10 Best Girls Episodes To Rewatch Before HBO's Revival

Published Oct 16, 2026, 9:31 AM EDT

Ben Sherlock is a Tomatometer-approved film and TV critic who runs the massively underrated YouTube channel I Got Touched at the Cinema. Before working at Screen Rant, Ben wrote for Game Rant, Taste of Cinema, Comic Book Resources, and BabbleTop. He's also an indie filmmaker, a standup comedian, and an alumnus of the School of Rock.

Lena Dunham recently made the surprise announcement that her career-defining masterpiece, Girls, is coming back for a new season, a decade after it ended its initial run. Dunham is reassembling the iconic ensemble to shoot five episodes of a Girls revival in 2027. The reboot will pick up with Hannah Horvath and her friends as they face 40. The original show was all about being in your 20s, making mistakes and trying to find some direction in life, but the revival will explore the midlife jitters: aging, regrets, maturity.

I can’t wait to see Hannah and the gang again, but it’ll be at least a few months before they even start filming these new episodes. It could be a while before we actually see this promised revival, so, in the meantime, it’s the perfect time to rewatch the original show.

From the post-#MeToo discussions of “American Bitch” to the haunting whirlwind romance of “The Panic in Central Park,” Girls had a ton of great episodes through its six-season run. If you don’t have time to rewatch the entire series before the reboot (or maybe you just don’t want to relive the disappointment of the ending), you could just revisit these old classics instead.

Pilot

Season 1, Episode 1

Girls’ pilot episode proved to be a perfect introduction to the series. From Shoshanna’s bubbly optimism to Ray’s hardened cynicism to Adam’s wildcard weirdness, all the main characters arrived fully formed.

Hannah boldly declares herself “the voice of a generation,” establishing how conceited and delusional she can be, and getting cut off by her parents was a great inciting incident for the show. It’s the catalyst for Hannah to finally grow up and embrace her adult responsibilities. Girls’ pilot is a masterclass in how to set up a series.

Triggering

Season 4, Episode 2

Girls didn’t stay in the Midwest for long, but it was a nice change of pace from the usual chaos of the Big Apple. In season 4’s sophomore outing, “Triggering,” Hannah struggles to adjust to her new life at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

The episode wrings plenty of laughs from Elijah gate-crashing Hannah’s higher education and accompanying her to a college party. But, after Hannah submits a risqué piece for her fellow writers to read, the episode leads into a thought-provoking discussion about the responsibilities of a writer dealing with “triggering” subject matter.

On All Fours

Season 2, Episode 9

Between Hannah obsessively jamming Q-tips up her ears and Marnie singing “Stronger” for Charlie in public and Adam drunkenly sexually assaulting his new girlfriend Natalia, “On All Fours” is the most uncomfortable episode of the series by far. I wouldn’t be surprised if some fans had to skip it on rewatches.

But that discomfort is precisely what makes this one of the most memorable and powerful episodes of Girls. The show never indulged in Hollywood fantasies; it was much more interested in the pain and suffering of real life.

All Adventurous Women Do

Season 1, Episode 3

In Girls’ third episode, Hannah faces one of the first unexpected hurdles of adulthood when she finds out she got HPV from her ex-boyfriend Elijah. But the real revelation is that Elijah has come out as gay. Andrew Rannells was perfectly cast as Elijah, and the character got an unforgettable introduction here.

The best part of this episode is its ending, when Hannah invites Marnie into her room for a dance party. That uplifting final sequence illustrated how seamlessly this show could transition from heartbreaking to heartwarming, just like life.

Video Games

Season 2, Episode 7

Hannah accompanies Jessa to go and stay with her flaky dad in the season 2 episode “Video Games.” This fateful stay forces Jessa to confront feelings she’d rather just ignore, and it shows us a softer side of Jessa, who’s usually got her guard up, masking her pain with an ironic smirk.

Ben Mendelsohn gave one of the show’s best guest performances as Jessa’s estranged dad. You can see that he’s a terrible father, but you can also see that he doesn’t realize how terrible he is, which is so frustrating (and authentic), and Mendelsohn played that perfectly.

Welcome To Bushwick A.K.A. The Crackcident

Season 1, Episode 7

Season 1’s “Welcome to Bushwick,” also known by its much catchier title “The Crackcident,” starts off with a simple enough setup — the gang attends a warehouse party in Brooklyn — but it paves the way for all four of them to enjoy a great storyline. Ray chasing a crack-addled Shoshanna through the streets and quickly falling in love with her is the highlight of the episode.

But everyone has a solid storyline in this episode. Jessa’s ill-fated flirtation with the dad from her babysitting job is suitably messy, while Hannah finding out Adam is in A.A., and realizing the only reason she didn’t know is because she’s so self-absorbed, is an emotional rollercoaster.

Beach House

Season 3, Episode 7

Marnie brings the rest of the group up to a beach house on Long Island to work through their issues, but Hannah throws a spanner in the works when she bumps into Elijah and his friends, invites them over, and turns Marnie’s meticulously planned evening into a party. There’s an interesting tension as, the more fun the party gets, the more resentful Marnie becomes.

“Beach House” is one of Girls’ most lifelike episodes, capturing the mundanity and spontaneity of real life in its exploration of the messiness of female friendship, and it builds to an explosive emotional climax. The girls erupt into a vicious argument, and a lot of ugly home truths come out. That fight marked a watershed moment for the series.

One Man's Trash

Season 2, Episode 5

After a fateful encounter at the coffee shop where she works, Hannah ends up spending a crazy weekend with a newly single doctor named Joshua, played by Patrick Wilson. Hannah has been putting the café’s trash in Joshua’s trash cans, because she lost the key to the café’s own trash cans, and that misunderstanding leads to a wild weekend of love-making and life-rethinking.

Wilson played the part to perfection. At first, Joshua seems like the perfect guy. But, the longer Hannah spends with him, the clearer it becomes that he’s just as lost and aimless and chaotic as she is. The whole episode feels like a fever dream; it’s masterfully crafted.

The Panic In Central Park

Season 5, Episode 6

“The Panic in Central Park” holds a special, dark place in every Girls fan’s heart. Marnie has a big fight with Desi, bumps into her long-forgotten ex-boyfriend Charlie, and spends an exciting, romantic evening rekindling her first love — but there’s a shocking twist.

When Marnie and Charlie are taking the city by storm, falling back in love, you get swept up in the Before Sunrise-style whirlwind romance. But when Marnie finds out Charlie has been on heroin the whole time, you suddenly snap back into the bleakness of reality, just like Marnie. It’s a manipulative masterpiece.

American Bitch

Season 6, Episode 3

Image via MovieStillsDB

Girls responded to the #MeToo movement with a poignant, nuanced bottle episode called “American Bitch.” Matthew Rhys guest-stars as one of Hannah’s favorite writers, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by several young women. He’s an avatar for all the powerful male celebrities that were exposed as creeps during #MeToo, and after Hannah sent out an incendiary tweet expressing her disappointment in his behavior, he invited her over to his apartment for an interview, so he can give his side of the story.

The episode is a really interesting two-hander carried by the electric chemistry between Rhys and Dunham. They get into all these complex issues about power dynamics and sexual politics and the gray areas of consent — it’s a riveting deconstruction of a pressing social issue — and it builds to an appropriately depressing ending that bluntly points out that these creepy, powerful men exist, and they’re not going to change.

As a Girls superfan, I’m thrilled that we’re getting five new episodes exploring a different chapter in these characters’ lives. But those new episodes will need some truly incredible storytelling and social commentary to hold a candle to classics like “American Bitch” and “The Panic in Central Park.”

Girls