Glee is officially returning more than a decade after its original run ended, with Disney+ and Hulu ordering a new version of the musical comedy from Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.
The revival arrives as television networks and streaming services keep revisiting familiar franchises, with Scrubs' successful return offering one possible blueprint for turning nostalgia into a series with a future.
For Glee, the challenge will be finding enough continuity to bring longtime viewers back while making room for characters and stories that can appeal to an audience that may have discovered the show years after it left Fox.
20th Television will produce the new series, though it has not announced details about its plot or setting. Before the series order, Murphy said he had been in contact with about 10 members of the original cast after writing a script with Falchuk and Brennan.
At least one major piece is now falling into place. Lea Michele will reprise her role as Rachel Berry, Variety reported Wednesday, citing multiple sources. Heather Morris, who played Brittany Pierce, and Chord Overstreet, who played Sam Evans, also posted social media messages that appeared to suggest they will be involved, though Variety stopped short of reporting their returns as formally confirmed.
That mix of established characters and a potential new generation matters because Glee has tried something similar before. Beginning with its fourth season, the original series introduced younger students at McKinley High while continuing the stories of graduates including Rachel and Kurt Hummel. The balancing act proved difficult as the show moved between its high-school roots and the adult lives of characters who had outgrown them.
Eleven years after the finale, the creators have another opportunity to solve that problem. And they need look no further for an example.
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Why the Scrubs Revival Worked
Scrubs returned to ABC this year, 16 years after the original ended, with Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, and Donald Faison returning as J.D., Elliot, and Turk. Instead of freezing its original characters at the age audiences remembered them, the revival brought them back to Sacred Heart Hospital at different stages of their careers and put them alongside a younger group of doctors.
The approach established continuity without requiring the returning cast to simply recreate their earlier stories. J.D., once a young doctor dependent on mentors like Dr. Cox, returned as a senior doctor responsible for the doctors coming up behind him. That gave the revival a reason to revisit the same fictional institution while changing what its established characters do within it.
The initial audience was strong enough to produce something many revivals struggle to achieve: staying power. The first season averaged 8.7 million viewers, according to ratings information provided in the source material, and ABC renewed the show for a second season shortly after the first finished airing. The second season premiered Sept. 30.
Its critical reception offered another promising sign. The first revival season earned a 90 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from 50 reviews and a Metacritic score of 73 from 27 reviews, according to the provided ratings data. Those figures do not guarantee longevity, but paired with the renewal, they show that Scrubs moved beyond the initial curiosity that can greet the return of a familiar title.
TVLine reported another important distinction. Ari Goldman, ABC Entertainment's senior vice president of content strategy and scheduling, told the outlet that the network was encouraged not just by the revival's launch, but by how its audience held up as the season progressed. He contrasted that pattern with revivals that attract attention at premiere but lose momentum afterward.
For Glee, that may be the more meaningful measure of success. Getting former Gleeks to sample a premiere is one thing. Giving them a reason to stay, while developing viewers who have no nostalgia for the 2009 series, is something else entirely.
Glee Can Bring Back Its Stars Without Living in the Past
The original Glee centered on New Directions at the fictional William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, mixing teenage characters with teachers and other adults. The series premiered in 2009 and ran for six seasons before ending in 2015. Its younger cast included Michele, Cory Monteith, Chris Colfer, Amber Riley, Kevin McHale, Jenna Ushkowitz, Dianna Agron, Naya Rivera, Darren Criss, Morris and Overstreet.
Some of those actors have since built careers that generate interest independently of the franchise. Michele, for example, returned to Broadway prominence with Funny Girl and more recently appeared in Chess. Her return as Rachel gives the new Glee an immediate connection to one of the original show's central characters.
But Scrubs suggests treating returning characters as a foundation rather than the entire premise. Bill Lawrence told TVLine that bringing J.D., Turk, and Elliot back with the same problems they faced when they were younger wouldn't have worked. Instead, time became part of the story.
Glee has an obvious opportunity to adopt that principle. Its original premise was inherently generational: Students graduate, performers move on and the school remains. A return to McKinley, if that is ultimately the setting Disney chooses, could therefore provide a natural intersection between established characters and teenagers encountering the pressures of high school in a dramatically different cultural environment.
Disney has not yet announced that the reboot will return to McKinley, however, so that remains a possibility rather than a confirmed premise.
A New Generation Could Be as Important as the Original Gleeks
Nostalgia gives Glee an unusually large pool of potential returning viewers. The original became a significant pop-culture and music property, placing hundreds of recordings on the Billboard Hot 100 during its run and spawning concert tours and soundtrack releases.
