- Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for season one of
HBO Max 's "Gossip Girl." - The first episode of the continuation series premiered on Thursday.
- The premiere revealed the identity of the new character who takes on the title of
Gossip Girl .
The original "Gossip Girl" series waited until the series finale to reveal the mysterious titular blogger. But the continuation series pulled back the curtain on who the new instigator is during the series premiere.
The new series, which debuted on HBO Max on Thursday with episodes releasing weekly, introduced viewers to the new generation of teens ruling the Upper East Side. The first episode of 12 established the two characters whose dynamic will be at the center of the series: half-sisters Julien Calloway (Jordan Alexander) and Zoya Lott (Whitney Peak).
From the onset, it's clear that Julien, an influencer and daughter of a music executive, is the Queen Bee at Constance Billard.
But it's not just Julien who exerts dominance and a disregard for authority. All the students act superior to the faculty, so much so that it drives English teacher Kate Keller (real-life former blogger Tavi Gevinson) to revive Gossip Girl nine years after the snitching blog went dark.
During the premiere, the teachers complained about how the students continue to bully them without any repercussions. One of the teachers, who graduated in the class of '09, reminded her colleagues that back in her day the teens respected authority because they "lived under constant threat" of having their secrets exposed by Gossip Girl.
Kate said that it's not the students' fault that they're snobby when they "inherited power and influence the minute they were born, without any examples of how not to abuse it."
"We are their last hope," she added. "We're supposed to send them out of here Barack Obamas instead of Brett Kavanaughs."
After a teacher got fired for not changing grades, the faculty realized that reviving the GG blog would help them reclaim power and put the students in their place.
So, they created a GG 2.0 Twitter account but realized that it wasn't gaining any traction because the students are more active on Instagram. Kate, being a writer, volunteered to be in charge of penning the posts in GG's specific voice. She also came up with the idea to target Julien and Zoya's rivalry to get students to care.
"You ready to take the power back, do some good, and save the future?" she said.
Kate taking on the mantle of Gossip Girl sets up an interesting dynamic on the series.
Outsider Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) never really made sense as the original troublemaker. Joshua Safran, the showrunner of the new HBO Max series, said that at one point on the original show, Serena van der Woodsen's (Blake Lively) younger Brother Eric (Connor Paolo) was intended to be Gossip Girl.
But prior to Safran's departure as a writer and executive producer on the original series, the plan was adjusted to instead reveal Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) as Gossip Girl - which ultimately didn't come to fruition on the sixth and final season. Since then, Crawford and Badgley have agreed that Dan being Gossip Girl didn't add up.
Establishing the new blogger at the start of the new series prevents any future glaring plot holes or storylines that aren't plausible. And having a teacher, rather than a student, as Gossip Girl is another way that the new series is distinguishing itself from its predecessor.