The Netflix Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life revival was a bigger mess than Sloppy Joe Night at Al’s Pancake World, and we’ve been dreading the announcement of a follow-up more than Luke hates cellphones. But praise be to Miss Patty, it looks like we aren’t going to be subjected to a second instalment anytime soon because show creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s calendar just got booked up by a project we actually love.

You see, Amazon just announced that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, created by Sherman-Palladino, will be getting a third season. If you haven’t yet had the joy of watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel it’s basically everything that was good about Gilmore Girls—the mile-a-minute dialogue, the emphasis on female relationships, the whip smart humour—but saltier, a little darker, and definitely more R than PG. Also the retro costumes are everything. So let us break it down for you because the news of this third season is amazing news on at least three different levels. 

Binging Mrs. Maisel‘s upcoming Season 2 just got better

A scene from The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel where three girls are standing and smiling at a cafe counter (Courtesy of Amazon)
A scene from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Courtesy of Amazon)

A third season means another 10 episodes in the delightful, hilarious adventures of Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) and her quest to transform from Stepford Wife to stand-up comedian in 1950s New York. The second season hasn’t even dropped yet—that’s coming later this year, exact date TBD—but it means none of that sinking ‘is this the end?’ feeling once you’ve binged all the eps in one weekend. We don’t have much intel on the second season (although it possibly starts in Paris, as hinted by star Rachel Brosnahan’s Instagram posts) but we have no doubt we’ll be laughing through our tears, just like we did in Season 1.

Sherman-Palladino gave us a cast of lovable, flawed grown-ups to cheer for (and sometimes shake our heads at) and we can’t wait to see where she takes Midge’s complicated relationship with her sort-of ex-husband, her struggle to balance motherhood with her own ambition and of course, her burgeoning stand-up career as the show edges toward the swinging ’60s.

Move over Gilmores, Mrs. Maisel is coming through

This announcement also likely puts a second season of the v. controversial Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life revival on ice for at least the foreseeable future. Sherman-Palladino (along with her husband Daniel) created both the original TV show and the four-part Netflix series, as you know, and it’s highly improbable she’ll have the creative bandwidth or time to make a second instalment happen until this third season of Mrs. Maisel wraps. By our guesstimate, that could be at least 2020.

While we recognize there were some fans of Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life out there, over here at FLARE HQ, the Netflix revival was fairly universally panned. Yes, there’s that whole Rory: ‘I’m pregnant” cliffhanger to be resolved but TBH, we’d like to forget that whole episode (and the winter, spring, summer ones too) happened and just remember the Gilmores as they were when the show ended in 2008. We know that if a second revival ever happens, it likely won’t be at Netflix since Sherman-Palladino and her husband inked an overall deal over at streaming service rival, Amazon. The show creator, however, has left the door open for more on the gang from Star’s Hollow. As she told the RadioTimes last year: “We carved a little niche for ourselves with Amazon that if we ever wanted to do it, if the girls and us get together and we have a concept that works, then we have the freedom to do it.”

Even without the revival, you might see your fave Gilmores again  

There is good news of a kind for Gilmore fans in all this. Sherman-Palladino told The Hollywood Reporter that Lauren Graham, a.k.a. Lorelai Gilmore, has been lobbying hard for a part on Mrs. Maisel. “I gotta get my girl Lauren on the show,” said Sherman-Palladino. The announcement of a third season of Mrs. Maisel makes way more room in the show’s universe for a Graham arc—perhaps as a fast-talking booker who hosts Midge’s first Vegas residency? Sounds like the best of both worlds to us.