Millennial optimism started as a TikTok trend with Gen Z romanticizing the peak millennial era of ten to fifteen years ago, full of indie-folk music, mustache finger tattoos, and the feeling that it was fun to be young.
Arguably, it is both a misrepresentation of things then and now: millennials were also the generation that started adulthood in the middle of a massive financial crisis, and ended up with worse prospects than their parents. Plus, Zoomers are the ones who made whimsy, jestermaxxing, and being ‘just a girl’ things to aspire to.
Nonetheless, the premise of four privileged young women trying to follow their dreams in early 2010s Brooklyn means that Girls scratches that itch for anybody looking to be sentimental about this supposedly innocent time. It's also more than just a period piece, of course, and any fan would argue that the writing and acting hold it up just as much as the nostalgia factor does.
Aesthetics aside, it is no shock that Girls has been given the green light for a reboot. Rewatches of the original series have become such a trend this past decade that there's even an entire podcast dedicated to it. Millennial fans enjoy it because they have the privilege of seeing it first as a young adult, and then gaining a different sense of perspective now that they're older and (possibly) wiser. Younger Gen Z viewers get to pine for the idea of early 2010s Greenpoint while also appreciating the coming-of-age story. While the era that birthed Girls may have been and gone, it is just as compelling to see how the characters transition to the world we live in now.
Perhaps the most quoted part of the show comes from the pilot, in which protagonist Hannah Horvath tells her parents that “I don't wanna freak you out, but I think that I may be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice. Of a generation.” It turned out to be a prescient line. For all that Girls generated endless rounds of discourse for its limited representation of millennials, both the storytelling and the time capsule have proven that it is one of those pieces of generational media that continues to capture audiences.
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