Stars Hollow residents and Gilmore Girls fans are abuzz with the news that Netflix has finally released a trailer for the four-part Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life. There's Rory! There's Lorelai! There's Emily! There's... Kirk? It's not that his presence in the trailer in general is odd, since he was a big part of the original series, but the way he appears is completely shocking. Kirk is at Friday night dinner in the Gilmore Girls trailer, and I need to know why. Has he joined the Gilmore family? Is there something they're not telling us?
The trailer for the series show what looks to be a pretty normal life in Stars Hollow. Sure, everyone is older and maybe a little wiser, but it's the same cast of characters, the same town meetings, and the same abundance of coffee. The biggest hole seems to be the one left by Richard Gilmore — Edward Herrmann, who played the Gilmore patriarch, died in 2014 — and Emily, Rory, and Lorelai are left grappling with his death. As we see in the trailer, Emily commissions a wall-sized portrait of her late husband for their home, and could it be that she also has a plan for that empty chair at Friday night dinners? Around the one-minute mark in the trailer, Kirk is seen sitting with Emily, Rory, and Lorelai, enjoying whatever it is that Emily’s staff has whipped up for them.
Considering the fact that Luke and Lorelai still seem to be together and Rory is living, as Emily calls it, a “vagabond existence,” we don't have to worry that Kirk is somehow romantically involved with either of the younger Gilmore girls. Emily doesn’t even know him (even though he was her realtor at one point in the original series), as she says, “Explain to me who that person is,” to which Lorelai replies, “Oh, that I could.”
Maybe this is just another one of Kirk’s crazy schemes, and he's trying to eat at as many tables as possible or learn how to manage an estate like Emily’s home or be involved in girl talk. Maybe Kirk’s own mother died and he’s trying to get the Gilmore to be his own support group, since they just lost Richard, too. Honestly, Kirk is Kirk, so there could be a million different reasons as to why he’s at the Gilmore table. We don’t know how or why, but I’m just glad that he’s there and can't wait to see another Friday night dinner when Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life hits Netflix on Nov. 25.
Image: Warner Bros. Television
