If only they really existed! Sometimes a TV show’s setting becomes just another character in the grand scheme of the story.
In fact, fictional hometowns often feel like a little slice of home to fans, making it all the sweeter when they get to see them again in future iterations of the series. As was the case with Gilmore Girls, which returned to Stars Hollow in 2016 for the four-part Netflix revival, Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life.
“It was such a whirlwind, from the moment we walked in to pitch it, because we had a clock ticking,” creator Amy Sherman-Palladino told Vogue in December 2016. “If we were going to [do it], we had to do it in a certain time frame because it was the only time the [Warner Bros.] back lot was available to us, which was Stars Hollow. So there was no time to be slow. It was more like, ‘If we’re going to do this, we need to do this now! Start doing costumes; I don’t care what they look like!’ And then the shooting was so intense, and then we put them together and we feel like we’ve been living with these things that we really couldn’t talk about. It’s quite a relief now that it’s out there and that people are seeing them, and that they actually exist and it’s not just two crazy people walking around saying, ‘No, we really did this.’ It was a blast.”
As executive producer Daniel Palladino expressed to Collider in November 2016, “Everyone is going to be very happy with the world. It’s the Gilmores. It’s Stars Hollow in all of its nutty glory. It’s a big, wide canvas.”
However, some TV hometowns don’t give viewers the same warm, fuzzy feeling. Riverdale, for one, elicits fear not only in its fans but also from its residents, thanks in large part to the town’s high murder rate and unlimited creep factor.
“It may not seem like it, but I genuinely love these characters and I love this quartet. I want them to be OK,” creator Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa told Us Weekly in July 2019. “It feels like I put them through the wringer, and I do, but there’s a part of me that always thinks that they’ll survive, they’ll be OK, they’ll win.”
Scroll down to check out some fan-favorite fictional hometowns from the small screen, including Dawson’s Creek’s Capeside, Gilmore Girls’ Stars Hollow and more!
