#So maybe soap operas have influenced my opinion on this but it just doesn't seem that out of the ordinary

[thefirst3chapters]

What do you think about how some fans say it would be weird if rory and jess were together because luke and lorelai are now married? Wondering if this could’ve been the actual reason why they didn’t get to end up together as part of gg canon…

This ask arrived at an opportune time because I already had a draft post about this very topic! Lots of rambling ahead:

I really don't think we as the audience are meant to see Luke and Lorelai's marriage as a decisive obstacle for Rory and Jess possibly being together. The main defenses of Literati that I've seen others bring up regarding this concern are that Rory and Jess aren't genetically related and didn't grow up as relatives, and they dated before Luke and Lorelai did. Something else that probably makes being "step-cousins" essentially a non-issue is that there were numerous opportunities for the characters to see this as a problem, but they never did.

Throughout S2/3, Luke supports Rory and Jess's relationship (even enthusiastically so!) while he is pining for Lorelai.

At the end of S4, when Luke has just had the epiphany that he's ready to let Lorelai know how he feels, he eagerly listens to Jess's disastrous "I love you" story and gives him encouraging advice, and Jess witnesses Luke and Lorelai attending Liz and TJ's wedding together and seems happy about it. Neither Luke nor Jess appear to be troubled by the fact that they're both in love with a Gilmore girl.

When Luke and Lorelai start dating, Rory and Jess's previous relationship is never mentioned as an obstacle.

In S6, the infamous Truncheon kiss happens when Luke and Lorelai are engaged to be married, but that doesn't seem to be a concern for Rory and Jess at all, and the scene is completely focused on other problems.

In AYITL, when Luke asks Jess about being "over that," one of them could've said something to the effect of everything working out for the best in this regard if the writers wanted to imply that being step-cousins would impede any chance of a future relationship. Instead of that, though, we get the implication that "it's never over."

There's definitely potential for some awkwardness, but the characters' history suggests that this family link probably wouldn't be that big of a scandal for any of them.

As I've seen other people discuss here, it seems like maybe Rory was never intended to end up with any romantic partner at the end of the show because the central relationship is always Lorelai and Rory's, and the long-planned "last four words" are dialogue that they share and are focused on the "full circle" theme. ASP has expressed some disappointment that audiences focus so much on Rory's romantic life, which perhaps also suggests that the writers didn't want to finish the series with Rory in a relationship. In this Time interview (link) from right before AYITL was released, she said:

The fact that people love them and are excited about them is great. It’s just such a small part of who Rory is. I don’t see people debating “What newspaper is Rory’s working for?” “Did she win a Pulitzer yet?” It’s all about Dean and Jess. Dean was 16 years old when they dated. Everybody should go back and think about their boyfriend at 16 and then reevaluate whether that should be the focus of the conversation.

(That's kind of interesting considering what happens in AYITL. Rory is burned out and grasping at straws professionally, and there's limited mentions of what's been going on with her career in the interim years. Unlike Rory's forgotten boyfriend Paul, who presumably met Rory more recently than her OS boyfriends, Jess and Logan are both key players in the narrative and are both implied to have a significant role in Rory's future, but I digress...)

So anyway, I think there's plenty of hope that Rory and Jess could still end up together even with Luke and Lorelai being married. Thank you for the ask!