This article is a study of fans of the television series Gilmore Girls (2000–2007) in the context of the revival series Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (2016), when the series returned with a four-episode special on Netflix after being off the air for nine years. The series revolves around a single mother and her daughter, and this article shows how fans use representations of familial relationships, generations and transitional life stages in their own life course as long-term fans. The article combines theory on long-running serial narratives, media generations and cultural gerontology with fan studies theory, and analyses email interviews with 27 long-time fans of Gilmore Girls aged between 21 and 67 years. This article argues that being a long-term fan with an intense relationship to a media text (e.g. constantly re-watching old episodes) disrupts fans’ experience of generational belonging through: (1) what is experienced as nostalgic or a lack of nostalgia; (2) shifting character identifications across the life course and cross-generational identification; and (3) constantly ascribing new meaning to the media text as fans experience transitional stages in their own lives.