USA TODAY International Edition
‘Girls’ face their futures without us
Lightning- rod show wraps on an unexpected note
Spoiler alert: The following story contains significant details from Sunday’s series finale.
Hannah Horvath is ( kinda- sorta) grown up.
After six seasons of messy relationships, friendship fallouts and gonzo writing assignments, Girls’ self- absorbed heroine ( Lena Dunham) finally learned to consider someone other than herself: her newborn son, Grover, whom she cradled in Sunday’s series finale after a one- night stand with a surf instructor ( The Night Of’s Riz Ahmed) earlier this season.
Hannah’s nurturing, motherly side came to light after an agonizing struggle to breastfeed, as best friend Marnie ( Allison Williams) and mom Loreen ( Becky Ann Baker) tried to console her when Grover wouldn’t “latch on.” It’s a surprisingly domesticated turn for the lightning- rod character, with some critics arguing that her decision to keep the baby — and new job “teaching the Internet” at a college in upstate New York — was both “old- fashioned” and “narratively unrealistic.”
“Every choice we’ve ever made on Girls has been politicized,” Dunham says. “I saw some piece — because my mother loves to send me everything — that said, ‘ Girls did a disservice by not having Hannah have an abortion.’ And I was like, ‘ Part of what we’re all fighting for is reproductive freedom in all of its forms.’ The argument I keep making is, Hannah is one of the people who, statistically, in society, is in the best position to have a child. She’s in the 1% of people who is likely cushioned by her parents, has a liberal- arts education and has access to a job. Like, it’s going to be fine, guys. And she’s totally still doing something from a place of privilege like she always has.”
Co- creator Jenni Konner also defends the notion that the only way Hannah was able to mature was by becoming a mom and breastfeeding.
“What we were really trying to communicate, especially in terms of the breastfeeding, is that it’s one of those things that is supposed to be really natural and isn’t always,” Konner says. “Hannah is the kind of person who would take it personally if her child didn’t breastfeed. ... It was more about Hannah and her personality and letting go of a certain kind of narcissism.”
Dunham and Konner came up with the final image back in Season 4, when executive producer Judd Apatow asked them how
Girls would end. “I basically knew that it was going to end on her face in a feeling of looking towards the future and contentment,” Konner says. “It doesn’t necessarily mean we know what happened, but it’s supposed to communicate, ‘ She’s going to be OK on her own.’ ”
Neither Jessa ( Jemima Kirke) nor Shoshanna ( Zosia Mamet) appeared in the finale, which took place five months after the previous episode.
“I think the question of the show has been: These people that you randomly got selected to be in a room with in college, are these the people that you’re always going to be friends with?” Konner says. “The answer for some of them is no. This moment in their 20s meant something to all of them, but it doesn’t necessarily mean who they’ll be as grown- ups.”
“Every choice we’ve ever made on ‘ Girls’ has been politicized.” Lena Dunham