NetflixGilmore Girls: A Year in the Life was missing something fans around the world have come to associate with it: the theme song.
All 153 episodes of the original Gilmore Girls run featured a revised version of "Where You Lead" by Carole King and daughter Louise Goffin, but the four chapters of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life—"Winter," "Spring," "Summer" and "Fall"—were devoid of the iconic song, save for the end credits of "Fall." What happened? No, Carole King didn't revoke her rights—in fact, she appeared as Stars Hollow's music shop owner Sophie and even sang—it was a conscious choice by creator Amy Sherman-Palladino.
"Well, we were really trying to do these in a different form and we didn't want it to feel like a traditional television show. We sort of saved it for the end because we needed to include it, but it just felt like—we weren't trying to do, ‘Hey, here's more Gilmore episodes. They're just longer,'" Sherman-Palladino told E! News in a phone interview.
"We were really trying to tell a different kind of story about these three women and where they were when their lives got turned upside down. I think because of that and because there were no commercial breaks and because you're not writing to act breaks, you're really writing sort of in movie form, it's harder to break away from that and put a main title sequence in there without it feeling like you're just doing the old series again," she continued. "It really was just a stylistic thing and dramatically, wanting to come up cold on certain things."
Those things included the start of "Winter" where the revival began with whispers of iconic lines becoming louder and louder.
"It sort of went down from there," she said.
When viewers finally heard the beloved song, it was right after Rory (Alexis Bledel) told Lorelai (Lauren Graham) that she was—spoiler alert!—pregnant. Cut to black, start "Where You Lead."
"It was really all just creative decisions on how we use the music to its fullest impact," Sherman-Palladino said.
If you're still really missing the intro, let this fan-made video fulfill all your hopes and dreams.
Do you agree with Sherman-Palladino? Did the only inclusion of the Gilmore Girls staple have the impact Sherman-Palladino intended it to have on you?
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life is now streaming on Netflix.