Lauren Graham Defends Controversial Revival Ending 9 Years Later

Nine years later, Gilmore Girls star Lauren Graham has defended the polarizing ending provided by Netflix’s limited sequel series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. A Year in the Life represented more than a simple streaming-era revival, although it was one of the first major network TV shows to receive that treatment.

It was also a chance for Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who left the original show under difficult circumstances before its controversial seventh and final season, to conclude the story as she’d originally envisioned. This, of course, includes the now infamous “final four words,” which were revealed to be, “Mom? Yeah? I’m pregnant,” as Rory (Alexis Bledel) and Lorelai (Graham) shared a quiet moment in Stars Hollow’s iconic gazebo.

Nearly a decade on, Graham admits that she didn’t fully understand why Gilmore Girls: AYITL’s last moments – and indeed, major parts of Sherman’s four-episode revival – proved to be so controversial. When Variety recently spoke to Graham and questioned if she ever revisited A Year in the Life and whether she was aware of the show’s critical reception, the actress responded:

“The good news and bad news finds its way to you. But I don’t exactly understand why [AYITL was polarizing]. I was having the time of my life. I was on clouds every single day at work, and I felt like the work was really good and the episodes were really beautiful.”

When the revival was originally released, most of the controversy was actually aimed at Bledel’s character, Rory, who seemed to have undergone a complete 180-degree turn from where she’d left off in Gilmore Girls’ original series finale.

Rather than being a successful journalist, Rory had become a nomad, with a boyfriend so invisible she (and the audience) forgot he existed, all while wrapped up in an affair with her last love, Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry). The Gilmore Girls revival never confirmed the father of her baby, though the show’s timeline suggests it’s Logan (and given the other two options, this would also be the most narratively satisfying).

Interestingly, Graham is far from the only cast member to defend the show’s cliffhanger ending, which led fans to believe a second season of A Year in the Life was in the works. In her recently released memoir, Kelly Bishop, who played Gilmore family matriarch Emily, wrote that the show’s last words “struck [her] as more interesting than infuriating, since it opened debates among viewers to decide who Rory was pregnant by, and what the repercussions would be.”

Graham’s recent comments and Bishop’s musings line up with what Sherman-Palladino said about the revival’s ending. When it first premiered, the showrunner told Entertainment Weekly that she and her co-writer husband, Daniel Palladino, “weren’t going for a happy ending,” explaining:

“[The ending] wasn’t open-ended for any nefarious reasons. It’s open-ended because life is open-ended. One of the things that I always liked that we did on Gilmore is we never ended things with a hug, we never concluded things, we never had the moment where it’s like, ‘Everything is going to be okay.’ I think that that was the element here — it seems like Lorelai’s settled, it seems like Emily’s settled, but you know what? Life continues and life never is settled until you’re dead and somebody throws you in a box.”

Our Take On Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life’s Ending

Alexis Bledel as Rory Gilmore smiling in Gilmore Girls a Year in the Life

A Year in the Life‘s ending certainly brought Lorelai and Rory’s story full circle, which may be the kind of interesting, beautiful, open-ended symmetry that Graham, Bishop, and Sherman-Palladino were referring to. Even so, I can understand why fans were critical of the show and Rory’s fate; I’m one of those fans myself.

I don’t begrudge Sherman-Palladino for turning Rory into a less successful version of herself. Nobody has it all figured out so easily, and there were hints throughout the entirety of the original series that proved that Rory was a great writer, but potentially not a great journalist. Yes, there’s a difference, and look at how much happier she was while writing her own memoir!

That said, is the ending really fair to these characters? To Lorelai, who tried so hard to keep her daughter from going down the same path as her, only for Rory to end up pregnant? No steady income, no place to settle down? Was it fair to Rory to make her repeat the same mistake of getting involved with someone already attached to another?

Of course, the problem with discussions like these is that they’re completely subjective. It’s Sherman-Palladino’s story, and clearly, those on the inside of it view it through a different lens than fans who were perhaps hoping for a more conclusive and uplifting ending. Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life accomplished what its creator wanted it to, and that’s all anyone can really ask for.