The nostalgia is real when watching the shows and movies we grew up with come back around, only to realize this time, we’re watching the next generation live the story.
A Different World made its return to Netflix on September 24, exactly 39 years to the day after the original series premiered in 1987. And while the original Hillman College crew gave us plenty of reasons to tune in, this time the halls belong to a new generation of students.
Well, sort of.
The sequel brings back familiar faces, including Whitley and Dwayne, while putting their daughter, Deborah Wayne, and a new group of students at the centre of the story. The result is a little bit of nostalgia, a little bit of “wait, weren’t we just in college?” and a whole lot of watching our childhood favs grow up like us.
And if you were a fan of the original A Different World, that's going to be part of the fun of this version.
Reboots have a reputation for never quite living up to the original. Sometimes that criticism is deserved. Sometimes we're simply comparing something brand new to a memory that has had 30-plus years to become perfect in our minds.
But this isn't really the same show trying to be the same show because thirty-nine years is a LONG time.
The people watching the original as kids and college students are now parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles and, in some cases, the people introducing the show to their own children. The cultural references have changed. The technology has changed. The conversations young people are having have changed.
And yet, the basic business of becoming an adult? Still very much the same.
Which brings me to another reunion that had me thinking about generations.
Why Did I Get Married? first arrived in theatres in 2007. Nineteen years later, Why Did I Get Married Again? brings the story back to Netflix, this time with the original friend group reuniting as the next generation begins to enter adulthood. The children have grown up, relationships have evolved, and suddenly the adults are being forced to look at the lives they've built and the examples they've set.
There is something about that particular kind of sequel that feels especially interesting right now because Millennials are officially in our “wait...we're the adults?” era.
We are the ones paying mortgages and rent. Raising children, helping our parents, having conversations about retirement. Googling whether something is normal for a 40-year-old while simultaneously remembering exactly what it felt like to be 22 and have absolutely no idea what we were doing. Some of us still feel 22 and don't have a clue about planning for retirment or raising children.
And then there’s Gen Z.
If we're being honest, they grew up differently. Although that’s a generalization because every generation contains multitudes, and there is no single “Gen Z experience.” We can agree that the world they came of age in is undeniably different from the one Millennials inherited.
We grew up with dial-up internet and family computers. They grew up with smartphones.
We watched television shows at the time they aired because, unless somebody recorded it on VHS, you missed it. They can watch an entire season in an afternoon.
We had to learn how to navigate the internet. They were raised on it.
And perhaps most interestingly, many Millennials were raised by parents who expected us to adapt to the world. Gen Z came along at a time when young people were increasingly expected to question the world itself.
That difference shows up in the way they talk about work, relationships, identity, mental health, boundaries and even what they consider a successful life.
Watching A Different World through that lens makes the generational handoff even more interesting. The original series gave us young Black people figuring out who they were, what they believed, what they wanted from their relationships and what kind of adults they hoped to become.
The new generation gets to do the same thing, just in a very different world. And maybe that's why the question isn’t whether the reboot is “as good” as the original. It doesn't need to be. It speaks to a different generation.
The same is true of Why Did I Get Married Again? We aren't watching the same people at the same stage of life. We're watching what happens when the people we once followed into adulthood arrive at another chapter, and their children start asking some of the same questions in their own way.
That's what makes these types of reboots interesting. They remind us that while fashion changes, technology changes and language changes, some stories don't really have an expiration date.
Friendship.
Love.
Family.
Figuring out who you are.
Learning from the people who came before you while still insisting on making your own mistakes. Those stories belong to every generation. Maybe that's the real gift of a reboot.
Not giving us the original all over again, but giving us the chance to see ourselves, and the people coming after us, a little differently.
Share your own thoughts in the comment section.