Walmart has brought Us back to Stars Hollow.
In a new Gilmore Girls-themed commercial, Kirk (Sean Gunn) walks through the town square (right past a town troubadour) and enters the diner with a special delivery for Luke (Scott Patterson). As he exits, Lorelai (Lauren Graham) enters and says, “Coffee, coffee, coffee please!”
“Coming right up,” Luke says as he puts a blue Walmart box in front of her. Luke opens the package and it turns out to be a gift for Lorelai: a Keurig coffee maker.
“Luke, you shouldn’t have,” Lorelai exclaims.
He quips, “I had to — you’re drinking me out of business.”
The duo go outside and smile at the snow, which fans know is Lorelai’s favorite. “With top brands they’ll love from Walmart, give the gift that shows you get them,” Lorelai says in a voiceover.
The retailer brought Luke and Lorelai back together for the first time since 2016 “to celebrate love, friendship and the holidays,” per a press release.
Fans watched the couple fall in love when Gilmore Girls originally aired on The WB (and later The CW) for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007. They married in the 2016 Netflix revival series, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, which ended with Luke and Lorelai finally getting married. (Fans will notice the wedding band on his left hand in the new ad!)
Other easter eggs include the familiar music of Sam Phillips (who sings the iconic “la la” melody) and the town troubadour playing guitar on the bench. Fans can also expect another spot for the campaign in which Lorelai gifts Luke a backup baseball hat, just in case something happens to his signature one.
Walmart’s holiday campaign, designed to help customers “give the gifts that show you get them,” also includes ads featuring Crazy Rich Asians, SpongeBob SquarePants and Love Jones.
While no new episodes of Gilmore Girls have aired since 2016, much of the cast has said they’d happily reunite again over the years. Patterson even pitched some ideas when he spoke to Us Weekly in 2021.
“[Rory] has the baby,” the actor said while noting that he doesn’t know who the father of Rory’s baby is. “If it’s Logan [Matt Czuchry] or whatever, then, you know, he flips out and goes away. History repeats itself a la Christopher [David Sutcliffe] and Lorelai. And then she goes off to pursue a huge opportunity in Europe for her writing and dumps the baby in our lap. And we get to raise the kid a little bit while she’s off pursuing that and she comes back.”
