WARNING: This article features MAJOR SPOILERS from Gossip Girl season 1, episode 1, "Just Another Girl on the MTA."
Despite being connected to the original Gossip Girl show, the HBO Max sequel seemingly retcons the final crucial scene from the series finale of The CW drama. Given how popular Gossip Girl was back during its run on The CW, it took almost a decade for Warner Bros. to revive the teen series for a new generation. Despite many referring to HBO Max's Gossip Girl as a "reboot," the show is, in fact, a sequel to the original series that aired from 2007-2012. The second iteration focuses on a new group of elite Constance Billard students as they become targeted by Gossip Girl 2.0.
While Dan Humphrey turned out to be the original Gossip Girl, the reveal became a controversy for the series finale. In the sequel, several Constance teachers create an Instagram account to teach their students accountability. Unlike The CW series, HBO Max's Gossip Girl did not make the fans wait six years to find out who was operating as the anonymous blogger. However, despite the two shows being in the same world, the sequel story left out a major component that Gossip Girl's series finale established in 2012.
In Gossip Girl's final episode, the finale jumped five years into the future. While Serena van der Woodsen and Dan got married, the narrator, voiced by Kristen Bell, began talking again, only this time meant to be coming from a new Gossip Girl. The last scene followed a new gang of Constance students while focusing specifically on a Dan-like character. Based on Gossip Girl's dialogue, someone had picked up Dan's mantle, but that does not seem to be part of the sequel story at all. In the HBO Max drama, when a Constance faculty member brought up Dan's history as Gossip Girl, Kate Keller and her colleagues made it clear they had never heard of that.
Gossip Girl's series premiere on HBO Max only briefly showed Dan's old blog that went dark on December 17, 2012, which is when the original series finale aired on The CW. The premiere does not bring up whoever had decided to take over for Dan in 2017 after he abandoned the site. Even though it does not hurt the new story by any means, it is still regarded as a retcon for the sequel series. It is worth noting that the original creators and producers are involved with the HBO Max version, so they are basically erasing their own work.
It would have been so simple for the HBO Max premiere to just reference how maybe Dan's successor tried to be the new Gossip Girl but abandoned it very quickly. With Bell back as the narrator, the new Gossip Girl could have cleverly given the successor a brief backstory to establish what happened after 2017. Although given how many twists and turns The CW's Gossip Girl had, perhaps that is a plot point that gets addressed later in the season.
Gossip Girl releases new episodes every Thursday on HBO Max.