Younger creator wanted to keep the final season "timeless," so he made sure it was pandemic-free

The Hollywood Reporter

Darren Star says his decision to avoid the coronavirus in Younger's final season, premiering Thursday on Paramount+, was based on his experience avoiding the 9/11 tragedy on Sex and the City, which he also created, when the HBO comedy returned for Season 5 in 2002. "We didn’t include 9/11 in terms of it specifically affecting the lives of the characters; we didn’t reference 9/11. And I think that was also a really good decision," says Star in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. When presented with the option of ending Younger in the COVID era, Star decided to avoid the pandemic altogether. "We had discussions about possibly including COVID," he said. "We mapped out some story directions. But our timeline picked up where we left off — which, in the real-world timeline, was at least eight months before COVID would have affected the lives of these characters. We would have really had to jump time to catch up to when the pandemic hit and we would have been playing a guessing game about how things would develop, and I didn’t want to do that." Star added: "Younger is timeless. This a series you can watch years from now. And COVID, to me, instantly stamps it. Ironically, this final season became the most beautiful, biggest-looking season in terms of our production values and that’s really due to the amazing crew, our directors and how they were able to pull off the COVID-free, beautiful Manhattan that you see on the streets this season. To me, it’s a dream of what I hope New York will be looking like again soon."

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• There are signs Younger's final season was produced under COVID limitations: "Many hallmarks of the show — the busy streets, the packed bars, the book fairs and Comic-Cons, the not entirely incidental Big City Guidebook Younger has offered from the beginning — are missing," says Robert Lloyd. "In one scene, a Greta Thunberg-esque climate crusader, who has been established as world-famous, holds a rally in a park attended by only about 20 people. We are outside a lot."
• Younger's seventh and final season will remind fans why they loved the show in the first place: "Fans will finally get to hear Liza’s response on April 15, when Younger drops its seventh and final season on Paramount+ and Hulu, reaching TV Land later in the year," says Ines Bellina. "For those debating whether signing up for a streaming service is worth having their curiosity satisfied, the answer is yes. The final season brings back the wit, heart, and binge-ability of Younger’s finest moments."
• Darren Star says the truth of Liza Miller is "freeing" in the final season: "There is no more lie," he says. "She is not hiding anything anymore, and this season, she is creative and daring and is taking charge...It was freeing and it sets up a more mature season. It really freed the characters just to be exactly who they are. Any of the farcical elements of the show we weren’t dealing with anymore. We did it for a long time — quite honestly for much longer than I thought. I thought the premise would run out of stream faster than it did.”
• Star says Hilary Duff's pregnancy kept Younger's final season on track: "I thought, 'Now we have to do it,'" he says. "When I told her we wanted to get back to work in October (2020), she said, 'That's great because I'm having a baby in March.' And I thought, 'Oh my god, we really have to stick to this schedule because otherwise I don't know what we're going to do this season.' The baby was calling the shots. She gave us the right kind of pressure to make this season happen."
• Sutton Foster says the series finale won't disappoint Younger fans: “I had no idea how they were going to end it, but when I read the ending, I felt incredibly satisfied and realized, ‘Oh, there was no other way it could have ended,'” she says. “I mean, I guess it could have ended a million ways, but the way they ended it, I (gasped) and realized it was the perfect ending.”
• Younger stars react to the twists and turns of the final season premiere