Girls is coming back to HBO, and holy heck, I am excited.
I am also apparently incapable of hearing that news without immediately remembering Hannah and Adam. Or, as my brain insists on calling him, Kylo Ren. Yes, I know his name is Adam. Adam Driver played both, and that association is staying with me.
That relationship. What the fuck even was that?
I can be thrilled about getting more Girls and still look back at those two and think: absolutely not. The toxic stuff that gets tangled up with the idea of a great love story looks very different to me now.
What HBO has actually confirmed
According to HBO’s October 13 announcement, Girls will return for a limited run of five episodes. Production is scheduled to begin in 2027, ten years after the sixth-season finale.
The announced returning cast includes Lena Dunham as Hannah, Allison Williams as Marnie, Jemima Kirke as Jessa, Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna, and Andrew Rannells as Elijah. Judd Apatow is returning as an executive producer.
There is no premiere date in the announcement. That 2027 date is when production begins, so we do not have a new episode to put on the calendar yet.
I want to see them again. I have questions.
HBO says the new episodes will turn their attention toward the milestone of forty. That is the part that makes this more interesting to me than simply getting the gang back together.
Because the people watching have gotten older, too.
I will never forget Hannah and Adam’s weird relationship. Watching something compelling and deciding it represents the kind of love you should want are two very different things, but those lines can get blurry. For me, that relationship belongs in the conversation about the toxic shit we learned to mistake for romance.
That is my reaction to it. It does not mean a show has to give us healthy people making sensible decisions in every episode. Imagine how short that series would be.
But I want to see what happens when the characters have had time to reconsider things. What do they still defend? What would they look back on and refuse to do again? Those are the questions I am bringing to this return, not a plot HBO has promised.
And what about Adam?
Adam Driver is not named in HBO’s announced returning cast. That leaves his involvement unconfirmed; it does not establish what will happen to Hannah in the new episodes.
Incidentally, TTB was already talking about the Adam-to-Kylo-Ren whiplash back in 2016. Apparently that connection has staying power.
I am excited to see these women again. I just know I am coming back with considerably less patience for calling a toxic relationship a love story.
