There are MAJOR SPOILERS ahead for Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life. The revival takes place around nine years after the original series ended in 2007 — and that's a long time. Recessions came and went. President Barack Obama was elected twice and served his maximum two terms. And Rory Gilmore has been able to have what seems like a full journalism career, albiet off-screen. So viewers are left to determine what Rory did after graduating Yale, but before the Gilmore Girls revival — sort of. The four episodes do leave clues to the life and career of Rory that they didn't get to witness themselves.
It feels weird not to see some of her life, doesn't it? Fans got to essentially grow up with precocious Rory Gilmore, who started off the original at age 16 with dreams of attending Harvard and becoming the next Christiane Amanpour. Now at 32, Rory is a Yale graduate, a published journalist, and yet she's feeling more lost than ever, according to the revival series. In the episode "Spring," Rory endures discouraging interviews at Condé Nast and a chic new media website called SandeeSays after having achieved an incredible career high right before the revival begins: a byline in The New Yorker.
So what else in Rory's post-Yale life happened but went unseen by viewers before the revival? Check out the timeline I've put together below.
2008: Covering Barack Obama's Presidential Campaign
In the final episode of the original series in 2007 Rory accepts a last minute position with a website to cover Obama's first presidential campaign. I can only imagine that the gig lasted until Election Day in 2008 and even beyond. The job is not mentioned at all in the revival, but it was most likely invaluable experience for Rory and a great launching pad for her career.
2009: The Great Recession
And then the recession occurred, which hit journalism and other industries hard back in the day. It probably didn't help Rory's journalism career too much, as the industry came to a bit of a standstill for most people.
2010: Begins Freelance Writing
But once the economy regrouped, I can only guess that Rory did, too. Let's say that this is around the time when she begins her freelance writing career, getting those Slate and The Atlantic bylines that Headmaster Charleston spoke about at her Chilton alumni day in the episode "Spring."
At some point, she also gets an apartment in Brooklyn, which I imagine would be around now, since her days covering the campaign trail have finished.
2012: Meets With Jess
When Jess Mariano visits Rory at the Stars Hollow Gazette in the episode "Summer," they mention that they haven't seen each other in four years, but they don't mention how, where, or what they did. It was most likely something that deals with his writing (it sounds like he still works in publishing) or perhaps one of her articles led them to each other. After all, books and writing were always a shared passion between these two former lovebirds.
2014: Meets & Begins Dating Paul
Throughout the revival, it's a running joke that Rory's forgettable boyfriend Paul has been with her for two years and yet he still slips her mind. If they did in fact date for two years and Rory hasn't forgotten a year or two of the courtship, this is when they probably would have met.
2015: Writes About Naomi Shropshire For The New Yorker
And that brings us to Rory's career high: a "Talk of the Town" piece about London socialite Naomi Shropshire for The New Yorker. It's an article that gives Rory a bit of fame — and probably helped rekindle her romance with college boyfriend Logan. After all, the article probably required her to be in London — the same city in which he lives.
From there, you can watch Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life to find out what happens next in Rory's life on-screen.
Images: Neil Jacobs/Netflix; Giphy (5); nowisation/Tumblr
