Who Is Gossip Girl? Revisiting the Controversial Final Reveal — and Who the Creators Originally Wanted It to Be

Hey, Upper Eastsiders. Gossip Girl has been spotted back on Netflix.

All six seasons of the hit teen drama, created by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz and based on a young adult novel series written by Cecily von Ziegesar, became available to stream on the platform in October 2024.

Gossip Girl, which ran from 2007 to 2012, follows "it girl" Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and her wealthy New York City clique — Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester); Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick); and Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) — as an anonymous blogger using the pseudonym "Gossip Girl" publicizes their every salacious move.

The true identity of Gossip Girl, narrated by Kristen Bell, isn't revealed until the final season when viewers learn that Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) has been secretly stirring the pot for 121 episodes.

But according to executive producer Joshua Safran, it wasn't supposed to be Dan. Two other characters were in the running to be Gossip Girl — until the New York Post reported that one of the characters might be the mysterious blogger and the creative team had to change their plan.

Here's everything to know about the big Gossip Girl season 6 reveal and who was almost the titular character.

Who was Gossip Girl in the end? 

Fans learned who had been keeping tabs on New York City's elite during the series finale of Gossip Girl. In one final blog, Dan revealed that he was Gossip Girl.

"The Upper East side was like something from Fitzgerald or Thackeray. Membership in this community was so elite you couldn't buy your way in. It was a birthright. A birthright I didn't have and my greatest achievements would never earn me," he wrote.

"All I had to compare to this world was what I'd read in books. But that gave me the idea. If I wasn't born into this world, maybe I could write myself into it," Dan explained.

He went on to describe how he launched a website where people could send in tips — gossip about the wealthy who treated the city like their very own playground.

"Within weeks, I was getting dozens of emails with stories about Upper Eastsiders. So I posted them anonymously. Before long, it was a monster," Dan wrote. "When Serena came back from boarding school, I wrote my first post about me. Lonely Boy. The outsider. The underdog. I might have been a joke, but at least people were talking about me."

Who did Gossip Girl creators originally want to be the titular character? 

According to Safran's remarks at Vulture Festival in 2019, "Dan was not my intended Gossip Girl."

“We worked hard to kind of lay in tiny seeds about it being Eric [van der Woodsen], and then the New York Post wrote an article saying that Gossip Girl was Eric so we were like, ‘We gotta scratch that,' ” Safran explained.

The producers then pivoted to Nate, considering Crawford's character never sent a tip to Gossip Girl. After 85 episodes, Safran left the show, and ultimately the decision was made to make Dan the anonymous blogger.

“I like to joke that Dan was Gossip Girl because I had left the show by then,” Safran added. “But, I understand why Dan was Gossip Girl. I just had my heart set on Nate.”

While speaking to Vulture two years prior, Safran pointed out that Badgely's character was a "writer [and] observer" capable of mimicking different voices, making Dan the appropriate choice.

What clues pointed to Dan Humphrey being Gossip Girl? 

Although Dan wasn't selected as Gossip Girl until well into the series, there were a few tell-tale signs that the anonymous blogger was, in fact, the outcast, Brooklyn-based character. Surprisingly, most of the Easter eggs popped up in the pilot episode, aiding the producers in the long run.

Dan was the only main character at Grand Central Station when Serena arrived back in N.Y.C., and later in the episode, Badgley's character made a big point of claiming that he'd never heard of the blog, let alone read it.

Maybe the most obvious clue is when Dan is speaking with Rufus Humphrey (Matthew Settle) and suggests his dad "save some trees [and] start a blog," rather than promote his band's next gig using posters.

What has Penn Badgley said about being Gossip Girl?

Many fans were disappointed to learn that the person behind Gossip Girl was Dan. Would viewers have been happier not knowing Gossip Girl's true identity? That was the original plan, as Safran told Vanity Fair in 2021.

"We didn’t expect to even reveal who Gossip Girl was. It wasn’t even in our plans for many years," he explained. "So of course it doesn’t line up because it wasn’t like we started on day one and said, ‘Dan is Gossip Girl.’ "

Similar to fans, Badgley was surprised by the big reveal. In 2013, he told HuffPost that Savage kept him in the dark until right before filming the series finale. Later, he told PEOPLE, "It made enough sense. He was a writer."