This relationship was not the one we were rooting for.
The Big Picture
- Lorelai and Rory have changed and grown, and in
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
, we see them ten years after the events of the show entering a new era of their life. - Rory announces she is pregnant in the last few seconds of the miniseries, leaving audiences to speculate about the father.
- The baby’s father is confirmed to be Logan, drawing parallels to Lorelai’s complicated relationship with Rory’s father, Christopher.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is set nearly a decade after the finale of the original Gilmore Girls series. A lot has changed, and a lot has stayed the same. While the lovely town of Stars Hollow and its eccentric inhabitants remain largely unchanged, Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory Gilmore (Alexis Bledel) find themselves at a crossroads. Now that they are ten years older, they must learn to navigate a new era in their lives. By the end of the miniseries, Lorelai and Rory have changed – they are wiser and vastly more grateful for the lives they have and the people in them. But they are still the lovable, relatable, and witty characters we loved during the show’s original run. However, just as Lorelai and Rory embrace the changes that come with growth, Rory announces she is pregnant in the last few seconds of the miniseries.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life
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Set nearly a decade after the finale of the original series, this revival follows Lorelai, Rory and Emily Gilmore through four seasons of change.
- Release Date
- November 25, 2016
- Cast
- Lauren Graham , Alexis Bledel , Scott Patterson , Kelly Bishop
- Main Genre
- Drama
- Seasons
- 1
What Happened in ‘Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life’?
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life has four lengthy episodes, depicting Emily (Kelly Bishop), Lorelai, and Rory Gilmore’s lives as they go through winter, spring, summer, and fall. As the seasons change, so do the Gilmore girls. Emily, Lorelai, and Rory experience the tricky stages of grief as they mourn the loss of Richard Gilmore (Edward Herrmann). Richard was the husband to Emily, father to Lorelai, and grandfather to Rory. He was a pivotal member of the Gilmore clan, always wanting the absolute best for his family and working very hard to provide for them.
While Emily fills her home with a family of housekeepers to keep herself occupied, Lorelai goes on a soul-searching journey to California. Rory, however, suffers from an existential crisis as her journalism career hits a dead-end. Between trying to reclaim her sense of purpose and moving back home to Stars Hollow, Rory also distracts herself by having an affair with her engaged ex-boyfriend, Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry). The very last scene of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life involves Lorelai and Rory sitting on the famous Stars Hollow gazebo, taking a moment of reflection after Lorelai and Luke’s (Scott Patterson) wedding celebrations. After a few moments of silence, Rory tells Lorelai that she is pregnant. Then the show ends. This cliffhanger leaves the story open for a potential continuation, but in the meantime, audiences were left to speculate about who Rory’s baby daddy is.
How Did the ‘Gilmore Girls’ Revival End Up Worse Than the Original Show?
Where they lead, we will follow… for better or worse.
At the beginning of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, we learn that Rory has a boyfriend named Paul (Jack Carpenter), but Rory is so uninterested in Paul that she actually forgets that he is her boyfriend. Rory’s indifference towards Paul meant that they rarely saw each other. Eventually, Paul breaks up with Rory, and rightfully so because Rory’s avoidance of him was very cruel and selfish. Paul may have been a pretty dull guy, but Rory should not have strung him along for so long. So, the chances of Paul being the father of Rory’s baby were very slim.
Rory and Jess’ Relationship Goes Back Years on ‘Gilmore Girls’
Fan favorite ex-boyfriend Jess Mariano (Milo Ventimiglia) also makes a return in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Jess and Rory dated for some time during Season 3 of Gilmore Girls, but during that time Jess was a rude, reckless, and impulsive teenager. He was judged and misunderstood by the Stars Hollow community. Rory, however, was very different from Jess. She worked hard, she had ambition and a strong sense of direction. But Rory and Jess had a lot in common past those surface-level differences. Rory recognized the potential in Jess before he was able to acknowledge it himself. After Rory starts attending Yale, we do not see Jess for a long time. However, when he does return, he is a changed man. He is pursuing his love of writing, and he has a newfound respect for his family.
Interestingly, the two times that Rory does lose her way, it was Jess who happened to put her back on track. When Rory dropped out of Yale, Jess was the only person who could convince Rory to go back. And during Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, when Rory’s career was struggling, it was Jess who encouraged her to write a book about her and Lorelai’s life. Although Jess returned in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,there was no chance that Jess could be the father of Rory’s baby.
