'Will & Grace' Reboot Won't Address A Major Plot Point From Final Season

The iconic foursome's chemistry, however, will remain intact.
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Over the course of its Emmy-winning, eight-season run, NBC’s “ Will & Gracebroke boundaries with its portrayal of queer characters on mainstream television.

When the show’s hotly anticipated 12-episode reboot hits the small screen this fall, viewers will see how Will, Grace, Karen and Jack thrive in an era where same-sex marriage is the law of the land, and where America’s political climate has many in the LGBTQ community concerned for the future.

Since the revival was announced in January, fans have been speculating how the new version, which premieres Sept. 28, would pick up where the original’s 2006 finale left off. In that two-hour episode, which originally aired May 18, 2006, Will (Eric McCormack) and Grace (Debra Messing) had a brutal argument which ends their friendship. They don’t reconcile until their respective children, Ben and Laila, meet at college years later.

In the Aug. 11 issue of Entertainment Weekly, the “Will & Grace” creative team revealed that the reboot would forgo the plot points of the series finale altogether. That episode, simply titled “The Finale,” caused the writers “a lot of grief,” Max Mutchnick, who is the show’s co-creator and executive producer, told the magazine.

“We spent most of our time trying to figure out what would be the way to make the show the best version of itself coming back after 11 years,” he said. “You write a finale because a show is over. You never think that it’s coming back again.”

Co-creator and executive producer David Kohan echoed those sentiments, noting, “If they have children, then it has to be about them being parents, ’cause presumably it would be a priority in their lives. And if it wasn’t a priority in their lives, then they’re still parents, they’re just bad parents, right? We frankly did not want to see them being either good parents or bad parents.”

He then added, “We wanted them to be Will and Grace.”

What will be intact, however, is the undeniable onscreen chemistry between Will and Grace, as well as pals Jack (Sean Hayes) and Karen (Megan Mullally). “The strangest thing about this is how comfortable and natural everybody has been with the whole thing,” Mutchnick told EW. “We did this having not seen each other for 11 years and then decided one day to show up to work and got right back to it. Here we are. That’s a pretty bizarre thing.”

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