Warning! SPOILERS about the Gossip Girl reboot season 2 episode 3 ahead.Kate got back to being the sole Gossip Girl account manager in season 2 of the Gossip Girl reboot, but the way the HBO Max show handled this is failing the role’s legacy. In a bid to help Constance Billard and St. Jude’s students be their best selves, Kate (Tavi Gevinson) revived Gossip Girl as an Instagram account in season 1. However, season 2, episodes 1-3 showed that despite finally being able to manage it alone and on her own, Kate’s direction of Gossip Girl and the account’s purpose are unclear in the Gossip Girl reboot's second season.
A big storyline of the Gossip Girl reboot in season 1 involved Kate losing access to the Gossip Girl account because she cared too much about the students’ well-being to post the daring updates that made it famous. This proves the Gossip Girl reboot should be meaner, which is a belief also shared by Kate’s colleagues. Another relevant storyline had Kate prioritize potential career changes toward writing over handling the Gossip Girl account. That change could have also provided a different approach to managing the Gossip Girl role, but season 2 of the Gossip Girl reboot still showed Kate aimlessly returning to post anything Julien sent her.
Kate's Goals With Gossip Girl In The Reboot's S2 Aren't Bold Enough
The introduction of a known character behind the Gossip Girl account considerably innovated the Gossip Girl reboot, especially as it eliminated the mystery side of the story that deeply characterized the original show. However, it also made it difficult for the reboot to justify Kate’s reasoning behind her choices with the account. While the account was first presented as Kate’s artistic outlet and a way to make her students listen to something she said, her intentions were always clear. Instead, season 2 of the Gossip Girl reboot had Kate continue her work as Gossip Girl but without a clear vision of her goals.
Instead, the reboot's second season had Kate state that she wanted to go after bigger fish, like Monet’s mother, Camille de Haan, and yet she still found herself involved with what happened in the lives of Constance Billard’s students. Rather than actively looking at the bigger picture and displaying it in plain sight, season 2 had Kate aimlessly posting whatever Julien sent her, whether true or a lie. While the HBO Max show quickly shut out Kate and Julien’s plan, it still didn’t establish what to expect from Kate’s Gossip Girl, diminishing the role the original Gossip Girl granted the character.
Even if Kate’s original plan in the reboot wasn’t to be the “one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite” like her predecessor, it still followed a strategy. Instead, the Gossip Girl reboot’s Georgina Sparks-like threat still ended up only being narrated by Kate’s Gossip Girl, as if she were a commentator rather than the important player the source had been in the original show, informing her readers and influencing the other characters’ actions. This fails Kate as a character and also risks turning Gossip Girl into someone who makes empty threats rather than what she had always represented in the original Gossip Girl.
Gossip Girl Reboot S1's Revival Of Gossip Girl Had Meaning
The reasons behind Gossip Girl’s revitalization in season 1 of the Gossip Girl reboot were clear, albeit different from what the source originally wanted to obtain with her blog. Tired of being undervalued by their students and the school, whose rich pockets were being filled by the students’ parents, thus influencing their children’s academic careers, Kate restarted the account to keep them in check. This proved to be a problem for Gossip Girl’s original teen drama reputation because Kate was too attached to actually want to hurt her students with her revelations, while her colleagues wanted to use the account with precisely that goal in mind.
Although a teacher being behind an account that exposed her students’ secrets made the new Gossip Girl’s venture particularly unethical and problematic for the reboot, it still established a motive behind revitalizing Gossip Girl and a goal to pursue through it. Instead, season 2 of the Gossip Girl reboot had Kate’s personal grieving with specific people, like Camille de Haan, trying to influence what Gossip Girl should post. This shows an absence of strategy behind Kate’s Gossip Girl, making the purpose of Gossip Girl as a character less relevant in Constance Billard’s ecosystem and to audiences alike.
Gossip Girl's Account Should Not Be Handled By Kate In S2
Besides Blair and Serena’s rivalry, Gossip Girl was great because of how its characters’ lives were monumentally influenced by Gossip Girl’s blog. Season 1 of the reboot already proved that it was difficult for the teachers not to pursue personal goals besides holding their students and their families accountable. Therefore, it shouldn’t be any of them managing the Gossip Girl account, but rather someone with less interest in singling out specific people and more in going after everybody, like the original Gossip Girl did.
The original Gossip Girl already proved that the show delivered its best unsettling reveals when Gossip Girl’s identity was threatened or her laptop was lost and passed to different hands. Unless Kate’s attitude to how she handles Gossip Girl changes, only new management of the Gossip Girl account could actually put it back to the top. Hopefully, Georgina Sparks’s cameo in the Gossip Girl season 2 trailer means that change will happen soon.