The 12 months is 2009, and Glee has hit like a cultural earthquake. Each week, hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world tune in to observe a bunch of American highschool misfits belt out musical theatre and pop hits, turning present choir into mainstream leisure. The forged’s cowl of Journey’s Don’t Cease Believin’ turns into an anthem, spending 37 weeks within the UK charts, catapulting its younger stars to in a single day fame. Glee golf equipment begin in faculties throughout the US and past, and Ryan Murphy’s present develops a loyal fanbase – myself included – who proudly name ourselves Gleeks. On-line, we dissect each episode on Tumblr, commerce theories and put on our fandom, plus the merch we purchased to show it, as a badge of honour.
However by the point Glee got here to a detailed in 2015, all its magic had light. The Guardian reported that “few will mourn its passing” because the present’s final season premiered. A string of more and more absurd storylines and poor track selections left a dwindling viewership and even essentially the most diehard followers drifting away. Or so we thought – as a result of 10 years after its finale, the present is again with a vengeance.
Glee goes viral, primarily due to gen Z – who watch the present on Disney+ and Hulu, or purchase it on Amazon. On TikTok, clips of the present’s most outrageous moments repeatedly resurface in an infinite stream of nostalgia, whereas new Reddit threads continually pop up. Final 12 months, the present’s model of Rose’s Flip from the Broadway musical Gypsy debuted at No 3 within the US Prime 50 chart, whereas extra not too long ago, the “Glee dance” to Say a Little Prayer has seen hundreds of individuals study the choreography and add movies of them performing it. And that’s not all. On YouTube, Mike’s Mic Glee recap movies have been watched by hundreds of thousands. Even a number of the authentic stars have begun to capitalise on Glee’s renewed recognition. The 2022 podcast And That’s What You REALLY Missed, hosted by actors Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale (who performed Tina Cohen-Chang and Artie Abrams), recapped each episode from the present’s six seasons. However why, in 2025, are we nonetheless so hungry for Glee?
A lot of the dialog about Glee right now pivots round one query: “How did this ever get made?” Elements of it haven’t aged properly. How might we neglect the musical episode impressed by the mass faculty capturing at Sandy Hook elementary faculty in Connecticut in 2012? Or when Kurt dismissed Blaine’s bisexuality by telling him “it didn’t exist”? And that’s earlier than we’ve even bought to Mr Schue – a instructor whose inappropriate behaviour included blackmailing Finn into becoming a member of the glee membership by planting marijuana on him, instructing his college students to twerk and suspending Marley for not desirous to put on a revealing costume.
Unsurprisingly, the response to TikTok recaps of Mr Schue’s worst bits usually have a number of feedback like “I simply couldn’t watch it” beneath. However Glee’s cringeworthy nature can be exactly why many new and previous followers discover the sequence so engaging. Not solely does an episode have all of the nostalgia of the 2010s – an period gen Z are romanticising – nevertheless it additionally gives infinite “WTF” moments that hold us speaking.
The trendy-day consensus is that Glee is definitely so dangerous, it’s good, with many hate-watching the sequence. However, it’s straightforward to neglect that when it first hit our screens in 2009, it was groundbreaking. Murphy and his co-writers took us inside a standard faculty: William McKinley highschool in Ohio, which was dominated by jocks and cheerleaders. Nonetheless, the themes, folks and tales the present lined had been something however bog-standard. Christopher Baffa, the director of images on the primary three seasons, recollects feeling as in the event that they had been making one thing “boundary-pushing”. At a time when 58% of Individuals didn’t assist homosexual marriage, Glee put queer tales entrance and centre. As its closing sequence aired, one evaluate stated it “did extra to normalise homosexuality than every other present in TV historical past, maybe greater than every other mainstream murals”. Baffa actually feels that it had a constructive influence: “I’ve had lots of people inform me each at times that watching Glee was useful for no matter they had been going by means of in their very own lives.”
Ali Adler, a author on Glee, remembers that each episode, no matter the subject material, had comedy at its core: “We knew the subjects we had been coping with had been critical, however we had been at all times approaching them in a method that was humorous.” The characters, she explains, every “had their very own viewpoint” about regardless of the episode’s theme was – whether or not that be homophobia, faith or psychological well being – “and their opinions had been so particular” to offer the present a spread of various, real-life views.
Adler describes the entire expertise of engaged on Glee as like getting “a golden ticket”. And for viewers, too, the present was revolutionary. Elis Shotten, 29, who ran a Glee fan account on Twitter devoted to Darren Criss, the actor who performed Blaine, remembers the sequence as his “massive sexual awakening”. “It shortly grew to become an entire world by which I used to be in a position to exist away from the true world – the place I didn’t really feel like I used to be in a position to specific my queer id overtly,” he says of Glee fandom. “The character of Kurt was a revelation, and it will probably’t be understated how a lot good he did for therefore many individuals like me.”
Dominic McGovern, a comic who makes use of Glee as the premise for a lot of of his units, even calls the present “an schooling”. “We discuss Glee being humorous and foolish and campy, nevertheless it was additionally rooted in an appreciation for fashionable tradition,” he says. Shotten provides: “It is going to at all times discover a strategy to resonate with people who find themselves excessive school-aged. Even when its politics have grow to be extremely dated, the struggles of adolescence will at all times be the identical.”
However the factor about Glee is that it wasn’t one other American high-school drama; the music was important. In contrast to current display musicals comparable to Depraved or Wonka, which eliminated all songs from their trailers, Glee at all times revelled in its camp and flamboyant numbers. Nonetheless, Baffa is definite that its focus was at all times on its tales: “The songs had been intrinsically linked to the emotional ranges of 1, if not the entire characters … they had been simply one other system we used to inform tales,” he says. Musical TV reveals that got here after, comparable to Loopy Ex-Girlfriend, by no means fairly reached Glee’s ranges of outlandish comedy or over-the-top efficiency.
After all, the tragedy that surrounds Glee is now inextricable from its legacy, particularly the deaths of three distinguished forged members; Cory Monteith and Mark Salling, who each died by suicide, and Naya Rivera, who drowned in 2020, in addition to a number of crew who died throughout manufacturing, together with assistant director Jim Fuller, who had a coronary heart assault. “Statistically, to have three forged members and crew members have the deaths that we’ve skilled is odd,” says Baffa. On TikTok, they’re usually remembered in compilation movies, whereas And That’s What You REALLY Missed devoted a particular episode to memorialising Monteith. A sequence of accusations from forged members that Lea Michele’s behaviour made engaged on the present a “dwelling hell” now hang-out Glee too – with movies resurfacing month after month aiming to each show and disprove the claims and stars nonetheless being requested about what actually occurred on set, 10 years after the present ended. However, though the drama of Glee continues to gasoline headlines, Baffa likes to imagine “it isn’t the main target of the brand new fanbase I don’t need the legacy of Glee to be that – I hope that individuals can see the constructive aspect.”
Adler is assured that nothing just like the programme has been made since. “Glee was the last word by way of illustration – I believe children are nonetheless drawn to that.” Does she suppose they’d do issues in another way if Glee was being made right now? “Possibly totally different selections would have been made,” she says. “However I don’t suppose you’ll be able to ever apologise for historical past as a result of historical past is what creates the long run.” And by the appears of issues, the long run for Glee continues to be shiny – as a result of now, followers simply gained’t cease believin’.
