"So I guess that means it's all over now."
"Yeah, Gossip Girl's dead."
Gossip Girl ended by answering the mystery that had been
(very loosely) hanging over the soapy teen drama’s entire run.
"You are not going to believe who Gossip Girl is.
"Gossip Girl is real?"
Fans expressed everything from baffled amusement to indignant outrage
upon learning that the omniscient gossip blogger aiming to take down
young Upper East Side elites was in fact Dan Humphrey,
the outsider Lonely Boy from Brooklyn who had befriended and romanced his way
into the upper echelons of New York teen society.
"You need to explain everything from the very, very beginning."
Evidently, Dan created the nasty blog,
which frequently attacked the woman of his dreams,
Serena Van Der Woodson, as a way to... show his love for her.
"You’re no one until you’re talked about."
In addition to causing many problematic plot holes,
the abrupt reveal reframed Dan (the intellectual, moral, and
at times judgmental member of his friend group)
as kind of a sociopath.
"Okay, so this is your payback.
Do you feel better about
riding the subway to school since you made a fool of me and everyone?"
Still, the decision to make Dan Gossip Girl did drive home
the show’s central messages- like that your internet troll
might be the person closest to you, and that (deep down)
everybody wants to be an insider.
"There will always be someone on the outside wanting to get in."
Here’s our Take on the ending of Gossip Girl and
this surprisingly enduring teen drama’s ongoing legacy.
"You know you love me, XOXO."
"You're watching The Take.
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The reveal of Dan as Gossip Girl bewildered fans and critics alike
by essentially rewriting everything we’d seen up to that point.
This revelation meant that the brainy, wise heartthrob of the group has made
libel victims out of his family, the woman he says he loves,
and even himself.
"Dan, I cannot believe you are the one responsible for all of this poison.
The damage you've done to your friends, to your family,
to your own sister!"
Starting in season one, the Gossip Girl blog added to
Jenny’s unpopularity with nasty rumors about her sex life.
"Asher Hornsby overheard bragging that Little J swiped her V card
at his register."
So why exactly would Jenny’s own brother be slut-shaming her
to ruin her social life?
"Is this true?"
Although the finale later tried to explain away other Gossip Girl-related
blows to Jenny as a benevolent plot to help her get out of New York.
"She wanted to get out of New York, but she didn't feel like
she had the strength to leave on her own.
So she knew if Blair knew the truth, she wouldn't have a choice."
This still took the form of yet again publicizing her sex life.
"Turns out Little J didn't lose her V card to Damien Dalgaard.
She waited, and CHUCKed it away with her stepbrother."
Then there are the many, many stories
dragging his lady-love Serena through the mud.
"It seems everyone’s favorite party girl fell off the wagon
and landed in rehab."
Despite his claims that this is all inspired by love for her,
Dan’s constant public shaming damages this woman’s
emotional well-being, stability and reputation.
"If anyone should be mad, it should be me."
He also directly sabotages the romantic relationship
he supposedly was always after- like when he accuses himself
of cheating on Serena.
"It was quite detailed about you and Ms. Carr and your forbidden love."
"What?!
No!
That’s absurd."
"Well, I’m not the one you need to convince."
or when he intensifies the awkwardness of his dad getting
together with Serena’s mom by putting their quasi-incestual ties on blast.
"Seems D and S share a sibling."
And let’s not forget the time he leaked Blair’s diary pages
to damage his relationship with her.
"Guess we just answered who’s in Blair’s heart."
or the times he blows up his relationship with Vanessa
by (again) branding himself a cheater.
"As for Vanessa...maybe if I told her the truth,
that photo wouldn't have hit her so hard."
"That bad, huh?
What'd she say?"
"Nothing.
She's not currently
returning my calls."
Co-Creator and Showrunner Stephanie Savage has insisted that
Dan was always the choice for who’s behind Gossip Girl.
But more recently, the show’s producer Josh Safran has confirmed that
both Serena’s brother Eric and cool kid Nate were early candidates.
According to Safran, after the media caught on
that Eric was probably Gossip Girl.
"These rumors are getting to be ridiculous."
"Oh, like the one where I’m Gossip Girl?"
The show’s creative team decided that-given the direction
they were already taking Dan-
"The writer’s best tool is the ability to draw out
a subject’s secret and use it."
Lonely Boy made more sense as the blogger.
"All I had to compare to this world was what I'd read in books,
but that gave me the idea."
Gossip Girl tonally tended to walk the line between
soapy and tongue-in-cheek.
"Nothing says January like a brand new Cold War."
so it’s fitting that the final reveal is a little bit of both, too.
It’s not supposed to make total sense.
Thus, we don’t really need to worry about the fact that
Dan has a text conversation blackmailing himself to
bring Blair to a party, or somehow writes up a post while
still standing in Blair’s wedding.
