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We Already Know Who The New Gossip Girl Is & The Internet Is Not Happy

Natalie Morin
Last Updated July 12, 2021, 12:50 PM
Photo: Courtesy of HBO.
Spoilers are ahead. It took six seasons and 121 episodes for the CW's original Gossip Girl series to reveal its biggest secret: the identity of the elusive Gossip Girl herself. In the HBO Max reboot, whose pilot premiered on July 8, it takes approximately eight minutes.
At Constance Billard, the most popular students and their parents' bank accounts run the school. There seems to be absolutely no respect for authority — least of all the teachers, who we learn can get fired for refusing to change a student's low grade. "We own this school," It-girl Julien (Jordan Alexander) tells her new classmate and half-sister, Zoya (Whitney Peak). "They work for us."
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The teachers, led by Kate Keller (Tavi Gevinson), fed up with having to endure the constant harassment, fear, and disrespect from their students, decide to "take back the power" and resurrect the now-defunct blogger Gossip Girl on Instagram.
Yes, it isn't a lonely outsider playing Big Brother to his teenaged classmates — it's fully-grown adult teachers.
If that doesn't sit well with you, you're not alone. Following the Gossip Girl premiere, many flooded the internet with criticism of this decision, expressing how weird and creepy it was that teachers felt "bullied" enough to meddle in the love lives of their students. During the episode, one teacher stands outside of Obie Bergmann IV's (Eli Brown) apartment in the rain in order to snap a picture of him and Zoya — *grabs bullhorn* who is FOURTEEN-years-old! — in their underwear. There's a moment of hesitation, in which it seems like the characters might realize that what they're doing is extremely inappropriate (and kind of borderline illegal?), but then Keller ends the debate with a simplistic "we're either in this or we're not."
Maybe at some point the account will get hacked, and a mystery student will take control of Gossip Girl, but for now, this decision has not made for a promising start.
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