On a recent episode of The Kardashians, a newly rejuvenated Kris Jenner seems keen to give up the ghost of her family’s headline-making past. She arrives at what the family calls Eldorado Meadow, the 8,860-square-foot property on a street of the same name in Hidden Hills, Los Angeles, where most of the E! reality show that made them a household name, Keeping Up With the Kardashians (2007–2021), was filmed. Her motivation for putting the house on the market for $13.5 million in February? “Cash. I mean, is that a question?” Kris quips during the season seven premiere of the Hulu series.
Recession indicator? Maybe. Nostalgic for a time when the family filmed under one roof? Definitely. In the episode, Kris and her six children, Kourtney, Kim, Khloé, a newly returned Rob Kardashian, as well as Kendall and Kylie Jenner, all convene at Eldorado Meadow under the pretense of bidding farewell to the house with “one last supper.” But, really, the reunion is just a way to remind us of everything that has happened on these black-and-white checkered floors—conveniently revisited for those who’ve either stopped watching The Kardashians, or were too young to experience the unfiltered early era, in which the family became reality TV trailblazers.
Khloé mentions that the Eldorado house was where she and former NBA player Lamar Odom got engaged in 2009, and Kim remembers bringing her newborn children with Kanye West there. Even Kylie—who has become one of the lesser-filmed sisters on The Kardashians, which began airing on Hulu in April 2022—has dipped into her past recently. With the return of King Kylie—her 17-year-old alter ego who flaunted brightly-colored wigs, smokey eyes, and, most importantly, matte lip color on Snapchat circa 2015, she is working to “recapture her youth and our wallets,” as Slate’s Emily Kirkpatrick (a former Vanity Fair contributor) wrote earlier this month. To celebrate a decade of Kylie Cosmetics, the youngest Jenner is rereleasing updated versions of the lip kit that launched her career as a beauty mogul. Even Amy Schumer recently recreated her 2015 red-carpet spill in front of Kim. All of which begs the question: For a family that continues to reinvent itself, why are the Kardashians going back in time?
Let’s travel back to 2015—the year that the Kardashians’ fame seemed to crystallize for the wider public. It was when multiple family members launched their since-shuttered apps and Oprah Winfrey defended the family against accusations that their fame did not stem from actual talent or work ethic (as the acclaimed documentarian Werner Herzog would later warn: underestimate the Kardashians at your own peril). There was an air of possibility in 2015 that doesn’t seem to exist now: Back then, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage, the world agreed on its first climate change accord, and global poverty fell to its lowest point. Mad Men and The Hunger Games ended on high notes, as Stephen Colbert’s Late Show tenure and Broadway’s Hamilton began with similar buzz—and Julianne Moore finally won an Oscar on her fifth nomination.
It was also the final year before an inflection point for reality TV’s first family and society as a whole, with Donald Trump winning the 2016 presidential election and Kim being the victim of an armed robbery during Paris Fashion Week. Given Trump’s second term (Kim visited the White House during his first term to discuss prison reform on multiple occasions) and Kim’s testimony at the heist trial earlier this year, it makes sense that the Kardashian clan would revisit how we got here—and that they would want to spotlight a time before things became infinitely darker for both the Kardashians and the world at large.
Mining the past for drama is a strategy that’s likely been percolating for the last year—with publications like Rolling Stone pondering if the Kardashians’ star had “begun to fade.” Months earlier, in the face of a few lackluster Kardashian business ventures—like Kim’s currently paused KKW Beauty and Kylie’s clothing label, Khy—ELLE UK asked, “Are the Kardashians losing their influence?” These headlines could partially be blamed on their Hulu reality series, which has sometimes struggled to justify its existence, with episodes of the series feeling more like an extended ad for Skims or 818 Tequila than actual drama.
But it’s familiar territory for Kim, Khloé, and their almost brother-in-law Scott Disick. The three addressed viewer backlash back during the third season and got to work introducing juicier storylines in subsequent seasons. There was Kim and Kourtney’s infamous feud over working with Dolce & Gabbana in season three, and last season’s stilted on-camera reunion between Khloé and Odom, who split in 2013, but remained connected through his subsequent 2015 hospitalization for a life-threatening medical incident after he overdosed at a Las Vegas brothel. As part of the show’s storyline, the two-part rehashing served as a way for Khloé to shed past baggage before her 40th birthday, but also evoke the domestic drama that formed the foundation of her and Odom’s 2011–2012 E! spinoff, Khloé & Lamar.
