The Gossip Girl Reboot Roasted The OG Show's Dan Humphrey Reveal
Finally, they addressed it.
Lots of beloved TV shows fail to stick the landing with their final episodes, but perhaps no teen drama had a more controversial finale than the original Gossip Girl. After six seasons, the series finale in 2012 was tasked with answering a seemingly impossible question: Who was Gossip Girl? When the truth came out, fans were quick to point out how nonsensical it was. And now, even the Gossip Girl reboot is roasting that infamous Dan Humphrey reveal.
Warning: Spoilers for Gossip Girl Season 2, Episode 6 follow. For the most part, HBO Max’s reboot has been pretty disconnected from the original GG, save for a few winky references and minor cameos, but that changed in a big way when Georgina Sparks arrived halfway through Season 2. True to form, the Upper East Side’s most notorious drama queen arrived with a game-changing plot twist, as well as plenty of dirt on her old frenemies. She revealed Dan Humphrey and Serena van der Woodsen are still together five years after their finale wedding, and they also have a child running around in their Brooklyn home.
And of course, Georgina couldn’t resist taking a shot at her old nemesis. When she discovered Kate Keller had taken up the mantle as the new Gossip Girl, Georgina remarked on how much better suited she is for the job than Dan was. “Much better than Dan. It never made sense how he could be so many places at once,” Georgina said.
The statement was a big nod to fans of the original Gossip Girl, since the biggest complaint about that show was how Dan being Gossip Girl never made sense. Ever since the big revelation happened in the series finale, fans have compiled lists of reasons why Dan couldn’t be Gossip Girl, ranging from text blasts that hurt characters he would never want to harm to scenes where it was physically impossible for Dan to have sent a blast.
In response to the fandom, the show’s co-creator Joshua Safran even revealed Dan wasn’t initially supposed to be Gossip Girl. He said the writers jumped back and forth between other characters like Eric and Nate for several seasons before finally landing on Dan as the anonymous gossipmonger in the end.
To avoid another snafu, the Gossip Girl reboot did away with the guessing game altogether, immediately revealing fed-up teacher Kate Keller as Gossip Girl in the first episode. And with Georgina’s recent comment, it sounds like the GG team is happy to poke fun at the Dan Humphrey nonsense now.