"Watch this."
"Of course I love you, Chuck, I’ve always loved you."
Savage said Gossip Girl’s identity wasn’t "something that we wanted
viewers to be actively thinking about" during the course of the show.
Still, if they did know for a long time that Dan was Gossip Girl,
it’s odd that the creators didn't feel this would have been
relevant information to share with the actor who played Dan, Penn Badgley.
Savage told TVLine, "It was nothing that
we wanted to be part of Penn Badgely’s performance as Dan."
But not only does this lead to numerous scenes where Dan reacts
with genuine shock and horror to a Gossip Girl post
he’s reading all by himself, it also drastically changes
the fundamental nature of who Badgeley’s character is.
So what does this last-minute bombshell tell us
about Dan Humphrey?
"I wrote my first post about me, Lonely boy, the outsider, the underdog."
"Are you really turning this into an upstairs, downstairs thing?"
All hilarious plot holes aside, with the canon of Dan as Gossip Girl
comes the realization that he’s been the villain of the entire series.
"Why do you think that this is funny?
Gossip Girl ruined our lives,"
If we accept this reveal at face-value,
it’s interesting to revisit the series
and try to make sense of Dan’s emotional arc.
"They gave it to Nate Archibald."
What could be driving him to be this much darker character
than he appeared to be all along?
"The whole reason you sent us to a school like this is so
we can go to a college of our choice.
What if that’s all for nothing?"
The narrative Dan puts forward is that he started the blog because
he wanted to be close to Serena.
"Every writer needs his muse."
after he was accidentally invited to a party she was at.
"...that's when I saw you."
Yet once he finally does get to be with Serena,
he evidently has the impulse to brag about his conquest -
like when he tells everyone he might have got her pregnant.
"Dan, you're gonna be really sorry you did that."
Other posts-like when he spreads rumors that she has an STD,
"Rumor has it our favorite blonde could be spreading more than
just good cheer."
suggest toxic jealousy and possessiveness directed toward
his dream girl.
So it appears that on some level Serena is a prize he wants to win,
and her special importance to him is symbolic of a deeper desire:
to be on the inside.
"I didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to be there.
Once I got inside, I wasn’t leaving..."
Over time, his obsession with belonging to her world seems
to take precedence over actually being with Serena herself.
"Membership in this community was so elite, you couldn't even
buy your way in.
It was a birth right.
A birth right I didn't have, and my greatest achievements
would never earn me."
Meanwhile, he also resents Serena for the way her extreme privilege
has insulated her, in ways that his merely upper-middle-class level
of wealth has not.
"Have you ever wanted something so badly, but you just know
you’re not going to get it?"
"Oh that's right, I forgot who I'm talking to.
Of course you don’t."
There’s a streak of bitterness running through his Gossip Girl posts,
which can be explained by his repeatedly watching his friends
enjoy unfair privileges that he doesn’t get,
"But you still believe that there's a double standard.
That people like me get special treatment...
"Miss van der Woodsen?
Your mother send me to pick you up."
like when Serena avoids serious punishment for
throwing a pool party on school grounds,
"Sorry I couldn't get the charges completely dropped but
at least I got you minimal sentence."
"The new van der Woodsen/Bass library should be completed
for Erik's graduation."
or when Nate beats out Dan for the Dartmouth
Ivy League usher position, without trying at all.
"Which makes total sense because I'm second in our class,
and you're somewhere around- what, I don't know, uh, last?
How many libraries has your dad had to endow to get you this spot?"
Over the course of the series, Dan is repeatedly disappointed
that Serena’s ultimate allegiance is to her world over him.
"It has always been your world and you’ve never let me forget it.
I’ve always been a visitor.
The poor kid from Brooklyn who
you’ve never seen as an equal to you."
and at times, he appears to lose respect for her entirely.
"I don’t know who you are anymore."
Eventually, jaded and tired of feeling like
he’s still not enough for Serena and still not
fully accepted by the group, he publishes scathing exposés
he’s secretly been writing about them, no longer hiding behind the blog.
"You couldn’t say these things about me if you loved me."
He stoops to what he perceives to be the Upper East Siders’ level,
thinking that being as mean as them will finally make them accept him.
"No matter how much we love Lily and Serena,
they’re always gonna choose guys like Bart Bass."
"So maybe the trick is to become Bart Bass."
Along the way, in addition to venting his frustrations,
the Gossip Girl blog has also been a tool for him to figure out
what kind of writer he wants to be.
"So I go back out there, and I make him trust me?
"Be ruthless, and bring me back a story with teeth."
There are even times when we can spot him bringing in
his more high-brow literary sensibilities
in the Gossip Girl voiceover.
"Spotted, a family reunion only Faulkner would approve of."
"Just mention how his prose style is influenced by early Faulkner."
