We seem to be experiencing a collective inability to leave the 2010s alone. Tumblr aesthetics have returned, indie sleaze has been resurrected, and television executives have discovered that almost anything can be brought back, provided audiences remember loving it the first time. Now, ten years after Girls concluded its six-season run, Lena Dunham is bringing Hannah Horvath, Marnie Michaels, Jessa Johansson and Shoshanna Shapiro back to HBO for a five-episode revival, with production scheduled to begin in 2027. But the cultural landscape they are returning to has changed considerably. As Gen Z discovers the series while its original audience prepares to revisit their twenties from the other side of thirty, a question emerges: are we nostalgic for Girls itself, or a time when being a mess did not require an explanation?

When Girls premiered in 2012, it was heralded as a portrait of millennial womanhood. Dunham, then in her twenties herself, created a series that rejected the polished fantasies of female independence popularised by shows before it. Her protagonists were not in designer wardrobes or navigating their romantic lives with the benefit of hindsight. Hannah was an aspiring writer whose confidence routinely exceeded her talent, Marnie was perpetually dissatisfied with herself and everyone around her, Jessa confused recklessness with freedom, and Shoshanna was so preoccupied with missing out that she seemed to experience adulthood as a deadline she had already failed to meet. They were selfish, insecure and frequently unbearable. Their friendships were as competitive as they were affectionate, their relationships often disastrous, and their conversations an exercise in watching people talk without listening. Hannah’s relationship with Adam Sackler, played by Adam Driver, was similarly compelling because it refused to turn romantic dysfunction into a reassuring story about finding the right person. Their attraction was not evidence of compatibility, and their repeated failures to understand a convenient declaration of love rarely resolved one another.