Lena Dunham confirmed it: Girls is about to return And we need it today more than ever

I'm a Girls girl. Born in 1994, I followed him on MTV Italia, in real time. I watched the first season with the feeling that I had found a very precious pearl, hidden in the midst of the chaos of the programming of those years. I felt, for the first time, it really happened from something I saw on television. Because, unfortunately, Sex and The City and Gilmore Girls, however pleasant, were still far from my experience, children of other times and of other generations. I have closely followed all the debates that the series, at the time, caused. Too much nudity for a too-un-untraditionally attractive (read: overweight) protagonist? Too close, too sincere, too cringe. It was 2012.

The return of Girls starts from the Zeitgeist

More than a decade has passed and Girls, which at the time was praised by critics at home and almost ignored in Italy, is back. It has returned to Twitter, Instagram and TikTok, it has returned in the form of gifs, memes, video clips and articles on Substack in which, in fact, it is discussed for what it is: a very strong window, very effective as a harm, on the millennial generation, and on American millennial women in particular. A gem of writing that still provides us with a lot of material for reflection and discussion, especially on social networks, and that has a lot to say. When younger colleagues ask me if I've seen it and what I think about it, I reply that it has changed my brain chemistry forever, and it's true.

Five new episodes in 2027, on HBO Max, with the (almost) full original cast

So Girls has returned some time ago in thought and in the zeitgeist, but now it has also returned materially, for real. The 4 headline girls announced it on Instagram yesterday. Lena Dunham (protagonist, showrunner and author) has staged a video call with Zosia Mamet, Allison Williams and Jemima Kirke in which they discuss a possible return. The protagonists are perfectly in character, and to them is also joined by Andrew Rannells. We don't know who else will return, but those who have read Famesick, the biography of the protagonist, feel like they can exclude Adam Driver. "But can we call it Girls even if we're old?" Dunham wonders at some point. And this question, for fans of the series, encapsulates a bit of everything.

Girls' millennial optimism and the possible ramifications of this return

On Twitter, Girls' return was greeted with joy. There is also a lot of talk about millennial optimism in relation to the series written by Dunham and Konner between 2012 and 2017. Do you know? That feeling - typical in all 20-year-olds, but in older millennials, even for socio-economic reasons - that everything will be fine, and that our lives in one way or another at some point will fall on tracks even after doing colossal crap. Optimism that was then not honored, but this is another matter. There is nostalgia, now omnipresent, that loudly asks for the continuation of everything we have ever loved. There is the feeling, more ideal than real, that if Girls returns then that naivety will also return, which for Gen Z is as precious as it is non-existent, and perhaps even more precious because it is desperately sought. Will it be true? We don't know. On the contrary, there is a risk that the return will disappoint and leave you unhappy, that it will be a sad operation. It happened, for example, with Scrubs and with Sex and The City itself. But it's nice to hope without having to look (too much) back, and perhaps that's also why we're so grateful to Lena Dunham, queen of being over the top but real, desperate but hopeful, an eternally millennial woman, young even if adult, herself but also all of us.