First things first: The “Gossip Girl” reboot does acknowledge its predecessor in that, within its universe, the titular blog — once run by Penn Badgley’s “lonely boy” Dan Humphrey — has been dormant for years, and fictional figures from the original show like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen, played by Leighton Meester and Blake Lively, remain legends. This story, though, focuses on two girls — Julien Calloway, the show’s de facto “queen bee” played by Jordan Alexander, and her half-sister Zoya Lott (Whitney Peak), who specifically moves to Manhattan with her dad Nick Lott (Johnathan Fernandez) to meet Julien. (The two girls had the same mother, who passed away long before they came to unite as teenagers.)
As Zoya’s star begins to rise, Julien finds herself jealous of her beautiful and charismatic half-sister, especially when Zoya strikes up a connection with Julien’s on-again, off-again boyfriend Otto “Obie” Bergmann IV (Eli Brown). The rest of Julien’s clique, such as it is, includes her best friend Audrey Hope, an obvious Blair stand-in played by Emily Alyn Lind, as well as pansexual playboy Max Wolfe (Thomas Doherty), Audrey’s boyfriend Akeno “Aki” Menzies (Evan Mock), and the formidable duo Luna La (Zión Moreno) and Monet de Haan (Savannah Lee Smith), who are both always on hand to help Julien rule their elite private school with iron fists.
The weirdest thing the “Gossip Girl” reboot does, though, is immediately reveal the person behind the recently rebooted Gossip Girl blog — and in an even more baffling move, that person is a teacher. Yes, Tavi Gevinson’s Kate Keller, who teaches English at the fictional New York school Constance Billard, hides behind the moniker — alongside fellow teachers like Jordan Glassberg (Adam Chanler-Berat) — to bully her own students after she gets tired of them controlling the entire narrative, which is, to put it lightly, absurd and terrible. (A teacher at a school should not be posting creepy paparazzi-style shots of teenagers kissing!!! That is just … wrong!!!)
The “Gossip Girl” reboot tried to stir up controversy and drama just like the original, but ultimately, it failed in its mission, no matter how much betrayal and incest the showrunners threw at the wall. So, why wasn’t it any good? It was too — and this word is going to seem bizarre here, but bear with me — ethical.
