Girls showed us the joyful complicated reality of womanhood - but how do Hannah, Marnie, Jessa and Shoshanna fit into 2026?

‘Adventurous women’ everywhere, get ready, because Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna, and Jessa are returning to our screens, this time navigating life as women turning 40, in a very different world.

The new limited series will consist of five episodes and star all of the original cast members - Dunham, Alison Williams, Jemima Kirke, Zosia Mamet, and of course, Andrew Rannells, as Elijah.

Often billed as a more realistic version of the Sex and The City, the Dunham creation subverted traditional telly tropes by showcasing flawed, deeply unlikable, and morally ambiguous characters. Unflinching in its approach, it featured awkward sex scenes, uncomfortable moments, and explored the complexities of intense friendships, trauma, addiction, and mental health.

While we loved their chaotic, messy lives, we didn’t always like them — critics point out how their redeeming qualities were often overshadowed by their extreme levels of entitlement and self-absorption, which was part of the point Dunham was trying to make about her generation. Hannah could barely get through any conversation before making it about herself. All four of the leads are so desperate to be understood but are quite unwilling to understand other people, making for a difficult watch at times.

A bigger critical flaw with Girls was its lack of diversity — you can’t be the ‘voice of a generation’ when only a very small part of that generation is represented. Dunham herself has admitted she understands why not reflecting a multitude of experiences was ‘really disappointing to people,’ telling The Independent last year: “I think one of the profound issues around Girls was that there was so little real estate for women in television that if you had a show called Girls, which is such a monolithic name, it sounds like it’s describing all the girls in all the places.

The actor and writer reflected: “The thing I have really come to believe is that one of the most important things is not just diversity in front of the camera, but it’s diversity behind the camera. As a producer, one of my goals is to bring a lot of different voices into a position where they can tell their story.”

Still, she’s got a difficult road ahead of her. The reboot — see: And Just Like That, Scrubs, Frasier and the like — has become the nostalgia go-to of the Hollywood machine. But I’ll admit I can’t wait to see how the crew have changed since we left them frozen in time.

What would they think of TikTok, AI, Donald Trump being president, ‘gentle parenting’ and ‘looksmaxxing,’ and how did they pass the time during the Covid-19 pandemic? The questions are endless.

Hannah definitely has a self-indulgent Substack, that’s for sure.

Last July, Dunham gave us a huge hint of what we can expect, telling Variety: “If we had something to say that was really specific and it was a moment in their lives where we felt like revisiting it - like millennial women becoming mothers or stepping into menopause or going to live at old-age homes - I would always want to work with those people again.”

She predicted: “Shoshanna was married to, then divorced from, the mayor of New York City, and she runs an athleisure startup that’s zero-waste. Marnie - it’s third marriage. She still sings, but I think Marnie really needs to take it to sex and love addicts anonymous.

“Jessa is unvaccinated and lives on a boat in Croatia. Adam is a cult theater actor, and he’s probably living in Berlin, and Ray is still on city council and running his coffee shop and doing better than anyone. Elijah is the fourth lead on a sitcom, making a good amount of money and still looking for love in all the wrong places.”

As for Hannah, Dunham thinks she’d be ‘teaching at Bard and loves raising her son’. “She probably has a girlfriend who’s, like, a chef. And she’s less obsessed with being famous. That is where I feel that she would land,” she added.

Maybe the reboot is where Girls could find its second life. Not by pretending that its characters have finally figured everything out, but by exploring what happens when they realise they probably never will, which is what we loved about the series in the first place.