Just when we thought we were done with a TV landscape full of reboots, revivals and reunions, Lena Dunham has given us one that’s actually worth getting excited about.
On Tuesday night, the Golden Globe winner shocked the world with the news that her much-celebrated series Girls was being brought back to life by the US broadcaster HBO, a decade on from the final episodes.
Girls originally ran for six seasons between between 2012 and 2018, making household names of its principal cast members, Allison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet and, of course, Lena herself, who was also the show’s creator, and directed and wrote many of its most iconic episodes.
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As fans the world over celebrate the reunion between one of TV’s most dysfunctional quartets, here’s a quick round-up of everything we know about it so far…
Which members of the Girls cast are back for the reunion?
Lena revealed the news in a video of a staged Zoom call between herself and her four co-stars, asking them if they’d be up for spending the summer together making another season of Girls.
While the short skit sees the four core – plus Andrew Rannells – playing themselves, as the minute-long clip progresses, they all start displaying traits and tropes associated with their characters.
So far, we know that Lena will be joined by all three of her principal co-stars, as well as Andrew, who played Hannah’s best friend (and ex) Elijah. All five of them are also named as executive producers on this next run of episodes.
Other love interests for the original core four were played by the likes of Adam Driver, Christopher Abbott, Alex Karpovsky, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Riz Ahmed.
There’s no word yet on whether any of them will be returning, but we’d bet on a few putting in appearances, even if they’re only cameos.
Interestingly, a press release for the project gives Andrew billing alongside the show’s four principals, with Lena referring to the core group of characters as a “fivesome”, and HBO’s rep also listing Elijah as part of the main group.
While Judd Apatow is also listed as an exec producer, one name who’s not mentioned in the press release is Jenni Konner, Girls’ former co-showrunner, who wrote and directed key episodes throughout Girls’ original run.
Lena wrote candidly about her at-times-difficult working relationship with Jenni in her 2026 memoir Famesick, noting that the two hadn’t spoken since 2018.
When will the Girls reunion be out, and how many episodes will there be?
The Girls revival is being billed as a “limited run” consisting of just five episodes.
There’s no word yet on the specifics of when it’ll be on our screens, but in her video, Lena teased working together in the summer of 2027, so we could still be in for a bit of a wait.
What happened in the Girls season finale?
We might be better off discussing the events of Girls’ penultimate episode, as the actual finale felt more like an epilogue to the main series than a farewell to the show.
In the second-to-last instalment, which aired in April 2017, Hannah plans to leave New York to raise her unborn child out of the city.
At Shoshanna’s engagement party (oh yeah, we totally forgot about her fiancé, Byron, played by Julian Leong), she confronts the rest of the group for their past selfishness, and tells them she no longer wants to be friends with them.
The actual finale initially sees Marnie moving upstate with Hannah to help raise her child, but Hannah’s mother encourages Marnie to live her own life.
In the final scene, Hannah makes a breakthrough in her motherhood journey when her five-month-old son finally latches onto her, which is where we leave the complex character for what we thought would be the last time.
What has Lena Dunham been up to since Girls came to an end?
Over the last decade, Lena has continued to act, write and direct.
Since Girls’ ending, she’s played the radical feminist Valerie Solanas in American Horror Story and Catherine “Gypsy” Share, a member of Charles Manson’s cult in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
Behind the camera, the Bafta winner has directed the movies Catherine Called Birdy starring Bella Ramsey and Sharp Stick, as well as the first ever episode of the British financial drama Industry.
Last year, she unveiled the romantic comedy series Too Much for Netflix, in which she also played a supporting character, with Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe play the series leads.
So far, 2026 has been another massive year for Lena. Not only did she shoot a role in the upcoming series It Gets Worse and released a bestselling memoir, Famesick – in which she speaks with her trademark honesty about the ups and downs of making Girls, as well as chronic illness and life in the public eye – she also announced last month that she’d become a mother, welcoming her first child via a surrogate.
What has Lena Dunham said about a Girls reunion in the past?
Last year, while promoting Too Much, Lena claimed there’d been no Girls reunion “conversations”, noting: “We always said when the show ended that if we were going to go back, it would have to be at such a different phase in their lives.”
“Let’s check in when they’re 60 [and have] taken even another leap,” she remarked to The Ankler. “Part of the goal of the show was always to lean into what was unexpected, so we want to be unexpected if we come together again.”
Around a year later, though, she appeared to have had something of a change of heart, when she revealed she’d been considering a stand-alone Girls film.
“I would love to do it, and I have to say, I got a little plot line in my brain,” she shared, while also revealing that she and her co-stars will occasionally pop up in their group chat to ponder where their characters would be today.
Lena teased in a new press release: “We always said we would only return to Girls if there was a specific story we were burning to tell. 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 [in May 2026], 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.”
She enthused: “It’s rare that you get the chance to return to something that changed your life with the gift of hindsight and a whole new level of gratitude and understanding.
“I love these girls (and boy), our friends at HBO, and all the people who have continued to discover the show and remind us afresh why we do this, which is the joy of being together… and the chance to wear yellow mesh…”
HBO’s head of comedy programming added: “We’re thrilled to have Lena turn her gaze from the tumult of one’s 20s to the milestone of turning 40.
“To say the world has changed since we last saw Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, Jessa, and Elijah is a massive understatement, but we know fans – old and new – will be happy to see how they’ve grown and relieved to see that they’re still the Girls we knew way back when.”
The first six seasons of Girls are streaming on Sky, Now and HBO Max in the UK.
