‘Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life’ Spoilers: Complete Breakdown of ‘Winter,’ The First Episode

Caution: This article contains Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life spoilers in the form of a complete breakdown of what happens in the first episode, Winter. So read on at your own discretion.

Ready?

Okay. So when we last left the Gilmores, Rory was heading off to join Senator Barack Obama’s campaign and Luke and Lorelai were maybe together, maybe not together. When Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life premieres on Netflix on November 25, it will have been 3,483 days since that last episode was aired. That’s nine years, six months, and 11 days since that somewhat disappointing series finale. Thankfully, it is now just a season finale, as Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall are here, each presented in easily digested 90-minute morsels. But you knew that. So let’s get into some things you might not know.

Winter is the episode that lets us ease back into the lives of our favorite mother/daughter combo as they catch us up on what Rory has been doing for the past decade. There’s no mention of her being a political writer; it’s almost as if Amy Sherman-Palladino wants to pretend that didn’t happen. ASP and her writing partner and husband, Dan, both resisted watching Season 7 of The Gilmore Girls for a long time. When it came time to write the revival, ASP explained in an interview with TVLine.

“The good thing about Season 7 is, it didn’t take certain story elements from me that I would’ve wanted to play. We had to sort of catch up on Season 7. We did a lot through asking our friends who are obsessive Gilmore fans and have watched every moment to talk us through what happened. And I’ve seen bits and pieces. But the main thing was: We weren’t going to take something and do it even though Season 7 negated it. That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to say to the fans who stayed through Season 7, ‘Hey, you all wasted your f***ing time for a whole season. So, ignore all that!’ We had to pick them up where they left off. Luckily, the elements that we really wanted to play were not taken or destroyed by whatever they did in Season 7.”

ASP also revealed that although Rory is single at the beginning of Winter, she’s only single in the sense that she isn’t married. So let’s start with the spoiler heavy part. Seriously, this is it.

Winter opens up four months after Richard’s death. Rory is dating someone named Paul, and there’s a running gag that she’s constantly forgetting to break up with him. Rory and Logan are in an open relationship, calling it a “Vegas relationship,” as in, “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” Rory lives with Logan and crashes at his place when she’s in London, but the Rory storyline is mainly to catch us up on her vagabond existence, as the main story focuses on Emily, Lorelei, and Luke. It does get mentioned that Rory is trying to write a book as she jets around the world (Spoiler: This is where Alex Kingston’s appearance happens).

We get a flashback of Richard’s funeral, which is a tearjerker. Luke and Lorelai are living together, and Lorelai and Rory are still having Friday night dinners with Emily. Emily is a wreck, and Winter shows how she learns to move on. There’s a great scene with Kirk at a friday night dinner as a guest. Kirk is there because he runs a driving service called “oooober” and drives Lorelai there. He only stays because his car breaks down as well. The dinner is strained because Lorelai and Emily are very cold and distant with each other. This is due to a story that Lorelai shared at Richard’s funeral about how he was never really there for her. Ouch.

For all of the anticipation and rumors about someone having a kid, Luke and Lorelai don’t have a child. However, Lorelai does contact a surrogacy agency to talk about possible candidates. Luke and Lorelei go to visit, and guess who runs the surrogacy agency? If you guessed Paris Gellar, you win a prize. Didn’t see that one coming, did you? Paris runs the largest surrogate mother agency in the western hemisphere.

The episode ends with Lorelai on the phone with Emily, who has found a therapist to help her cope with Richard’s passing. Emily asks Lorelai to come with her, and after they hang up, Luke tells Lorelai that she’s going.

Sookie isn’t in Winter, as she went away for six months to find herself, but has ended up staying much longer than anticipated. Lane makes an appearance, and she’s still playing music with Hep Alien and has her twins. Sebastian Bach has a small cameo as well.

So that’s what happens in Winter episode of the Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. Even knowing what happens, we’re still going to be glued to the couch watching the entire thing. The entire four-episode revival will be released November 25 on Netflix.

[Featured Image by Netflix]