Rory Hasn’t Made the Best Decisions in the Past
Furthermore, while conducting research for a journalism piece in New York City in A Year in the Life, Rory finds herself mixed up with a crowd of cosplayers. One thing leads to another and Rory ends up sleeping with a man she met who was cosplaying as a Wookie from Star Wars. This is a low point for Rory. After she sleeps with the Wookie cosplayer, she tells Lorelai: “I’m just a big, fat, Wookie-humping loser with no future.” Although the Wookie cosplayer could potentially be the father of Rory’s baby, Valerie Campbell, the Key Set Costumer for Gilmore Girls and Costume Supervisor for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, took to TikTok recently to respond to the speculation surrounding Rory’s baby daddy.
In response to the Wookie cosplayer being the potential father, Campbell quoted that Rory would “definitely be showing, but we never gave her a pregnancy belly, and that is very, very important. We never gave her one; we were never instructed to give her one.” Campbell also informed fans that Rory was definitely not sleeping with Paul. The only other possible candidate for Rory’s baby daddy is Logan, and Campbell confirms that Logan is indeed the father.
‘Gilmore Girls’ Logan Has Consistently Proven Himself as Unreliable
Logan being the father of Rory’s baby draws immediate parallels between Lorelai and Rory’s father, Christopher (David Sutcliffe). At some points during Gilmore Girls, Lorelai and Christopher seemed as though they were meant for each other. However, Lorelai and Christopher never felt as right as Lorelai and Luke did. Even though they tried to be good parents to Rory, they just never fit together well. The same can be said for Rory and Logan – their relationship showed various signs of impermanence. Logan was impulsive, often engaging in foolhardy behaviors like excessive drinking and partying, and sometimes he’d even get himself arrested. Logan’s recklessness was an act of rebellion against his father, Mitchum Hunztberger (Gregg Henry). Mitchum is adamant that Logan follow in his footsteps and be a successful businessman, but Logan despises his father. Mitchum is a very selfish, narcissistic man and at one point, he crushed Rory’s dreams of becoming a journalist. Initially, Logan’s family disapproved of Rory, and since then, Rory’s relationship with Logan’s family has been very standoffish. So, Logan being Rory’s baby daddy makes Rory’s austere relationship with Mitchum even more complicated.
It’s Time to Forgive Rory Gilmore for Being Imperfect
Adolescent Rory Gilmore deserves the same space we all do to mess up and make mistakes!
Although Logan refused to grow up because he did not want to inherit the future that his father had set up for him, Logan was never afraid to spend his father’s money. Logan’s wealth and privilege made it difficult to sympathize with him as he often acted like a spoiled brat. He attended Yale, but he neglected his academic responsibilities. It was hard to feel sorry for Logan when he had the freedom to make bad decisions because his father was rich and had the means to get his son out of trouble. Logan had a bad habit of running away from his problems. If he’d made a mistake or something upset him, he’d fly to another country, get drunk, and jump off a cliff with a faulty parachute. There were moments during the series where Rory wasn’t even sure why she loved him. Rory has never been materialistic, and she values honesty and humility over extravagance. However, Rory couldn’t help who she fell in love with. Although Jess and Logan are academically intelligent, they are very, very different people because they value different things.
Rory and Logan’s Relationship Mirrors Lorelai and Christopher’s on ‘Gilmore Girls’
In the final season of Gilmore Girls, Logan asks Rory to marry her. Rory takes her time to make a decision, but eventually she declines, choosing to prioritize her career because during this time she was graduating from Yale. However, while we did see Logan eventually mature, he was having an affair with Rory despite being engaged to someone else in Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. We do not know what instigated this affair, but it does prove that Rory and Logan cannot resist being in each other’s lives, much like Lorelai and Christopher.
Now that Rory is pregnant, she will always be tied to Logan. If Logan’s track record of running away from his problems holds true, then it is hard to say what he will do when he learns he is the father of Rory’s baby. But while it’s unclear where the future will take Rory and her baby, if Lorelai and Christopher are the blueprint for Rory and Logan, could Lorelai and Luke be a reflection of Rory’s future with Jess? It’s unlikely the revival will get any follow-up seasons, but that just means the possibilities are endless for Rory’s future.
This article was originally published on collider.com