But ultimately it’s by transforming into a ruthless, exploitative,
sensationalist gossip writer that Dan eventually does come to belong
in Serena’s world.
"If I wasn’t born into this world, maybe I could write myself into it."
Through his pursuit of literary and social success at all costs,
this frequent critic of his friends’ superficiality evolves into
the most hungry, image-obsessed of all.
"Blair, I think you're just mad because Dan was the one who was
pulling the strings all along."
"This whole time, I had more power than you."
And in the end, he’s rewarded with the acceptance he always craved-
he just had to entirely change who he was, and
bury his idealistic former self, in order to get it.
"You were supposed to be different."
"I used to be.
Got me nowhere.
So now I'm the same."
Arguably, the final reveal even villainizes the outsider,
essentially for being one- sending the message that
not belonging was Dan’s original sin, requiring him to undertake
the ugly business of pushing his way into
a society that doesn’t want him.
"Chuck is one of us, whereas Dan, despite his years of trying,
never will be."
This shrewd observer-turned-conformist decided to base his entire life-
and identity-on the fundamental principle
underlying Serena’s world: that you’re no one unless
you’re talked about.
"I might have been a joke, but at least people were talking about me."
The other major message of the finale is that, however many bad things
these rich kids have done, and however many traumas they
put each other through, everything will always work out for them.
"You and I come from different worlds.
In my world, if I'm suspended or expelled,
a wing is donated in the Bass name."
"That sounds like quite a world."
What makes Gossip Girl an even guiltier pleasure than
previous soapy teen dramas about rich kids is its lack
of real consequences for its characters’ behavior.
In Beverly Hills 90210, Donna’s chances of graduating
are threatened when she drinks at prom.
In The O.C., Marissa dies in a car crash.
But in Gossip Girl, no one dies, (at least, no one
you’re supposed to care about).
And no one is held accountable for objectively terrible behavior.
Chuck Bass-the show’s original villain, turned central love-interest,
gets redemption and his dream girl Blair Waldorf,
even though he once sold her to his Uncle for a hotel business.
"I told Chuck I'd take either you or the hotel.
He chose to give me you."
and sleeps with her enemy.
"You didn't."
"Blair."
"You did."
It’s even okay if you run a nasty years-long gossip blog
about your best friends, as long as you explain why you did it.
"Dan was as hard on himself as he was on any of us.
And he wouldn't have had anything to post if everyone
hadn't been sending in tips."
All of Gossip Girl’s snark about its characters’ bad behavior gave way
to a conventional romantic pairing-off that delivered
audience wish-fulfillment wrapped up with a bow.
"He made me realize I don't wanna run away,
that you guys are my family and I belong here.
And so does Dan."
In the retrospective special the CW ran right before
the finale aired, Showrunner Stephanie Savage
likened watching Gossip Girl to reading a glossy magazine—
it’s a fun glimpse into the glittering world of
the monied elite.
"We always wanted the show to be able to function like a magazine.
so, f you wanted to find out what are the trends,
what’s a place that I should go, you could just watch Gossip Girl."
And what viewers loved the most about Gossip Girl was
the over-the-top glamour it showcased.
The show premiered the same year as Keeping Up with the Kardashians,
in the midst of the reality and semi-scripted TV boom of the 2000s,
when audiences were becoming ever-more captivated by
privileged glimpses into the so-called "real lives" of
the rich and famous."
"Lo, it’s not a fashion show..."
"It's always a fashion show, mom."
Gossip Girl offered the 18 to 34 demographic a rose-tinted,
aspirational Sex In the City-style Manhattan, only it's populated with
horny teenagers instead of horny 30-somethings.
It was the perfect intersection of teen soap, Golden Age of Television
character development, and reality TV escapism.
"Here's my advice.
Have a little faith,
and if that doesn't work, have a lot of mimosas."
It was also one of the first teen dramas to use the internet
in the central premise of the show- something Pretty Little Liars
would later mimic through its plot centered around blackmailing texts.
And Gossip Girl was the jumping-off point for
numerous series to come focusing on the sensational lives
and supposed problems of rich people, including Turkish, Thai, Mexican,
and Indonesian versions of Gossip Girl; the Bravo reality show NYC Prep,
"Money is power, that’s what it is."
and a 2021 HBO Max reboot of the show.
After a slew of more realistic, heavy, or dark teen shows,
Gossip Girl’s good old-fashioned pulpy escapism may continue to appeal.
It remains to be seen how the show’s sensational fantasy of
the wealthy elite will fit with today’s more critical social discourse.
"Blake Lively's doing her thing."
"Is that the white girl?
"Oh, I guess they're all white.
There's so many of them..."
"It's good to see them doing they thing."
But if there’s one thing the show’s enduring influence proves,
it’s that we will always want a glimpse into
the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite.
"XOXO, Gossip Girl."
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