The Kardashian-Jenners give a similar sheen to the reintroduction of Rob and Caitlyn Jenner, both of whom join the regular cast members for the Eldorado dinner after lengthy stints away from filming. Their absences are acknowledged, even if the reason for their time away isn’t expressly stated—an indication that both will likely be a more frequent presence on the show. “It would be great if he would regularly be back on—that’s the goal,” Kim says of Rob, who appeared on Keeping Up, but stopped filming in fall 2016, the same year he and his then fiancée, Blac Chyna, starred in a self-titled reality series. (In October 2017, Chyna filed a more than $100 million lawsuit against the Kardashian family for defamation, but in May 2022, a jury ruled in favor of the Kardashians, with no damages awarded to Chyna, who shares eight-year-old daughter, Dream, with Rob.)
“Rob is doing well, he’s alive,” Khloé jokes, speaking for Rob in lieu of his own confessional. “The conspiracies run wild. One of the main ones is that he lives with me; he’s in our shadows and we don’t wanna have him around us…. He’s not a miserable person who lives under a bridge. We’re totally fine.” (On an episode of Khloé’s podcast earlier this year, Rob explained that he had “nothing against” being around his family, but when it came to filming, he’s “not gonna just put myself out there if I’m not comfortable with myself.”)
Meanwhile, Caitlyn previously expressed hurt about being excluded from the show and has had a rocky relationship with the Kardashian family since separating from Kris in 2013 after 22 years of marriage, and publicly transitioning in 2015. But even she pauses her busy schedule of “eating dinner and watching Fox News,” as Kris jokes, to join the family for one last meal at Eldorado. “I just couldn’t really come here with my whole family and say goodbye to this house and not invite the person who made all the memories with us for so many years,” an emotional Kris says during the episode. Caitlyn has not appeared onscreen with the group since Keeping Up’s 2021 conclusion (she starred in her own reality series, I Am Cait, from 2015–16)—but even Kim knows that making nice with her stepparent is a savvy business move. When talking about how the family has managed to stay on TV for so long, Kim even credited Caitlyn for some of that longevity. “The shows write themselves. Once, when we wondered what might happen next, my stepdad turned into a woman and there were two more seasons right there!” Kim recently joked during an appearance on The Graham Norton Show.
On the surface, Kim seems eager to launch a new professional chapter. She calls herself “a number one on the call sheet” in this fall’s Ryan Murphy legal drama All’s Fair, which also features Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, Naomi Watts, Niecy Nash-Betts, and Teyana Taylor, all of whom appear in the episode. (The way Watts raises her eyebrows as Kim admits to never having seen Close’s Oscar-nominated turn in Fatal Attraction should be studied—to say nothing of the fact that Kim sends moon-landing conspiracy theories to Paulson between takes.)
But off set, Kim is focused on protecting her kids—North, Saint, Chicago, and Psalm—sharing with viewers that they are becoming increasingly aware of their father Kanye West’s recent erratic behavior—a plot point she soft-launched on Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper (who is also producing a reality dating series for Hulu). “It’s a divorce, not a kidnapping,” she says on the season’s first episode, of coparenting with West. “We haven’t left. We’re in the same spot. What happened to the house that you bought next door?” West bought a house down the street from Kim’s Hidden Hills estate in 2021, shortly after she filed for divorce. Kim said at the time she suggested that West take the kids to school every day and that they have dinner together as a family nightly, but those plans never panned out. “Maybe that’s too much,” Kim concedes, “but that’s just what I saw from my mom and my stepdad and my dad.”
By revisiting her past with West, Kim can illuminate the challenges of her present. Back at Eldorado, Kendall and Kylie admit to smoking weed in the backyard, with the elder of the two joking that she lost her virginity in the house. “We’re children number five and six,” says Kendall. “[Kris] just—she has no more energy for us.” But for all the cynicism about the Kardashians returning to their retro rebrand, there is genuine emotion to be gleaned from their trip down memory lane. Later in the episode, Kris captures an intimate moment between Kendall and Kylie as they softly cry on the staircase of their childhood home. “Those were some of the best years,” Kylie tearfully admits.
Reality TV has always mirrored our current climate back to us. Perhaps no one is more familiar with this than the Kardashians—who have spent decades taking the temperature of their audience and reflecting what they may crave back to them. With unease in America seemingly at an all-time high, reality TV’s first family has opted for some good old-fashioned 2010s nostalgia—using their past to inform their present, and thereby secure their future by providing context for how we got here.
A rep for the Kardashians did not immediately reply to a request for comment from Vanity Fair.
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