Lorelai's choice to marry Christopher was actually Gilmore Girls season 7's best decision and gave Lorelai and Luke the finale they deserved.
The most despised story choice of Gilmore Girls’ final season to have Lorelai Gilmore marry her teenage sweetheart Christopher Hayden was actually the perfect decision for Lorelai. The relationship between caffeine-addicted innkeeper Lorelai Gilmore and grumpy diner owner Luke Danes had been a staple of water-cooler discussion since its premiere in 2000. Audiences came to love the odd couple and their dialogue as Gilmore Girls progressed. The spanner in the works, however, came in the overwhelmingly hated plot twist at the end of Gilmore Girls season 6 to temporarily end the romance between Lorelai and Luke, and pair Lorelai with her daughter Rory’s father, Christopher, instead.
Gilmore Girls showcased a will-they-won't-they dynamic between Lorelai and Luke for four seasons before sparking off their anticipated relationship in season 4, episode 22, “Raincoats and Recipes.” Their temporary separation before their ultimate reunion at the close of the show is often cited as one of the reasons why Gilmore Girls season 7 is so bad. Luke’s romantic interest in Lorelai was never in doubt over Gilmore Girls’ tenure. However, Lorelai’s romantic hopes tended to remain pinned on Christopher. Even when she and Christopher were in relationships with other people, whether Lorelai with Max or Christopher with Sherry, they always gravitated back to one another, despite Lorelai clearly having outgrown Christopher.
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Even so, Lorelai had to marry Christopher in order to truly secure her happy ending with Luke in Gilmore Girls' final season. Christopher represented the unexplored potential of the picture-perfect family for Lorelai since their teenage romance. However, ultimately, he was not the right partner for her, and Lorelai had to discover that in a proper relationship with him for herself. In Gilmore Girls season 2, Lorelai confessed that she had sabotaged every potential romance she’d ever been in because of Christopher. It affected her relationships throughout the show, with Lorelai even declining to marry her fiancé Max because she had been holding onto the potential of a life with Christopher in the back of her mind.
Luke would have been one such casualty of this unhealthy pattern of Lorelai's had she not found closure by answering the question of what a life with Christopher actually looked like in reality. Luke’s awareness of Lorelai’s unresolved romantic potential with Christopher placed a strain on the peripheral of their relationship, which continued to encroach on their engagement in Gilmore Girls season 6, alongside the introduction of Luke’s much-hated daughter April Nardini. Luke’s fears were eventually realized after Lorelai left him for Christopher in the Gilmore Girls season 6 finale. However, by leaving him, Lorelai finally had the opportunity to understand just how far from picture-perfect a marriage to Christopher was outside the realm of her imagination.
Lorelai’s tendency to believe the grass would be greener on the other side could only be broken by marrying Christopher as it eventually brought her to the realization that she had outgrown her teenage love for him. More, it showed her just how right for her Luke was. The cracks began to grow in Lorelai's marriage to Christopher, with Christopher eventually forced to realize that it was Luke instead of him who now occupied the back of her mind. Christopher ended up going the way of old love interests, such as Jared Padalecki’s Dean, once he and Lorelai realized that she had matured beyond him, and that Luke was her endgame relationship.
Lorelai tells Christopher in Gilmore Girls season 7, episode 14, “Farewell My Pet” that he’s always been “This wonderful possibility.” However, she eventually concludes through tears that “It’s just not right.” Their relationship closes in a shattered mess of memories, and as the bubble pops, Lorelai walks away with the fresh clarity of closure. Having answered the question of the road not taken, she walks straight into Luke’s arms, and finally closes the door on the past for good.
Next: Will There Be More Gilmore Girls On Netflix?
Natasha is a features writer for Screenrant with a particular love for Star Wars, Marvel, the Netflix Marvel shows, Lord of the Rings, Hannibal, Outlander and The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel. A Law degree graduate, she decided that working in a corporate glass skyscraper was not to her taste as much as writing rambles about her favourite entertainment (hey, might as well get paid for it), and she enjoys hiking, MMA, drinking copious levels of coffee and lots of streaming entertainment and online gaming in her down time. She is also a financial journalist, so if you can't reach her between the hours of 08:00 and 16:30 GMT, she's most likely working on her additional job.