The Gossip Girl reboot creator Joshua Safran shares that the original show never intended to reveal the identity of the eponymous blogger. Gossip Girl, based on a series of YA novels by Cecily von Ziegesar, premiered on The CW in 2007 and ran for six seasons. It was a big hit, benefiting from the growing popularity of social media platforms like Twitter, and catapulted its young cast to stardom. The Gossip Girl reboot was announced in July 2019 and will premiere on HBO Max.

The original Gossip Girl follows the lives of a group of privileged Upper East Side high school students, led by Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), whose every scandalous move is made public by an anonymous blogger. Though the blog acts as a framework throughout the show, the blogger's true identity is not disclosed until Gossip Girl’s final episode. Theories ran rampant over the years until it was finally revealed that despite being voiced by Kristen Bell, Gossip Girl was, in fact, “Brooklyn Boy,” aka Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley). Fans have long complained that Dan being Gossip Girl doesn’t add up, partly because it would mean that he is responsible for leaking incriminating information about himself and his loved ones throughout the series.

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Now, those plot holes are starting to make a bit more sense. In a recent interview with Variety, Safran shared that the writers of Gossip Girl didn’t start the show with a plan for the blogger’s identity because they never intended to reveal it. Read his full quote below:

“Of course it doesn’t fully sustain itself because we didn’t expect to even reveal who Gossip Girl was. It wasn’t even in our plans for many years. So, of course it doesn’t line up because it wasn’t like we started on day one and said, ‘Dan is Gossip Girl.’”

Safran, who was a writer and executive producer on the original Gossip Girl before being tapped to take charge of the reboot, also recently shared that another character, Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), was supposed to be Gossip Girl for a while. The show spent quite some time lining up that reveal before ultimately discarding it. The decision for Dan to be Gossip Girl came too late in the series for earlier plot holes to be avoided.

It’s likely that Safran, Schwartz, and Savage have learned from experience and have already settled on the identity of the reboot’s truthteller. Indeed, other shows with related premises have done so. The creators of Netflix's Bridgerton, for example, knew who Lady Whistledown was all along, and savvy viewers can see the clues hidden throughout the series. If the team behind the Gossip Girl reboot wants to be extra-sneaky, perhaps they’ve chosen a few characters who could be the new Gossip Girl and will make their final decision sometime down the line. Though the original Gossip Girl cast won't appear in the reboot, with the same creative team behind the scenes, fans likely have a lot more drama and scandal - and hopefully fewer plot holes - to look forward to.

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Source: Variety