Warning: This post contains spoilers for Season 5 of Emily in Paris.
Another season of Emily in Paris, another will-they-won’t-they cliffhanger ending.
Now streaming on Netflix, Season 5 of creator Darren Star’s escapist romantic dramedy follows over-the-top expat Emily Cooper (Lily Collins) from Rome to the fictional Italian village of Solitano to Paris to Venice and back to Paris again as she continues to navigate the ups and downs of her personal and professional life.
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Complementing a temporary new title card of “Emily in Rome,” the season opens with Emily living in the Eternal City alongside her Italian fashion heir beau Marcello Muratori (Eugenio Franceschini) while taking charge of Agence Grateau’s new Italian branch. When Emily’s on-again-off-again Parisian chef love Gabriel (Lucas Bravo) shows up in Rome intending to win her back—as the Season 4 finale set up—he sees her cozying up with Marcello and decides to return home without ever speaking to her. But after a series of unfortunate events results in Sylvie (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu) shutting down the Rome office and the Agence Grateau team returning to Paris, Emily and Gabriel’s paths intersect once more.
With the exception of a brief breakup stint, Emily spends the majority of the fifth season’s 10-episode run building a relationship with Marcello. Meanwhile, Gabriel is recruited by billionaire Thomas Heatherton (Jonathan Cake) to be the private chef on his yacht and travel the world. However, in Episode 9, Gabriel returns to Paris for an afternoon and spends a lunch hour with Emily that seems designed to give Team Gabriel viewers hope for the couple’s future. While the visit ends with Gabriel admitting to Emily that he followed her to Rome before expressing hope that she’ll be happy with Marcello, the romantic tension between them feels undeniable—especially considering the moment is soundtracked by Mindy (Ashley Park) performing a dramatic rendition of the iconic Moulin Rouge love ballad “Come What May.” In spite of that moment of connection, the episode ends with Marcello and Emily saying “I love you” for the first time and it seems as though Emily may finally be moving on for good with Gabriel out of the picture.
It doesn’t help that, back in October 2024, Bravo told IndieWire he was questioning whether he even wanted to be a part of Season 5 due to frustrations surrounding Gabriel’s character development. “The ‘sexy chef’ was very much part of me in Season 1 and we grew apart season after season because of the choices he makes and because of the direction they make him take. I’ve never been so far away from him,” he said. “In Season 1, there was a lot of me in him. But as they made him kind of unaware of his surroundings, of the dynamic, always victimizing and always being completely lost in translation and oblivious to anything that is happening around him and being manipulated by everyone, it kind of became not fun for me to shoot or to see a character I love so much and brought me so much, being slowly turned into guacamole. I really grew apart from him.”
Obviously, Bravo did in fact sign on for this season, with Star recently telling Deadline he believed the actor’s comments were a misunderstanding. “I think he was never intending not to come back,” he said.
Still, Gabriel yachting off into the sunset while Emily settled down with Marcello might’ve seemed like a natural conclusion to the “sexy chef’s” storyline. But fear not, Gabriel fans. Judging by the closing minutes of the finale, that certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. After Emily finds an engagement ring hidden in Marcello’s luggage during their trip to Venice, she nips any chance of a successful gondola-ride proposal in the bud by freaking out over the idea of moving to Solitano to marry Marcello and leaving her life in Paris. Unfortunately, in the wake of her loudly declaring she can’t marry him, Marcello reveals the ring actually belongs to Nico (Paul Forman), who proceeds with his proposal to Mindy despite the extremely awkward mix-up.
Emily’s little outburst pretty much spells the death knell for her and Marcello and she returns to Paris alone. Except, upon hearing about their breakup, Sylvie shoots a text off to Gabriel—who’s conveniently just learned he has a few weeks off in Greece—letting him know that Emily is single again. He immediately sits down to send her a postcard telling her he’s “at sea” without her and asking her to meet him in Greece.
At this point, no matter how many seasons it takes, it’s hard to believe Emily and Gabriel won’t eventually make things work. Here’s hoping Season 6 introduces “Emily in Athens.”
The post How the Cliffhanger Ending of Emily in Paris Season 5 Could Be Setting Up the Series’ Romantic Endgame appeared first on TIME.
