It’s time! The reunion we have all been waiting for streams today. Sixteen years after they bowed out as the faces of unarguably the most popular sitcom in television history, the ‘friends’ are coming back! Ross and Rachel, Phoebe and Monica, Joey and Chandler will bring alive the memories of two decades in the Friends Reunion episode, aptly titled The One Where They Get Back Together. Airing on HBO Max in the US, the Reunion episode will be simultaneously available in India today, streaming on Zee5 at 12.32pm.

While the two-minute trailer, released recently, has given us an idea of what to be excited about, here’s a guide of what to expect from the Reunion episode.

The beginning

Initially scheduled to be aired to honour the iconic sitcom’s 25th anniversary, the pandemic pause ensured that production on the episode began only in March this year and wrapped up in the second week of April. The shoot fittingly took place at the original Friends soundstage — Stage 24, at the Warner Bros Studio in Burbank, California. Ben Winston, the writer of James Corden’s highly popular The Late Late Show, directs the episode. He’s also an executive producer, along with Friends EPs Kevin Bright, Marta Kauffman, and David Crane.

When the news of the reunion was announced, the actors all shared the same photo and caption on Instagram — “It’s happening”—and tagged each other. This was in February 2020, just on the brink of the pandemic. The image, shot by Mark Seliger, is from the May 18, 1995 issue of Rolling Stone.

In February 2020, all the actors shared an Instagram post announcing the Reunion episode with this picture shot for Rolling Stone in 1995 Sourced by the correspondent

The middle

So will it be another round of the foosball table, the holiday armadillo, the traditional English trifle and the smelly cats? As the trailer suggests, actors Jennifer Aniston (Rachel), Courteney Cox (Monica), Lisa Kudrow (Phoebe), Matt LeBlanc (Joey), Matthew Perry (Chandler) and David Schwimmer (Ross) will reunite, revisit the set, indulge in a quiz of sorts, chat with James Corden in a joint sit-down interview in front of a live audience, reread their lines and share behind-the-scenes footage. They will appear as themselves (for a reality check, they are now all between 51 and 57 years old) and not portray their original characters. In a candid moment during the interview with Corden, we get to see how close the six friends still remain. “I love you guys so much,” one of the actors says in the middle of a group hug. And, of course, the familiar strains of I’ll Be There For You by The Rembrandts is enough to transport us back to 1994.

“Nothing is scripted, and we are not in character,” David Schwimmer had said in an interview. “We are all ourselves, although there is one section of it that I don’t want to give away, but we all read something.”

Lisa Kudrow, in an interview with The Sunday Times, had said, “No audience has seen us together since the show was over. It’s six of us coming together for the first time in I don’t know how long.”

“It was unbelievable. It was so emotional,” Courteney Cox said during an Ellen DeGeneres Show appearance earlier this month. Cox insisted that she has “the worst memory”, but being around her old co-stars helped her remember a lot that she thought she’d forgotten.” We had a lot of special surprises, and it was fantastic. It really was,” she added.

The reunion will also feature the six friends performing a table-read of a section of the iconic episode The One With the Jellyfish, along with a reimagining of the trivia game from Season Four where Rachel and Monica bet their apartment… and lose.

The 10 seasons of the show have featured appearances from some of the biggest names in show business — Brad Pitt to Bruce Willis, Robin Williams to Julia Roberts — and the Reunion episode will be no different. Expect the likes of David Beckham, Justin Bieber, BTS, Cindy Crawford, Cara Delevingne, Lady Gaga, Kit Harington and even Malala Yousafzai to show up at some point.

Former Friends actors will also make an appearance, including Elliott Gould, who played Monica and Ross’s father; Christina Pickles, who played the siblings’ mother; Reese Witherspoon, who was Jill Green, Rachel’s sister, and Tom Selleck, who took on the role of Richard Burke, Monica’s love interest.

And it’s not just you and me who are excited about this regrouping of the Friends gang. When Jennifer Aniston shared the 40-second teaser of the episode on Instagram, actor Olivia Wilde commented, “This is my vaccine!”

The end (or maybe not!)

For the episode, each of the six actors has reportedly taken home a pay cheque between $2.5million and $3million, much more than the $1 million-per-episode they earned when Friends was still running. So will the Reunion be a one-off special or will we see the six buddies come back for a season (fingers crossed) or at least a cuppa at Central Perk? Aniston seems to have the answer: “Look, we’re not going anywhere. You’re never going to get rid of Friends, sorry. You’re stuck with us for life, guys!” Now those words we love!