Warning: Spoilers ahead.
The Gilmore Girls reboot on Netflix has generated a stir for a few reasons, and one of those was the wedding date for Luke Danes and Lorelai Gilmore: Nov. 5, 2016.
In reality, that was just a few days before the presidential election, and several interviews with the show’s creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, and her husband and co-executive producer Daniel Palladino have focused on why they chose that date in particular.
The two confirmed in interviews with Vulture, TVLine and Vogue that they didn’t want to predict the election’s results so they chose a date before then.
“We considered putting Hillary Clinton in there, but first of all, I didn’t want to jinx it—little did I know that the world was going to jinx it,” Amy Sherman-Palladino told Vogue. “And it’s the kind of thing that dates a show.”
“We were tempted to put something about — you know, because there was the prospect and the likelihood that there was going to be a woman president-elect at the very, very end. I think that [promotional] poster [originally] indicated that it would be on Nov. 19, I think it was post-election,” Daniel Palladino told Vulture. “We in this industry can’t afford to even predict the future even when it's as certain as Hillary Clinton winning the presidential election.”
Given the election went to Donald Trump, that was probably the better call. But in the interview with Vulture, that question also prompted a back and forth between the spouses about whether Stars Hollow, where the Gilmore Girls live, would have voted for Trump.
“Amy and I are dyed in the wool liberals and very left wing,” Palladino said. “But the show, we always wanted it to be bipartisan and Stars Hollow is a — probably voted for Trump, mainly...”
“No. No, no, no, no,” Amy Sherman-Palladino interrupted.
“Oh, I think they did,” Palladino said, pointing out it’s “rural America.”
“No, no, no, no, no. There is no evilness in Stars Hollow,” Sherman-Palladino said. “Do not put that out there, I do not accept that. Absolutely not.”
The two agreed to disagree, and Sherman-Palladino previously told TVLine she has had a hard time not interpreting the election results as “the world is ending.”
So which one was right? Normally, the only way to tell the results in a fictional world would be to ask the show’s creators. But in this case, Stars Hollow is based on a real town called Washington, Connecticut.
That town voted for Hillary Clinton over Trump, 1,242 to 738. However, the county it’s in, Litchfield, went to Trump, and the state itself went to Clinton.
The show has commented on both presidential candidates in the past, before they were nominees for major parties. Sookie St. James, the cook and Lorelai Gilmore’s best friend, refers to Trump as “that bastard” in one episode.
On the other hand, Lorelai Gilmore tells Luke Danes, “see you when Hillary’s president,” when she is expressing doubts about when she’ll ever get to see him again.