Girls Revival: 18 Ways the HBO Series Could Show Its Characters’ Next Chapter

Girls made its mark by treating early adulthood as a long stretch of bad decisions that might, with luck, become material for a book. Its characters were selfish, funny and often hard to tolerate; their talent for rationalizing every misstep was part of the show’s appeal. A five-episode return gives Lena Dunham and the original cast a chance to see what a decade of life has done to that particular kind of chaos.

HBO is bringing the series back with Dunham at the helm, and Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna are all set to return. The original show ended in 2017. Since then, the internet has become even harder to ignore, friendships have shifted, and the women have had years to become either more settled or more convinced that they’re right. I don’t need them to have solved their lives. I want to see how their old habits have adapted.

Back in 2012, Hannah’s claim that she might be “the voice of a generation” landed because it was both absurd and recognizable. The show captured a moment when careers seemed perpetually close to taking off and every failure could be recast as personal growth. A revival can test what that self-image looks like in middle age, when the audience has changed and the old friends may no longer be close.

Here are 18 turns of events I’d like to see the series try on. They’re less predictions than ways to bring the characters’ old traits into contact with today’s work, media and culture.

Careers, clout and online life

1. Joshua returns. Patrick Wilson’s hot doctor remains an open question. Is he single? Does he still live in that beautiful Brooklyn brownstone? Some viewers have not forgotten the kitchen.

2. Jessa sells wellness. She could be drinking raw milk, hawking expensive tinctures and hosting Hudson Valley retreats under a self-appointed title as a trauma healer. The joke would land best if the show let her believe her own pitch.

3. Marnie becomes a mommy influencer. Picture beige interiors, gut-health sponsorships and a podcast called Becoming Marnie. She still releases music now and then, because a new platform hasn’t cured her desire to perform.

4. Shoshanna builds a startup. A successful wellness company and a polished professional profile would fit her drive. She could be the only one who knows how to use LinkedIn, dropping “circle back” into conversation without a hint of irony.

5. Hannah becomes a TikTok villain. A personal essay about her son gets picked apart online, and her Notes app apology only makes the backlash worse. It’s a modern version of her old belief that personal disclosure will automatically make people understand her.

6. Caroline, Laird and Sample get an update. Is Sample growing up in a Brooklyn commune? Has Caroline turned homeschooling into online content? And is Laird still wearing that beanie? Those loose ends could add welcome strangeness to the revival.

7. Elijah takes on elder status on Fire Island. Andrew Rannells’ character could be a moderately successful Broadway actor complaining that younger gay men don’t know their history, while dating someone 26 and sharing liberally with his Instagram Close Friends.

8. Ray stays Ray. Alex Karpovsky’s character could be absorbed in protecting independent coffee shops, opposing corporate landlords and complaining about people filming in public. His irritation with the world around him feels like a durable part of the show’s comedy.

9. Marnie’s mother outdoes her online. Evie, played by Rita Wilson, could build a TikTok audience with dating advice for divorced women. Marnie would be appalled to discover that the audience sees her mother as the emotionally stable one.

10. Hannah tries to impress younger women. At a Williamsburg bar, she attempts to connect with twentysomethings who consider millennials embarrassing. One calls her “mother,” and Hannah takes the word far too literally.

11. Desi turns to men’s spirituality. Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s character could host a show about divine masculinity, sell pricey breathwork courses and include “consciousness” in his profile. An ayahuasca retreat would round out the persona.

12. New York makes them feel old. Their favorite bars have closed, old apartments have become far more expensive, and familiar neighborhoods have changed beyond recognition. Realizing Williamsburg no longer caters to you can do more than any birthday to make age feel concrete.

13. Mimi-Rose becomes an AI artist. Gillian Jacobs’ character embracing generative AI as conceptual art would give Hannah a new reason to seethe, especially if Mimi-Rose gets a profile in The New Yorker. The friction could explore what each woman thinks authorship is worth.

14. Marnie’s wedding makeup returns as a meme. A younger audience rediscovers the disastrous look and turns it into a TikTok trend. Marnie’s attempt to reclaim it with a sponsored “get ready with me” video practically writes itself.

15. Hannah gets an adult ADHD diagnosis. She could publish a 5,000-word essay explaining how it accounts for every decision she’s made, then launch a Substack about neurodivergence and stop after three posts.

16. Booth Jonathan runs out of money on NFTs. Jorma Taccone’s character could stage a blockchain art project with a members-only Discord and digital assets that have lost 98 percent of their value. He still calls himself a visionary; the audience can decide what to call him.

17. Dan Levy plays Hannah’s frustrated literary agent. After years of waiting for her book, he’s still hearing that it’s actually three books. His suggestion to write a commercial memoir about motherhood irritates her, as does her suspicion that he’s focused on a 24-year-old BookTok sensation.

18. Andrew Scott becomes Hannah’s rival and lover. He could play an acclaimed Irish novelist teaching at her university, praised for emotional honesty. Hannah’s conviction that she invented writing about herself would make the praise particularly hard to bear.

The question worth revisiting

These possibilities work because the characters’ defining flaws can survive a change in technology and age. The bigger question is whether the four women still speak to one another, and what their friendship means after years of living separate lives. The revival doesn’t need to offer tidy answers; it needs to show how their familiar self-absorption collides with the people they’ve become.