So far, Hulu’s Looking for Alaska adaption looks like everything John Green fans have hoped for

After a first look at Hulu’s adaption of Looking for Alaska, our expectations are as high as they’ve ever been.

The long, long, long wait is finally almost over! Ever since bestselling author John Green announced back in October 2018 that his book Looking For Alaska had been picked up for a limited-series adaption over at Hulu, fans of the book (and the guy who wrote it) have been itching for details.

Little by little, we’ve learned bits and pieces of information about the show. It will span eight episodes, it will star Charlie Plummer as Pudge and Kristine Froseth as Alaska and it drops on Hulu in October. But for the most part, we’ve had only hopes.

Hulu recently released the first images from the upcoming series, though, and things look promising. We’ve got a shot of Miles, Alaska, and their friends at school, along with several featuring just Miles and Alaska.

It’s been frustrating for many watching two of Green’s other books — The Fault In Our Stars and Paper Towns — become movies while this one has been picked up and tossed away more than once in the meantime. Green sold the movie rights to Looking for Alaska years ago, and a film has since almost made it to the development stage at least twice. Nothing has come of those many promises until now.

From what we know so far, it sounds like the story itself will follow the same outline as the book. It’s likely to expand upon certain elements of the novel’s story, possibly going deeper into flashbacks and further developing specific relationships between characters.

A limited series is absolutely the right way to handle a story like this. A TV adaption will never mimic the story told in a book exactly, but eight episodes — let’s assume that equals eight hours  — should be an ideal amount of time to bring a fan-favorite story to life.

Showrunners Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage — yes, of Gossip Girl fame — are teen drama veterans. They’ll do a good job.

The only way they could really mess this up is by carrying the story beyond where the book ends. We’ve seen a lot of recent examples displaying how badly this can turn out.

Game of Thrones was praised endlessly until the writers reached the part in the story where George R.R. Martin had stopped.13 Reasons Why is still going, for some reason, even though the premise of the show was never really meant to extend beyond a single season.

It’s hard to imagine showrunners trying to add to a story that is almost perfect just the way it is. The running motif of “last words” throughout the novel means the story does have to end, and we can only hope the show ends just as magically as the book did.

Looking For Alaska is set at a boarding school in the ’00s and tells the story of a teenage boy’s heartbreaking first love — and first loss. We can’t wait to watch Green’s characters appear before our eyes … until we’re crying too hard and can’t see through our tears. It’s going to be great.

Looking for Alaska premieres in full on Hulu on October 18.