HBO Brings Back 'Girls' After 10 Years: Five Episodes Set for 2027

By James Calloway

HBO has confirmed a limited five-episode return of "Girls," nearly ten years after the series ended its sixth and final season in 2017, with production set to start in 2027.

The original cast returns: Lena Dunham as Hannah Horvath, Allison Williams as Marnie, Jemima Kirke as Jessa, Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna, and Andrew Rannells as Elijah. Dunham created, directed and starred in the show, which she conceived at 24. The revival will follow the characters, first shown as women in their twenties in Brooklyn, now at 40.

The announcement lands during a strong run for Dunham. Her memoir, "Doente de fama," became a New York Times best-seller and revealed details of her experience making "Girls."

Why the return matters now?

When "Girls" launched in 2012, critics and viewers measured it against "Sex and the City," which aired from 1998 to 2004. The show itself did the same: in the pilot, Shoshanna unpacks a suitcase under a "Sex and the City" poster and tells her English cousin, "You're a Carrie; I'm a Miranda."

Dunham acknowledged the debt in 2012, in an interview with O Globo: "The 'Girls' could not exist without 'Sex and the City.' Their ideas about what it means to be a woman and what it means to live in New York are entirely formed by 'Sex and the City' and the feminist ideas that existed in the show."

Bruna Aucar, coordinator of Obitel, a Brazilian network of audiovisual fiction researchers, frames the 1998 series as a product of a fragmenting market. She said: "SATC marks the moment when the market was beginning to fragment with the arrival of pay TV, and the representation of women on mass television revolved around marriage and family. In that, the series represented innovation by bringing women who worked, were independent, earned their own money, talked openly about sex."

What separates the two shows?

Hannah Horvath, like Carrie Bradshaw, is a writer. But she starts the series unemployed and newly cut off from her parents' financial support while still believing she is "a voice of a generation." Where "Sex and the City" tied female autonomy to glamour and consumer success, "Girls" ran the other way.

Aucar said: "'Girls' shows a generation reaching adulthood under the effects of the 2008 financial crisis and the precarization of work. Even though the characters desire independence, recognition and sexual freedom, they have much more difficulty realizing their aspirations than their predecessors."

Raquel Galdino, a researcher of female representation in serialized narratives with a master's degree from PUC-Rio, points to the fragmented-TV anti-hero as the format's advantage. "They no longer need to be perfect, they can be wavering and express their experiences through morally questionable values, controversies, adversities that respond not only to them but to social contexts, economic expectations and power relations," she said.

Lucas Muniz, a researcher of fictional narratives, argues Dunham revisits the New York imaginary built by "Sex and the City" and ironizes it, exposing the gap between earlier promises of success and her characters' unstable life projects.

How is Gen Z responding?

At its 2012 debut, "Girls" was among the first series "discussed" on social media, generating opinion pieces and debates over its portrayal of bodies, sex scenes and nudity. Aucar notes the show challenged stereotyped beauty standards "through the exposure of bodies in uncomfortable situations and scenes of intimacy," legitimizing less idealized representations.

The show also drew intense criticism at the time for its lack of diversity, and Dunham became a controversial figure. Aucar said: "There is no single female experience, nor a universal trajectory of emancipation."

The ten-year mark, the social media resurgence and renewed interest in Dunham now position the revival for a new audience. Laura Neiva, 24, a cinema graduate and fan, said the show's slice-of-life style makes viewers "not want to be them, but to see themselves in them and in their anxieties."

Muniz's closing read: "The series is very aligned with Generation Z's frustrations and the contemporary disenchanted scenario. It's no accident that it has had its rebirth on social media, constantly resurfacing."