Warning: SPOILERS for Gossip Girl 2021 ahead.
The Gossip Girl reboot season 1 might have lacked the cameos of the original show’s six main characters, but it had many Easter eggs and references to the original throughout the first 12 episodes. The reboot and the original share many similarities, chiefly the creators Joshua Safran, Stephanie Savage, and Josh Schwartz, also executive producers of the original show. Both shows are inspired by the series of books of the same name written by Cecily von Ziegesar, but, while the original show and the books focused on the same characters (albeit with some differences), Gossip Girl 2021’s main characters have no connection to the ones of the books.
Season 1 of the HBO Max reboot did not receive a positive critical appraisal, scoring only 36% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 53 critic ratings. Rather than nuanced, many critics felt the Gossip Girl reboot's more socially-responsible protagonists were not mean enough, trying to “wrestle with their privilege” as creator Safran described, but not deciding which code of conduct to fully commit to, their moral quandaries, or the need to keep their status unchanged. Despite that, viewers seemed to like the show, as the 68% Rotten Tomatoes audience score and renewal for a season 2 suggest.
Gossip Girl 2021 season 1’s ending seemed to have taken the advice many critics voiced, setting up an alliance between Julien (Jordan Alexander) and Gossip Girl (Tavi Gevinson) to bring chaos, with Gossip Girl promising to accept the true and false tips Julien offered with the purpose of affecting change, as the two agreed. Despite the shows having very different vibes, with the original being often over-the-top but gripping and the reboot taking itself seriously but also faltering, the latter steadfastly referenced the former. Here are all the original Gossip Girl Easter eggs in the 2021 reboot.
Nelly Yuki and the Main Group’s Contemporaries
Some of the original Gossip Girl core six characters were referenced in the reboot episode 1, both by the teenage protagonists and the teachers. The preferred hairstyle of Leighton Meester's Blair Waldorf appeared in the first moments of Whitney Peak’s introduction as Zoya Lott to Julien’s friends when Julien took their mom’s scarf Zoya used as a headband and repurposed it as a scarf around her half-sister’s neck for their first Instagram picture together. At the same time, when the teachers learned about the existence of Gossip Girl in the past, Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), and Blair were all mentioned. The first two were remembered for their reputation, while Chuck and Blair’s relationship was dubbed as “out of control” by a teacher.
However, some minor characters from the original Gossip Girl appeared as cameos in the reboot. In episode 1, teacher Rebecca Sherman (Sarah Baskin) enlightened the other teachers on how the students of Constance Billard and St. Jude’s schools were kept in check through Gossip Girl’s blog. Rebecca was never seen in the original series, but she was mentioned by the main characters during the season 2 finale when they were trying to figure out who was behind the blog that was giving them so many problems.
In episode 5, Obie (Eli Brown) invited to a masked party Nelly Yuki (Yin Chang), and they talked about her career in a magazine that put Obie’s mom on the cover. Obie invited her only to prove to Zoya that her new friend Simon (Mason Versaw) was actually a reporter under Nelly, which he did, but he also ended up being warned by Nelly, who highlighted how those types of setups were exactly the drama Gossip Girl used to stir. Nelly was one of Blair’s minions in the original show, despite being treated worse by her than her other underlings. She managed to leave that toxic environment when she was offered Blair’s place at Yale and only came back to interview Blair on her Waldorf Designs line for a magazine.
Georgina Sparks’ Progeny Who Inherited His Mom’s Slyness
In the original Gossip Girl season 4, Milo Sparks was only an infant, and he was used by his mom Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg) to convince Dan that he was actually their baby. Georgina, Dan, and Milo lived for some time together at the Humphreys’ loft, but it was then revealed he actually wasn’t Dan’s child. That revelation was just another of Georgina’s ploys to get what she wanted.
The Milo seen in the Gossip Girl reboot, portrayed by Azhy Robertson, seemed to have inherited his mom's skills. He approached Zoya, offering her help in taking down Julien when she thought her sister did not respect her wishes to keep her birthday secret in episode 4. Despite being only 10 years old, he proved to be good at what he promised to Zoya, who didn't want Julien besmirched by something false. Milo managed to find dirt on Julien in the form of past tweets that had aged terribly and created the chaos he had promised to Zoya.
The Original Gossip Girl's Conventions
The reboot’s references to the original show also turn up in little nods to its characters and their habits. Just like Serena (Blake Lively), Blair and the latter’s minions spent their time in-between classes on the steps of the Met, so do Julien and her friends. In fact, their first meeting with Julien’s half-sister Zoya, which was secretly organized by the two, happened there.
The new Gossip Girl took pages from the original one’s book and stopped posting on Thanksgiving, the only day Dan Humphrey’s Gossip Girl took as a vacation. In addition to that, she also mirrored Dan’s jargon as Gossip Girl. When Kate as Gossip Girl wrote about Zoya, she often referred to her as Little Z or Lonely Z, just like Dan’s Gossip Girl called Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen) Little J.
The Parents' Contemporaries
The cameos of the core teenager characters might have lacked, but that was not the case for their parents. In episode 10 of the Gossip Girl reboot, Audrey (Emily Alyn Lind) forced her mother Kiki (Laura Benanti) to attend a party to present her fashion line drafts. The mission did not go as planned, but the party was organized by Blair's mom, Eleanor (Margaret Colin), and stepfather, Cyrus Rose (Wallace Shawn). Among the guests, there was also Blair's ex-maid and confidante Dorota (Zuzanna Szadkowski). They seemed very close to some of the teenagers' parents in Gossip Girl 2021, showing how the original show's core six characters might have moved on, but their parents did not, being still very much part of the elite that both shows focus on.