. And Hannah Horvath has a similar promise. Since "Girls" ended, she's been frozen in time — our reactions to her may have changed, but she remains a creature of the late Obama era, the way Carrie Bradshaw of the late-century Gen X saga was an icon of old millennial manners and ways of speaking. How has Hannah's perspective changed since we left her — and what parts of her remain irreducibly? Almost as much as I've loved seeing Dunham come into his own in recent years, I can't wait to find out.