With This Taboo Hookup, The New Gossip Girl Is Finally Getting Scandalous
It can't end well.
It may have taken a few episodes, but HBO Max’s new Gossip Girl is finally getting truly interesting. So far, the series has mostly centered on the social war between half-sisters Julien and Zoya and the waning monogamy of stuck-in-a-rut couple Audrey and Aki, but at the end of Episode 4, a questionable hookup is promising to turn up the heat — just when it seemed like Gossip Girl was running out of ammo. Spoiler alert: Don’t read on if you haven’t watched Gossip Girl Episode 4, “Fire Walks with Z.” After finally succumbing to their twisted, flirty game, it feels like only a matter of time before Max and Rafa get caught by Gossip Girl and a teacher-student scandal erupts on the Upper East Side.
Max Wolfe set his sights on Constance Billard classics teacher Rafa Caparros pretty much right off the bat when Gossip Girl began, having heard glowing rumors about him from men who had slept with him. True to his nature as the Gen Z Chuck Bass, Max aggressively pursued the teacher, despite Rafa constantly turning him down due to how inappropriate their relationship would be. The headstrong high schooler even involved Rafa in an ill-advised plot to expose his father Roy of cheating on his other father Gideon, which ended disastrously. Due to the fallout, Max turned to excessive drug use, with Rafa seemingly being the only one trying to help him turn over a new leaf.
Although Max kept flirting with him, it seemed like Rafa had developed a healthy relationship with his student as a caring mentor... but that all flew out the window at the end of Episode 4.
After Max confided in Rafa about feeling like the cause of his parents’ separation, he tearfully leaned in for a kiss. Initially, Rafa pushed him away and told him to go home as he had always done before, but after a few seconds, he relented. “F*ck it,” Rafa conceded, and the two began hooking up.
Obviously, this was a terrible idea, not only because Max had just threatened to tell Gossip Girl he and Rafa had hooked up earlier in the episode to blackmail him into sex, but also because the teachers running Gossip Girl are not big fans of Rafa. He’s one of the only people who knows the truth behind Gossip Girl, having been in the room when Kate, Jordan, and Wendy created it. But he opted out of helping his fellow teachers run the account, causing the GG group to view him as a potential threat.
Now that he’s slept with a student, Rafa is one misstep away from Gossip Girl finding out and not hesitating to expose him. Given Max’s loose lips and penchant for vengeful tantrums, it seems like that may be sooner rather than later. Things are about to get truly wild at Constance Billard.
New episodes of Gossip Girl hit HBO Max on Thursdays.
