Fans have been pressing Lena Dunham to create fresh material for Girls for nearly a decade. On October 13, HBO confirmed that their wishes have finally been granted.
Amid the current reboot craze and a new generation of women finding the show, HBO has officially greenlit more episodes of Girls, with the core four cast members slated to return for a limited run. The news has been a long time in the making—in 2025, Dunham noted that she wasn’t opposed to bringing back Girls, should the right plot arrive.
“If we had something to say that was really specific and it was a moment in their lives where we felt like revisiting it—like millennial women becoming mothers or stepping into menopause or going to live at old-age homes—I would always want to work with those people again,” she told Variety at the time.
Following the arrival of the news, Amy Gravitt, the executive vice president, head of HBO & HBO Max Comedy Programming, shared, “We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s twenties to the milestone of turning forty. To say the world has changed since we last saw Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, Jessa, and Elijah is a massive understatement, but we know fans—old and new—will be happy to see how they’ve grown and relieved to see that they’re still the ‘Girls’ we knew way back when.”
Here’s what we know about the new Girls episodes.
Who is in the cast?
Per HBO, the “returning cast will include Dunham as Hannah, Allison Williams as Marnie, Jemima Kirke as Jessa, Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna, Andrew Rannells as Elijah.”
It’s currently unclear if Adam Driver and Christopher Abbott, who starred as Adam Sackler and Charlie Dattolo, respectively, will reprise their roles. Alex Karpovsky, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Jake Lacy also starred in the series, but we don’t know if they’ll return either.
What has the cast said?
In a press release announcing the news, Dunham said, “We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell. I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my fortieth birthday, they started talking to me in the shower. And, as you may remember, once this fivesome starts talking it’s pretty hard to get them to stop… It’s rare that you get the chance to return to something that changed your life with the gift of hindsight and a whole new level of gratitude and understanding. I love these girls (and boy), our friends at HBO, and all the people who have continued to discover the show and remind us afresh why we do this, which is the joy of being together… and the chance to wear yellow mesh…”
What will the new episodes be about?
No plot details have been shared yet, but Dunham gave her thoughts on what each of the characters would be doing now in her 2025 Variety interview.
“Shoshanna was married to, then divorced from, the mayor of New York City, and she runs an athleisure startup that’s zero-waste. Marnie—it’s her third marriage. She still sings, but I think Marnie really needs to take it to Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,” she mused. “Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia. Adam is a cult theater actor, and he’s probably living in Berlin, and Ray is still on city council and running his coffee shop and doing better than anyone. Elijah is the fourth lead on a sitcom, making a good amount of money and still looking for love in all the wrong places.”
When asked about Hannah Horvath, Dunham said that the character “teaches at Bard and loves raising her son. She probably has a girlfriend who’s, like, a chef. And she’s less obsessed with being famous. That is where I feel that she would land.”
The original show, which ran from 2012 to 2017, followed four millennial women in New York City struggling through their twenties and navigating relationships.
When will it be released?
There is no release date for the new episodes of Girls, but HBO did confirm that “production is set to begin in 2027, 10 years after the season 6 finale.” The reboot will contain a total of five episodes.
This story will be updated.