Act One: What Glee Meant Back Then
When Glee first premiered in 2009, it was weird. And I say that with love. It was quirky, messy, overly ambitious, and absolutely obsessed with mashups. But it also felt like the first mainstream show that let musical theater kids, and anyone who ever felt a little offbeat, take center stage.
It wasn’t just about singing. It was about being seen. About feeling like your weirdness was the main plot, not comic relief. The jocks sang. The cheerleaders cried. The gay kid was not the punchline. The popular girl had real problems. And under all that glitter and Auto-Tune, there was something revolutionary happening.
Sure, the plotlines spiraled. Yes, the tone sometimes shifted from heartfelt to chaotic in under five seconds. And no, I still haven’t emotionally recovered from that “Bohemian Rhapsody” birth scene. But when it was good, it was so good. The performances were electric. The casting was bold. The message: be yourself, even if it’s loud and off-key, landed right in the hearts of millions of teenagers who didn’t fit the mold.
Glee made high school feel like a Broadway stage. And for a while, we all sang along.
Act Two: Why Glee Still Lingers in 2025
Let’s be honest: I haven’t stopped watching Glee. Not really. It lives rent-free on my TikTok feed, wedged between cleaning hacks and dog videos, popping up in the form of Santana burns, Rachel solos, or Sue Sylvester monologues that have aged suspiciously well. And every time one of those clips hits, I’m instantly transported back to the early 2010s, when streaming was new, fandoms were louder, and Glee Club felt like a real-world escape plan.
Now, in 2025, musicals are still everywhere. Broadway’s booming again. Every animated film comes with six songs and a karaoke version. But musical TV? That’s harder to get right. There’s a reason nothing’s quite filled the Glee-shaped hole in pop culture. It wasn’t just the music. It was the audacity. The unfiltered chaos. The cast that felt like they could break into song at your bus stop and somehow make it work.
The truth is, Glee predicted TikTok before TikTok existed. It mashed genres, celebrated over-the-top performances, turned covers into hits, and made misfits cool. Watching people duet or harmonize through their screens now feels like a spiritual cousin to what Glee was doing weekly on network TV. So no wonder it’s still echoing through the algorithm.
Act Three: Should Glee Come Back? Or Should We Let It Go?
This is the part where the key changes, and we get introspective.
Do we need another Glee? Probably not. But would I watch the hell out of one? Absolutely.
Still, there’s a risk to reboots, especially ones that were so specific to their time. Glee was messy, brilliant, tone-deaf, inspiring, chaotic, and emotionally raw, often all in the same episode. That’s what made it special. It didn't try to be perfect. It tried to be big. It aimed for sincerity in a world full of snark. And that felt radical in the Tumblr era.
But now? Sincerity is harder to sell. Audiences are quicker to critique, and the internet never forgets. A new version would either get flattened by think pieces or sterilized into something safe and polished, and Glee was never meant to be safe. The original pushed boundaries. It missed the mark a lot. But it also hit hard when it worked.
So maybe instead of rebooting it, we just let it echo and let it live on in TikTok edits, Broadway dreams, and the occasional spontaneous Target harmony.
Epilogue: Some Legacies Deserve an Encore. Others Just Need a Standing Ovation
So there I was, in my kitchen, wearing a decade-old Glee Live Tour shirt I found in the box I hadn't opened since 2013, like it was couture, belting “Don’t Rain On My Parade” while my dog stared at me in quiet judgment. And I thought. Maybe this is enough. Perhaps the legacy of Glee doesn’t need another season. Maybe it just needs a good playlist, a few TikTok tributes, and people like me still crying over Lea Michele hitting that final note.
The truth is, Glee was never just about music. It was about being a misfit and finding your chorus. It was messy, chaotic, often cringey, but it was also honest in ways few shows dared to be.
And as I stood there in my vintage tour shirt, scrolling through TikTok clips of teenagers lip-syncing to “Defying Gravity,” I realized: the spirit of Glee never really left. It just changed stages.
So maybe we don’t need a reboot. Maybe we don’t need a gritty reimagining or a Gen Alpha upgrade. Maybe what we need is to remember how good it felt to feel seen. To sing out of tune with your whole heart. To believe that, even in high school, the underdogs could win.
Glee wasn’t perfect. But it was ours. And that’s more than enough.