Its audience did not disappear when the final episode aired. Variety reported that the series' music currently draws an average of 4.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify. That continuing footprint gives the reboot access to viewers who remember watching New Directions in real time, as well as younger listeners who encountered the music and series later through streaming.
That resembles an effect ABC has seen with Scrubs. Goldman told TVLine that viewing of the original show's streaming library increased following the revival announcement and again around its premiere. The network could not determine precisely how many revival viewers discovered the franchise for the first time, according to the report, but its streaming audience's age profile suggested it wasn't composed solely of returning original viewers.
For Glee, the opportunity may be to use its returning stars to provide familiarity without making prior fandom a prerequisite for watching. Its music-driven format also offers a built-in way to distinguish generations: The original constantly responded to contemporary songs and artists, so a new cast could naturally perform music that didn't exist during the Fox run.
That strategy would also address a basic limitation of nostalgia. Recognition can create interest, but a sustainable reboot ultimately needs characters whose stories matter without viewers having to remember what happened 15 years earlier.
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Glee Has Already Learned How Hard a New Cast Can Be
One particularly relevant warning lies in Glee's own history. The series began adding a younger generation after several original characters graduated from McKinley. It also continued storylines for alumni, meaning the show increasingly had to split its attention between an evolving school ensemble and characters audiences had already followed for years.
That history makes Scrubs' handling of its younger characters especially relevant. The 2026 series introduced a new generation of interns while retaining J.D., Turk and Elliot in substantial roles. TVLine reported that the creative team adjusted after the first season, with showrunner Aseem Batra saying the second season slowed down to give the younger characters more developed stories.
It also reflects a lesson learned from within the Scrubs franchise. Its previous ninth season shifted toward medical students while retaining some established characters. Faison told TVLine that avoiding a repeat of that experience mattered when the latest incarnation came together, while Lawrence said the earlier concept had originally been intended as more of an offshoot.
A new cast cannot simply exist as replacements for Rachel, Kurt, Mercedes, Santana or their contemporaries. At the same time, a revival centered entirely on former students risks losing the high-school dynamic around which the series was originally constructed.
The more durable model may therefore be a transfer of narrative weight: familiar characters strong enough to reopen the door, followed by younger characters compelling enough that the series no longer depends entirely on nostalgia.
Why Glee's Past Makes Its Reboot More Complicated
Glee also carries emotional and cultural baggage that makes its return different from many television revivals.
Three original cast members have died. Monteith, who played Finn Hudson, died in 2013 while the series was still airing. Rivera, who played Santana Lopez, died in 2020. Mark Salling, who played Noah "Puck" Puckerman, died in 2018.
Colfer has already identified Rivera's absence as one reason returning would be difficult. Speaking to Bustle before the series order, he recalled how demanding the original production was and said doing it again without Rivera would be hard, though he also acknowledged the show's fans' enthusiasm.
The series itself is equally tied to the period in which it was made. Glee regularly built episodes around race, sexuality, disability, mental health, bullying and other social issues, sometimes earning praise and sometimes controversy for how it handled them. A revival must decide not simply which characters return, but which parts of the original show's sensibility remain useful 17 years after its premiere.
That may be another place where Scrubs provides a useful model. Rather than pretending that medicine, its characters or its audience had stood still, its producers made elapsed time part of the premise. Glee has an opportunity to do the same with high school, music and the cultural issues its characters confront.
Can the Glee Reboot Repeat Scrubs' Success?
There are reasons to believe Glee starts with significant advantages. It still has a measurable music audience, its three creators are behind the new script, Michele is returning and Murphy has said roughly 10 original cast members responded enthusiastically after he contacted them.
But those advantages create expectations as much as opportunity. The original series' cultural footprint means viewers clearly remember what Glee sounded and felt like. Its later seasons also showed how hard it can be to introduce new students without losing viewers' attachment to established characters.
Scrubs' revival offers a possible answer: preserve the relationships and setting that made viewers care in the first place, acknowledge that the characters and world have changed, and give a younger ensemble enough room to become more than stand-ins for their predecessors.
Faison described the ambition to Newsweek in simpler terms when discussing Scrubs' return. He said the cast didn't want merely to reproduce what had worked before. They wanted to "elevate it."
For Glee, that may ultimately be the standard that matters. The question is whether a new generation can give audiences a reason to keep watching after the reunion ends.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Samantha Beech and Gray R. Thomas