WARNING: This post contains spoilers from the premiere episode of HBO Max’sGossip Girlreboot.
The newGossip Girlreboot is an update on the iconic 2000s teen drama — it’sless white, less straight and altogether more socially conscious — but there are still more than a few clear references to the CW original.
Based on author Cecily von Ziegesar’s book series of the same name, the originalGossip Girlran for six seasons from 2007 to 2012. The series centered on the drama-filled lives of rich teens living in New York’s Upper East Side and starredBlake Lively,Leighton Meester,Penn Badgley,Chace Crawford,Ed Westwick,Taylor Momsen,Kelly Rutherford,Matthew SettleandJessica Szohr.
The new series, which premiered Thursday on HBO Max, stars Whitney Peak,Emily Alyn Lind,Evan Mock, Jordan Alexander,Thomas Doherty, Eli Brown, Zión Moreno, Savannah Smith and Tavi Gevinson.
The new horde of ultra-rich, teenage Upper East Siders have their own drama to deal with, from secret half-sisters to disgruntled teachers and complicated love triangles. But like the first series, their story would be nothing without the all-seeing power of Gossip Girl.
The first episode will be familiar for superfans — the characters drink dirty martinis and do drugs freely, eat lunch on thesteps of the Metropolitan Museum of Artand spend their parents' money with reckless abandon, all whileKristen Bell narratesas Gossip Girl.
Here are some other ways the premiere episode referenced the original show:
A Familiar Opening
Fans of the original show will recall that the first episode ofGossip Girlbegins with Lively’s Serena van der Woodsen arriving back in Manhattan via train after having been away at boarding school in Connecticut.
Her return to the city, and the subsequent drama it causes with BFF Blair Waldorf (Meester) and her boyfriend Nate Archibald (Crawford), launches Gossip Girl into the monster it will remain for the duration of the series.
The opening scene in the reboot appears to be an ode to the original pilot, with Peak’s Zoya Lott similarly staring out the window at the city as she takes the J train subway through Brooklyn and into Manhattan.
It doesn’t take long for the reboot to name drop the old characters, starting with Nate Archibald, who seems to be an esteemed alumnus of St. Jude School for Boys, the brother school to Constance Billard School for Girls.
Early on in the first episode, English teacher Kate Keller (Gevinson) bemoans how spoiled and rude their students are.
“This school produced great people! Caroline Kennedy, Colson Whitehead, Nate Archibald,” she says in the teacher’s lounge, wondering why her students don’t have the same promise.
“It’s not like Nate Archibald was such a saint when we started,” one of her colleagues, Rebecca, says, revealing that she went to school with the old crew.
“Class of ‘09, back when we still respected authority,” she says. “Now they can’t be controlled because we cease to matter. Who needs an education when you’re famous for putting on your makeup?”
The original “Gossip Girl” cast.Kurt Iswarienko/The CW
“When I was a student, we lived under constant threat. People like Nate were scared straight,” Rebecca adds, before explaining the concept of Gossip Girl and it’s true identity — Badgley’s Dan Humphrey.
“It was this thing that started freshman year, called itself Gossip Girl, kind of like an Orwellian big sister, kept tabs on students it deemed important,” she says. “If she knew your secrets — and she always did — she told them. She kept us all accountable. People thought it was me, but it was actually one of my classmates, Dan Humphrey.”
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Later, as the teachers dig deeper into the Gossip Girl archives and decide to resurrect it as an Instagram account to keep their students in check, they comment on some of the past drama, including Blair’s tumultuous relationship with Chuck Bass (Westwick) and her various feuds with Serena.
StyleSimilarities
Zoya, a transfer student from Buffalo who gets a scholarship to Constance Billard in order to finally meet half-sister Julien Calloway (Alexander), shows up to her first day of school in a uniform nearly identical to the one Jenny dons in the pilot of the original.
Her headband, which turns out to be a scarf formerly belonging to her and Julien’s late mom, is also reminiscent of those Blair wore as her signature piece throughout the CW series.
Giovanni Rufino/The CW/Courtesy Everett Collection; Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
Gevinson’s first outfit — a blazer, navy-and-cream striped sweater and silk neck scarf — similarly appears to be a reference to the pilot, mirroring Serena’s look when she arrives into Grand Central in the first scene.
“It’s like that first Serena moment, and then we get this Tavi moment and you don’t know: ‘Is Tavi coming? Is she a student? Who is this new outsider?'” costume designer Eric Daman, who worked on both shows, recently toldRefinery29of crafting the look.
More ‘Super Rich Kids’
One of the more subtle references lies in the song that plays when viewers meet the new group of popular students: Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids.”
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The appropriately named tune begins as Julien and her friends, Monet (Smith), Luna (Moreno), Max (Doherty), Audrey (Lind), Aki (Mock) and Obie (Brown), meet up in the courtyard on the first day of school.
However, it’s not the first time Ocean’s hit has been featured onGossip Girl— fans may recall that the song played during a season 6 episode of the original, titled “Monstrous Ball.”
New episodes ofGossip Girlpremiere Thursdays on HBO Max.
source: people.com
