‘How did this ever get made?' Gen Z is falling in love (and hate) with Glee

The Guardian

03-04-2025

The year is 2009, and Glee has hit like a cultural earthquake. Every week, millions of people around the world tune in to watch a group of American high school misfits belt out musical theatre and pop hits, turning show choir into mainstream entertainment. The cast's cover of Journey's Don't Stop Believin' becomes an anthem, spending 37 weeks in the UK charts, catapulting its young stars to overnight fame. Glee clubs start in schools across the US and beyond, and Ryan Murphy's show develops a devoted fanbase – myself included – who proudly call ourselves Gleeks. Online, we dissect every episode on Tumblr, trade theories and wear our fandom, plus the merch we bought to prove it, as a badge of honour.
But by the time Glee came to a close in 2015, all its magic had faded. The Guardian reported that 'few will mourn its passing' as the show's last season premiered. A string of increasingly absurd storylines and poor song choices left a dwindling viewership and even the most diehard fans drifting away. Or so we thought – because 10 years after its finale, the show is back with a vengeance.
Glee is going viral, mainly because of gen Z – who watch the show on Disney+ and Hulu, or buy it on Amazon. On TikTok, clips of the show's most outrageous moments repeatedly resurface in an endless stream of nostalgia, while new Reddit threads constantly pop up. Last year, the show's version of Rose's Turn from the Broadway musical Gypsy debuted at No 3 in the US Top 50 chart, while more recently, the 'Glee dance' to Say a Little Prayer has seen thousands of people learn the choreography and upload videos of them performing it. And that's not all. On YouTube, Mike's Mic Glee recap videos have been watched by millions. Even some of the original stars have begun to capitalise on Glee's renewed popularity. The 2022 podcast And That's What You REALLY Missed, hosted by actors Jenna Ushkowitz and Kevin McHale (who played Tina Cohen-Chang and Artie Abrams), recapped every episode from the show's six seasons. But why, in 2025, are we still so hungry for Glee?
Much of the conversation about Glee today pivots around one question: 'How did this ever get made?' Parts of it have not aged well. How could we forget the musical episode inspired by the mass school shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut in 2012? Or when Kurt dismissed Blaine's bisexuality by telling him 'it didn't exist'? And that's before we've even got to Mr Schue – a teacher whose inappropriate behaviour included blackmailing Finn into joining the glee club by planting marijuana on him, teaching his students to twerk and suspending Marley for not wanting to wear a revealing costume.
Unsurprisingly, the response to TikTok recaps of Mr Schue's worst bits often have several comments like 'I just couldn't watch it' underneath. But Glee's cringeworthy nature is also precisely why many new and old fans find the series so enticing. Not only does an episode have all the nostalgia of the 2010s – an era gen Z are romanticising – but it also provides endless 'WTF' moments that keep us talking.
The modern-day consensus is that Glee is actually so bad, it's good, with many hate-watching the series. But, it is easy to forget that when it first hit our screens in 2009, it was groundbreaking. Murphy and his co-writers took us inside a normal school: William McKinley high school in Ohio, which was ruled by jocks and cheerleaders. However, the themes, people and stories the show covered were anything but bog-standard. Christopher Baffa, the director of photography on the first three seasons, recalls feeling as if they were making something 'boundary-pushing'. At a time when 58% of Americans did not support gay marriage, Glee put queer stories front and centre. As its final series aired, one review said it 'did more to normalise homosexuality than any other show in TV history, perhaps more than any other mainstream work of art'. Baffa certainly feels that it had a positive impact: 'I've had a lot of people tell me both now and then that watching Glee was helpful for whatever they were going through in their own lives.'
Ali Adler, a writer on Glee, remembers that every episode, whatever the subject matter, had comedy at its core: 'We knew the topics we were dealing with were serious, but we were always approaching them in a way that was funny.' The characters, she explains, each 'had their own point of view' about whatever the episode's theme was – whether that be homophobia, religion or mental health – 'and their opinions were so specific' to give the show a range of different, real-life perspectives.
Adler describes the whole experience of working on Glee as like getting 'a golden ticket'. And for viewers, too, the show was revolutionary. Elis Shotten, 29, who ran a Glee fan account on Twitter dedicated to Darren Criss, the actor who played Blaine, remembers the series as his 'big sexual awakening'. 'It quickly became a whole world in which I was able to exist away from the real world – where I didn't feel like I was able to express my queer identity openly,' he says of Glee fandom. 'The character of Kurt was a revelation, and it can't be understated how much good he did for so many people like me.'
Dominic McGovern, a comedian who uses Glee as the basis for many of his sets, even calls the show 'an education'. 'We talk about Glee being funny and silly and campy, but it was also rooted in an appreciation for popular culture,' he says. Shotten adds: 'It will always find a way to resonate with people who are high school-aged. Even if its politics have become incredibly dated, the struggles of adolescence will always be the same.'
But the thing about Glee is that it wasn't another American high-school drama; the music was essential. Unlike recent screen musicals such as Wicked or Wonka, which removed all songs from their trailers, Glee always revelled in its camp and flamboyant numbers. Still, Baffa is certain that its focus was always on its stories: 'The songs were intrinsically linked to the emotional levels of one, if not all of the characters … they were just another device we used to tell stories,' he says. Musical TV shows that came after, such as Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, never quite reached Glee's levels of outlandish comedy or over-the-top performance.
Of course, the tragedy that surrounds Glee is now inextricable from its legacy, specifically the deaths of three prominent cast members; Cory Monteith and Mark Salling, who both died by suicide, and Naya Rivera, who drowned in 2020, as well as several crew who died during production, including assistant director Jim Fuller, who had a heart attack. 'Statistically, to have three cast members and crew members have the deaths that we've experienced is odd,' says Baffa. On TikTok, they're often remembered in compilation videos, while And That's What You REALLY Missed dedicated a special episode to memorialising Monteith. A series of accusations from cast members that Lea Michele's behaviour made working on the show a 'living hell' now haunt Glee too – with videos resurfacing month after month aiming to both prove and disprove the claims and stars still being asked about what really happened on set, 10 years after the show ended. But, although the drama of Glee continues to fuel headlines, Baffa likes to believe 'it isn't the focus of the new fanbase I don't want the legacy of Glee to be that – I hope that people can see the positive side.'
Adler is confident that nothing like the programme has been made since. 'Glee was the ultimate in terms of representation – I think kids are still drawn to that.' Does she think they'd do things differently if Glee was being made today? 'Maybe different choices would have been made,' she says. 'But I don't think you can ever apologise for history because history is what creates the future.' And by the looks of things, the future for Glee is still bright – because now, fans just won't stop believin'.