Oh so THIS is who played Tristan in the “Gilmore Girls” revival

There were a whole lot of surprise appearances throughout the Gilmore Girls revival, from the many Parenthood cameos (Mae Whitman! Jason Ritter! Peter Krause!) to just characters we didn’t think we’d see again, let alone ever see (shoutout, Mr. Kim). And then there was one character who took us all by surprise, and almost sent us running into the bathroom just like Paris. Chilton pretty-boy-bad-boy Tristan made a surprise appearance during A Year in the Life, and oh nooooo.

The scene with him is very quick, and we only ever see Tristan from afar. Though we barely catch a glimpse of him, Paris gets a good long look and then proceeds to have a major freak out in the bathroom. One look at Tristan will do that to you.

But not so fast, because that is not, in fact, Chad Michael Murray, who played Tristan during Seasons 1 and 2.

Instead, the role of Tristan is now being played by Days of Our Lives actor Anton Narinskiy. We reached out to CMM (and by that, I mean I tweeted at him), to ask why his iconic Chilton role was recast, but he has yet to respond.

Oh yeah, we can clearly see how they both could be Tristan Dugray.

Since we can’t ask CMM why he wasn’t part of the revival, might as well turn to Liza Weil, yeah? On red carpet for the Gilmore Girls premiere, she explained the recast to ET:

“I mean, it would’ve been nice [to have him in the revival], but he’s busy. He’s doing a lot of things and he’s doing very well for himself…so I think in all, I think it plays.”

We think it plays, too.  The visual joke still works, even without forever-dreamboat CMM.