The eternal debate rages on in the Gilmore Girls fan camp: who was Rory’s best boyfriend? Decades of Team Jess, Team Dean, and Team Logan battles have solved nothing, and neither did Netflix’s revival of the iconic series, which ended with Rory pregnant and no father in the picture, although she ran into all three of her exes along the way.
Milo Ventimiglia, who played Jess Mariano for several seasons on the show, now has a daughter of his own and says he’d understand if she turned out to be Team Dean instead of Team Jess.
“I’d be way okay if my daughter eventually watched the show and she was team Dean,” Ventimiglia told People. “I get it because I’m team Jared [Padalecki], so I get it.”
Supernatural star Padalecki started out on TV in the first season of Gilmore Girls back in 2000 as Dean Forester, Rory’s first love. He was a grounded, stable guy who truly loved Rory, but she started to outgrow him intellectually, so when the smart but rebellious Jess entered the picture, it was only a matter of time before a love triangle developed. After Jess didn’t work out, Rory moved on to Logan (Matt Czuchry), a rich playboy who wasn’t ready to settle down.
It’s surprising yet heartwarming to hear that Ventimiglia is chill with a Team Dean outcome for his daughter, but he notes that all three of the actors who portrayed Rory’s paramours have remained solid friends since the show wrapped.
“I know that Logan and Jess and Dean were kind of very spread apart in who they were as characters, but Matt Czuchry and Jared Padalecki couldn’t be … I mean, they’re the best guys,” Ventimiglia explained. “They couldn’t be any lovelier as human beings, and I think it’s nice that more than 20-plus years later we all still can talk about this show we were growing up on and come together as grown men just to recognize that and still have loving words for one another.”
Ventimiglia might be Team Jared these days, but Padalecki says he’s firmly Team Jess, while Czuchry thinks Logan could still be an option if he sorted his life out. Still, if you ask Scott Patterson, who played Jess’s uncle and one of Rory’s default father figures on Gilmore Girls, she should forget the lot of them.
“I’ve been in either camp one time or another in the past, but now I’d like to see her have a completely new experience,” he said last year. “None of these relationships worked out, and there’s a reason for that because they weren’t meant to.”
