Spoilers below.
Every Darren Star show has a will-they-won’t-they couple: Carrie and Big on Sex and the City, Kelly and Brandon on Beverly Hills 90210, Liza and Charles on Younger, and Emily and Gabriel on Emily in Paris. When we left Emily a month ago at the end of the first half of season 4, she was blissfully in love with Gabriel, the chef she’s been circling for the entire series. They were finally single at the same time and ready to give their love a shot, even if Gabriel’s ex-fiancée Camille was lingering with a fake pregnancy.
But Emily and Gabriel spend most of the second half of the season, which is now streaming on Netflix, apart. Emily unceremoniously breaks up with Gabriel when he leaves her at the top of the mountain during a Christmas skiing trip with Camille’s family and then later expresses his irritation at always having to speak English around her (Parisians are never beating the allegations). But Emily quickly bounces back: She’s whisked off her feet by an Italian fashion company heir Marcello who invites her to Rome on a holiday.
In maybe her first use of PTO since moving to Paris, Emily goes. And to everyone’s surprise, Emily is happy to be in the moment and not think about work, but Sylvie has other plans for her. Marcello’s family is considering hiring JVMA to run their marketing—something they’ve never trusted an external company with before—and Sylvie is determined to win the business for Agence Grateau by any means necessary. That includes sabotaging Emily’s romantic getaway.
Emily in Paris often pokes fun at American work culture, so it’s genuinely exciting when Emily initially rebukes Sylvie. She goes to the town where the Muratori family lives to make amends with Marcello, and he reluctantly shows her around. The company’s philosophy is all about honoring each other and a simple way of life, and Emily is treated to an extravagant lunch being thrown in honor of one of the long-time employees. But Emily lets her marketing brain get the better of her and suggests ways of bringing the Muratori brand to the masses, using the lunch as a jumping off point for the brand’s identity. Once again, Marcello believes she’s there for the wrong reasons and asks her to leave.
Marcello’s mom Antonia receives her advances more openly, and agrees to at least hear what Grateau has to offer—but only at their Rome office. The team scrambles and Sylvie pulls some strings to stage their office at one of her old flings’ offices, and Emily sells her vision of marketing the way of life instead of the clothing successfully at the expense of her budding relationship with Marcello. He accuses her of being there for the business and not for him, and honestly who can blame him? To add salt to the wound, Antonia sees right through their lie about the Rome office, knowing the same mutual friend from whom Sylvie borrowed it.
Sylvie, who is the real reason for Emily’s relationship woes, seems only marginally remorseful for meddling in her employee’s personal life. She admits that it was wrong of her to use Emily’s budding romance to get ahead professionally to a former lover, a hunky Italian film director whom she took classes from years ago, while also expressing some concerns about her ambitions getting in the way of her happiness. But Sylvie doesn’t exactly regret exploiting Emily, especially when she gets the coveted meeting.
Things aren’t going great for Mindy in the relationship department either. She and Nico broke up for good after she realized that she’d never fit the trophy wife mold that he was looking for. Nico turns out to be a vengeful ex: He utilizes one of Mindy’s songs for a commercial without her permission, violating the Eurovision rules and disqualifying them from the competition. To mend her broken heart, she flies to Rome to visit Emily. Gelato in hand, they stroll the streets and something Emily says sparks a lyric for one of Mindy’s unfinished songs. She takes over a piano in a piazza and belts out an original song “Beautiful Ruins,” lamenting the end of the relationship but still finding beauty in the memories and love shared.
Emily and tourists alike record the performance and upload the video to social media. Even though Emily is a supposed influencer in the world of the show, it’s a tourist’s TikTok that goes viral and prompts Chinese Pop Star to invite Mindy back to be a judge and perform the new song. If anyone can turn lemons into lemonade, it’s Mindy.
Back in Paris, Genevieve, Sylvie’s step-daughter and new employee, receives word that Gabriel has finally received a Michelin star—for real this time. She runs to deliver the news and his first reaction is that Emily should be here to celebrate with them. Genevieve doesn’t let that deter her; at the celebration party later that night, she throws herself at Gabriel in front of Anton and Alfie, and Gabriel draws the line and tells her he’d like to keep things professional. Still missing Emily, Gabriel leaves her a voicemail telling her the good news and expressing his gratitude to her. Emily returns the favor, leaving a congratulatory message for him in French, a callback to their break-up fight.
But unfortunately for Gabriel, the message is only an olive branch for friendship. In Rome, she’s a little preoccupied: Emily’s pitch is good enough to win over Antonia for a 6-month contract, and at the party thrown in honor of the partnership, she and Marcello make up. He’s encouraged that she insisted not to be involved with the account, taking that as a sign that she actually wants to put the relationship first.
That is immediately complicated when Sylvie announces she’s officially opening a Rome office, which Emily will run. She’ll be intimately involved with the Muratori account, but this is a wrinkle that Emily in Paris glosses over—it seems her gesture to remain uninvolved was enough for Marcello. She’s put up in a beautiful villa with a gorgeous view of the city, stopping to take a selfie of her new life.
Mindy gives Gabriel the news, and Alfie encourages him to go after her. “Don’t let your pride and misunderstanding get in the way of the greatest girl in the world. We both did,” Alfie says, which is a somewhat unbelievable stance from him given how their relationship ended, but it’s the fuel Gabriel needs to ask Mindy where in Rome Emily is.
Emily is busy posting her selfie to Instagram and contemplating changing her handle, deleting Paris from her name but not fully committing to @EmilyInRome. When Marcello knocks on her door, she leaves her phone behind (a first!) to hop on the back of his Vespa and start a new life.
Netflix hasn’t officially renewed the series for a fifth season, but it seems likely the hit show will return: guest roles were auctioned off at an amFAR event at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this summer. And when it does, fans will once again question whether or not they ship Gabriel and Emily, or if they have room in their hearts for someone (and somewhere) new.
Radhika Menon is a freelance entertainment writer, with a focus on TV and film. Her writing can be found on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Bustle, and more.