All the Times We Teared Up at the 'Gilmore Girls' Reunion

The fourth annual ATX Television Festival wrapped up in Austin with a most spectacular evening of laughs and tears, as the cast of Gilmore Girls reunited for the first time.

Fans started gathering outside the Paramount Theater early in the morning, with ambulances needing to be called throughout the 90-degree afternoon to tend to people passing out from heat exhaustion. Inside the sold-out theater, the crowd went nuts when creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, and family matriarch Kelly Bishop first took the stage.

Later, almost the entirety of Stars Hollow (Luke! All of Rory’s exes! Paris! Lane! Michel! Miss Patty!) joined the women on stage. From the get-go, the conversation was fast, loose, affectionate, and occasionally heartbreaking — much like any episode of the beloved seven-season series. Here are all the times we reached for our tissues:

* Describing her first response to Lorelei Gilmore in the script, Graham quoted Christopher Reeve from an Inside the Actors Studio appearance: “He said, 'When you know a part is really for you is if you can’t stand the idea of anybody else doing it.’ And that’s how I felt about this. I was like, 'Ooh, this is mine; I can’t stand the idea of anyone else doing this.’” She didn’t even meet her onscreen daughter Bledel until they showed up for work in Toronto.

Related: 10 ‘Gilmore Girls’ Episodes That Will Make You Want to Binge-Watch All 7 Seasons on Netflix

* When Sherman-Palladino talked about going after Edward Herrmann, who died on Dec. 31, for the part of Richard Gilmore, her voice broke. “F–k you for dying,” she said, her voice thick with love. “I hate that you’re dead. We love you so much.” She joked about how he used to bark at her while watching dailies (“We’re not puppets!”), and later introduced a beautifully cut tribute of some of his finest moments from the series, from his wedding dance with Emily (“Tonight, you can call me Bill.”) to the simple act of sharing his newspaper with his granddaughter. When the larger cast assembled on stage, they left a chair empty in Herrmann’s honor.

* Rory’s fellas were all asked who they thought the young woman should have chosen in the end. Milo Ventimiglia (Jess) said he always rooted for Dean. Jared Padalecki (Dean) said he was a Jess man. Matt Czuchry (Logan) was a Jess man as well. Ventimiglia spoke for the vocal minority of us when he said, “Logan was kind of a dick.” And Scott Patterson tugged at the audience’s hearts when he piped up, “I think I have the final word on this. None of you were good enough for Rory.”

* When asked where they think all their characters ended up, Graham said, “I think Luke and Lorelai are together, 100 percent.” When Bishop added, “Now Emily is a widow, so that’d be a whole new world,” the whole room broke into a terrible sigh. In happier news, Liza Weil predicts that Paris and Doyle are still happily a couple, supporting each other and “taking over the f–king world, man!”

* Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan were forced to walk away from the show over botched contract negotiations for its final season. She said she harbored a hope the network would bring her back on to write the series finale but alas. “It was hard not to be able to yell 'Cut!’ that final time,” she said.

* It’s known that Sherman-Palladino spent much of the series knowing what the final four words of the series would be. Despite the prodding of reporters and fans over the years, she said she was just going to “be an a–hole” and take them to her deathbed. Graham explained beautifully why she herself has never asked Sherman-Palladino to spill. “I don’t want to know what they are, unless I am saying them or I’m listening to someone say them who’s in the show. I’d be too sad to know what I wasn’t a part of, you know what I mean?”

Related: Revelations and Regrets From the ‘Dawson’s Creek’ Writers’ Room Reunion

* When asked who took what as mementos from the set, Keiko Agena (Lane) said, “We didn’t know it was ending! I would have stolen so much.” But the good news is that the Stars Hollow sign does hang proudly in the Palladino household, and Ventimiglia walked away with Jess’s leather jacket.

* So the bad news is there’s no movie in the works. “I’m sorry; there’s nothing in the works,” Sherman-Palladino says. “But here’s the good thing: Nobody here hates each other. That’s very important. It would have to be the right everything, the right format, the right timing, the right budget. It would have to be honored in a certain way.” (“Do a wedding!” yelled someone from the balcony.)

* When asked where the Gilmore Girls experience sits in her heart today, Sherman-Palladino said, “You get one, where you go, OK, if everything else fails and I wind up a big, dumb drunk in a gutter saying 'I used to be a writer!’ at least I got this. There’s just no way I’m going to top this experience, this cast, these leading ladies here, it’s just not going to happen. And that’s OK! Because that’s what this business is. This business is, some people get lucky and some people don’t — and God, I got so lucky.”

* Bonus awww: Parenthood stars Mae Whitman and Miles Heizer were in the audience to cheer on their TV mom Graham.