Warning: This post contains spoilers for Gossip Girl Episode 1
The Gossip Girl reboot is straying away from the path that the original series built its entire framework around, including revealing who Gossip Girl is in the show’s first episode. Creator Joshua Safran explained the reason for Gossip Girl’s almost immediate identification: it’s the teachers of the show’s iconic prep schools, attempting to reclaim power from the students and parents. Safran was an executive producer on the original series, which ran from 2007 to 2012, and was inspired to create a sequel show after coming up with the idea to designate the teachers as the all-knowing force.
The HBO Max series takes place almost a decade after the original Gossip Girl left off, with a new cast, a new social media landscape to navigate, and an updated recognition of privilege in elitist Manhattan. Just as the release of the iPhone and popularity of blogs made the original series perfect for its time, the new series is meant to appeal to a Gen-Z audience, and this change of perspective is recognizable in the decision making.
Some of these decisions were explained by Safran in an interview with Variety, where he explained that he still considered the Gossip Girl reveal to be a twist, despite the fact that it took place fairly early in the series’ first episode. He also explained that revealing Gossip Girl's identity early gave them way more freedom. Safran later discussed his inspiration for the focus on teachers, having once attended private school on the Upper East Side and now having friends working in the same profession. Read what Safran had to say about creating the twist below:
I can’t remember whether I first knew that there would be teachers and a teacher would be Gossip Girl, or whether I knew first that I would know who Gossip Girl was and it would be a teacher. The two were so neck-and-neck for me. I was also very interested in looking at roads we hadn’t explored the first time around, and teachers — that was a whole area. Especially private school teachers who are younger than public school teachers, who make less money than public school teachers, who come out of college and are not so removed from the age of the students that they’re teaching. All of that combined just felt like really fertile territory.
Along with explaining the series’ intent to show how being Gossip Girl changes someone, Safran also revealed some of the decisions he missed out on after leaving the original series for NBC’s Smash. The writer originally believed the finale of Gossip Girl would make Nate the pot-stirring blogger. So, imagine his own surprise, watching alongside the rest of the world, when Dan was revealed to be behind the computer screen all along. Though Safran eventually agreed with the choice of Dan, he admitted to regretting not establishing the identity early on in the series as it doesn’t quite make complete sense when rewatched. Thus, the decision to reveal Gossip Girl early in the reboot was largely inspired by some of the pitfalls of the original show.
Still, it seems like Gossip Girl may have to try a bit harder to fill the enormous shoes left by the original show. There’s a delicate line to balance in trying to maintain the feeling of an older teen-drama while separating from tired storylines and characters seen before. Even with the first episode’s deviation, the reboot has a long way to go to establish itself as a binge-worthy series.
Source: Variety
