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"Oh my God, this is freaky. It's like fate. Jess didn't know we were here. I had no idea that Jess would come by and now look at us together. All the men in my life are drawn here to me. This is positive. This means something. Do you feel it?"
—Liz to T.J. as Jess walks in[src]

Liz Danes is a recurring character on Gilmore Girls. She is portrayed by Kathleen Wilhoite.

Character[]

Liz is the younger sister of Luke Danes. She was born and raised in Stars Hollow. Following her mother's death, Liz began to cut loose and get into trouble including smoking pot. She met Jimmy Mariano at a festival. The two married and Liz gave birth to a son, Jess Mariano. Jimmy left her right after the birth of Jess and Liz began to a series of bad relationships, drug problems, had trouble keeping a job and was unsure of how to raise her son.

Series arc[]

Lizbusiness

Liz's renaissance faire business

At the beginning of season two, she sent her seventeen-year-old son, Jess, to stay with her older and much more responsible brother Luke in their hometown of Stars Hollow. During this time, Liz seemed to clean up her life. She stopped doing drugs and got a somewhat a sustainable job making jewelry in the Renaissance faire circuit.

She returns to Stars Hollow in mid-season four for her high school reunion and visits Luke along with her new boyfriend T.J.. Although Luke is initially skeptical that her current job and relationship are unstable like those of the past, he eventually sees that Liz has finally gotten her life together. During this trip, Liz meets Lorelai for the first time. Lorelai, needing her broken window to be repaired, runs up to the window of Luke's truck expecting to see Luke, but instead sees Liz. Initially, Liz assumes Lorelai is Luke's then-wife Nicole and claims that Lorelai seems like his type. Also during this trip, it is revealed that Liz and Jess have reestablished contact on a semi-regular basis.

A few months later, she and T.J. return to Stars Hollow again announcing that they will be having a Renaissance-themed wedding in the town square. Carrie Duncan and a few other women buy Liz a stripper for her bachelorette party. Luke gets roped into helping out with a great deal of the wedding and brings Lorelai as a date, who conveniently fixes Liz's dress when she accidentally tears it moments before the ceremony.

A few weeks following her wedding, Liz and T.J. were in some undefined accident causing each of them to break an arm and a leg. Luke came and helped them run their booth at the Renaissance Faire for seven weeks while they recovered, allowing her and her husband to become somewhat closer to her older brother. A couple of months later, Liz and T.J. arrive in Stars Hollow and announce that they are looking for a home in Stars Hollow to settle down in the off-season.

Liz and T.J.'s crazy antics often irritate the generous and family-orientated Luke, over the next year, but Luke does seem glad that he gets to see them more often. Near the end of the sixth season, Liz discovers that she is pregnant. Fearing that she will repeat the same mistakes with this child that she made when Jess was young, she lashes out on an innocent T.J. and kicks him out of the house. She tells Luke, however, that T.J. left her and she was going to raise the baby alone. Luke is angered by this and immediately goes to find T.J. with the intent to fight him, but discovers the truth from T.J. and eventually reconciles them. In the final season, Liz has a home birth and gives birth to a daughter named Doula, named out of appreciation for her doula during her home delivery.

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