Warning: This article contains spoilers for season 2 of HBO Max’s Gossip Girl.
You know you love them! The HBO Max Gossip Girl reboot revealed what the OG series’ power couple Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) and Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) are up to now.
During episode 2 of season 6 — which aired on Thursday, December 29 — Serena’s old frenemy Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg) returned to hold the modern-day Gossip Girl, Kate Keller, (Tavi Gevinson) hostage in Dan and Serena’s apartment. Although the fictional couple are still together — and have a child — after tying the knot in the 2012 series finale’s five-year-flash-forward, they’re also still being tortured by Georgina.
“This is Dan and Serena’s house. They fired their staff when they thought someone was breaking in,” Georgina revealed to Kate in Thursday’s episode, explaining that she’d been sneaking into the duo’s home to wreak havoc for years. “They put up cameras everywhere. I had my son loop the image, so now they’re bringing in a paranormal expert. … At first it was small annoyances — taking a sock or two, turning the heat down — but then I wanted a little more fun, like replacing the oat milk with full dairy. Their kid’s lactose intolerant. They’ve seen every specialist, and no one knows what’s wrong.”
The return of the calculated villain — who was a recurring character on the original CW series — has been on reboot creator Joshua Safran’s mind for quite some time.
“I definitely knew that I wanted Georgina back from pretty much the day after I pitched the show,” he told Deadline earlier this month. “Michelle actually started DMing about it during the season 1 writer’s room. She was like, ‘I want to come back.’ And I was like, ‘I really want you to as well, but I actually don’t think season 1 is the right place,’ because I wanted everybody to be really set up so that she could come in and sort of destroy them.”
The cast of the HBO teen drama was equally excited by the character’s comeback.
“She’s an icon,” Zión Moreno, who plays Luna La, told POPSUGAR of the Harriet the Spy star, 37, earlier this month. “I loved her in the OG series, and it was an honor to get to work with her. She’s a hoot for sure, and there’s never a dull moment around her. It was a little nerve-racking because you want to make her proud, but she was just really, really nice and wonderful.”
Trachtenberg, for her part, announced her return to the role via Instagram in October.
“You can tell Jesus: She’s baaaaaack … #xoxo #gossipgirl 💋,” she captioned a still from the reboot, referencing a line from the original series.
