Gilmore Girls ’ Jared Padalecki Weighs in On Rory's Boyfriend Debate
Originally appeared on E! Online
Gilmore Girls is more than just a show—it’s a lifestyle, a religion.
Which is why decades after the show premiered in 2000, fans are still debating which boyfriend of Rory’s (Alexis Bledel) is best for her: the bad boy Jess Mariano (Milo Ventimiglia) who stole her heart with a shared love of reading, fellow Yale student and grandparent-preferred choice Logan Huntzberger (Matt Czuchry), or her first love Dean Forester, played by Jared Padalecki.
But as it turns out, Jared himself has a take that might surprise fans.
“What team am I?” the Supernatural alum teased to E! News at Steel City Comic Con. “All right, I'm Team Jess. I am.” (For more from Jared’s interview, watch E! News August 12.)
Yet, he isn’t the only former Gilmore Girls boyfriend who has an unexpected opinion.
“Funny enough,” Jared continued, “Milo's a buddy and he's Team Dean. Somebody sent me a meme, when he got in his office in his house, he has his Emmy nomination alert letter and on the bottom corner, it's like ‘Team Dean forever.’ And so I drew my own ‘Team Jess forever’ with markers, like same Milo, samesies but for you.”
Ultimately, however, Jared doesn’t care where viewers of the Amy Sherman-Palladino show fall—he’s just happy they’re invested.
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“I think with any story, when people are passionate and they have feelings,” the 42-year-old continued, “you're like, ‘That's what I'm doing this for, to get people thinking and reacting and talking about it.’”
And on where the Walker star thinks Dean would be today, Jared revealed the character hasn’t wandered far.
“Working at Dooce’s Market,” he said, which was also Dean’s high school job on the series. “Hiding all the cornstarch. It's like, ‘No one's going to steal this again.’ But as we found out in the reboot, he has a family of his own, so hopefully he's doing the right thing.”
And while Gilmore Girls: A Year In The Life (spoiler alert) ended with Rory pregnant with what is assumed to be Logan’s baby, that doesn’t mean all the former cast members have hopped aboard the Huntzberger train.
Take it from Rory’s best friend Lane Kim, played by Keiko Agena.
"I pretty much have stayed a team Jess person this whole time," Keiko herself recently told E! News. "And I don't think I'm gonna change."
As for why, the 50-year-old explained, “I felt like their passions were the same. They both loved reading, they both loved books. They loved challenging each other and the friction of that was so fun to watch."
And it’s that foundation between the two characters that Keiko—whose been married to her husband Shin Kawasaki for 18 years— thinks would have set them up for a lifetime of happiness.
"Because you can grow in the other ways," she explained. "I think maturity wise, we all had to grow. They were young when they met. But having that fiery interest where you can always talk about things and grow together. I feel like that's the bedrock of a good relationship."
- Reporting by Emily Curl
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