Where Will the Titular Girls of HBO’s ‘Girls’ Find Themselves 10 Years Later? Some Guesses

Saddle up, Girls-inistas, because we’re getting a limited-run five-episode return of the series that sparked a thousand tiresome think pieces. Lena Dunham, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, and Jemima Kirke will all reprise their roles as the HBO show’s foundational quartet, with Andrew Rannells’s irrepressible Elijah also reappearing. (Adam Driver’s Adam, for one, has not been confirmed to return—perhaps unsurprisingly.)

“We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell,” Dunham said in a release. “I’ve missed these characters, but for a long time I couldn’t quite picture them in the present day. Then, right around my 40th 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…”

I’m no Girls reboot writer, but hearing that the wildly-to-mildly annoying young women who made me and my Brooklyn-dwelling friends feel a little too seen in 2018 are returning to the small screen made me wonder what Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa would be up to in 2026 (or, rather, 2027, as production is slated to begin next summer—a decade after the original series finale). Below, find my absolute best guesses.

Hannah Horvath

Hey, remember that baby Hannah randomly had? Grover would be 10 or 11 years old in the reboot, and I’d love to see Hannah begin to navigate the highly competitive New York high school admissions process with him—though it’s totally possible that mother and son are still in Iowa, where we left them in the season-six finale. Hear me out: Is it crazy to think that Hannah might actually be…professionally successful in the reboot, maybe balancing a burgeoning career as a single-mom memoirist in the relatively affordable Midwest with always being at least 15 minutes late to pick up Grover from forest school?

Marnie Michaels

As I see it, there is no world in which a late-30s or early-40s Marnie is not also a mom—either to actual offspring (whom she would surely try—and fail—to gentle-parent, possibly going viral on Instagram in the process) or to a coterie of young art-world assistants who are now going through all the bullshit Marnie went through in her 20s. Does anyone really want to take advice from Marnie? No—God knows Hannah tried to avoid it for six seasons straight—but I doubt that will stop her. Square-jawed finance husband sold separately.

Shoshanna Shapiro

One word: corporate. Shoshanna-shone—say that five times fast—at her somewhat unexplained job in Japan (we know by her own admission that she “loves products”), and I think her late 30s would see her truly coming into her own as a business bitch, albeit perhaps in a Theranos-adjacent way. I do hope Shoshanna is still meeting Ray for lunch on Sundays to trade sections of the Times and listen to him grouse about how the new menu at Kellogg’s Diner in Williamsburg is too bourgeois.

Elijah Krantz

Unhappily openly married to Andy Cohen. Unsure if they should expand their Hudson Valley house or have a baby. More handsome than ever. Still sings, albeit mostly in the Tesla.

Jessa Johanssen

Sorry to be harsh, but…Jessa has got to either be dead (and appear to Hannah as a wise tousled-haired ghost) or super-MAHA, right? Nothing gold can stay, not even manic pixie dream girls!