For you and I, 2012 may have been an insignificant year jumbled in the memories of childhood. But for fully formed adults, 2012 was a year with significant cultural roots. Gangnam Style and Call Me Maybe were topping charts and BuzzFeed listicles were the peak of journalism. The Millennial dream was alive and well, and no piece of media seems to have captured it as well as Lena Dunham does in her HBO series, Girls.
Now, nearly a decade later, Lena Dunham, the show’s creator and head writer, has announced a five-episode limited run on HBO, with production beginning in 2027.
The original show had a six-season run, spanning from 2012 to 2017, and gained a loyal following. The show follows Hannah Horvath — played by Lena Dunham — a 20-something-year-old woman and aspiring writer. The show also stars Allison Williams as Marnie, Jemima Kirke as Jessa and Zosia Mamet as Shoshanna.
Girls follows these four characters as they navigate life in their twenties and all the complications of trying to make it in New York City. The story sounds pretty familiar now, and at the time, it did too. Comparisons were often made to its spiritual predecessor HBO original series, Sex and the City.
Like Girls, Sex and the City followed four women navigating their lives, careers and relationships in New York City. Though the women were in their 30s rather than early 20s, seeing another show centred around the lives of four women made viewers suspicious that this was the same recycled material.
Girls offers a different insight not only into womanhood, but into humanity in general that we don’t often get to see in media, especially at present. Complicated stories with complicated morality are difficult to market and are increasingly hard to come by.
In late 2022, the show regained popularity. While naturally possessing rewatch value, the show also gained a new following from Gen Z. Viewership had grown significantly by 2023, with “#hbogirls” on TikTok reaching 51 million views.
Two Gen Z comedians began a podcast titled Girls Rewatch Podcast in 2023. The podcast often features different comedians alongside the hosts, recapping the episodes and describing which of the four in the show they feel they are most.
The podcast has amassed a large following, with over 145,000 followers on Instagram. The Girls Rewatch Podcast became so big that even Lena Dunham herself came on the show in 2025.
On the revival in popularity of Girls, Jay Karales writes on his Substack:
“Lena Dunham tells the truth with her characters. No other series from the last twenty years presents the average New Yorker or average millennial with such accuracy: their highlights and lowlights, their personality flaws, and their character strengths. And you get a lot of that without clear authorial judgement.”
Girls remains relevant and transcends the specifics of millennial culture and cringe because of the undeniable honesty within its character. Girls does not paint its characters in clear shades of black and white. Instead, every character exists in varying shades of grey, and they’re not easy to digest or root for. Whether we do or not is not the goal, and the story is still worth telling and consuming.
Lena Dunham said in a statement that she would only revive Girls if there was a specific story they wanted to tell. And though it’s unclear what that story might be now, American culture has changed significantly since 2017, and how these characters will respond to this reality and their 30s is a mystery.
Whatever direction the show goes in, Gen Z and millennial girls alike are sure to be tuning in.