Despite taking off on a strong note, HBO Max has decided against moving forward with another season of the new Gossip Girl show. The news comes a week away from the Season 2 finale, which will air on the streamer on January 26. Series showrunner, Josh Safran confirmed the cancelation on social media while assuring fans that there might yet be hope as he intends to shop the show to other platforms.
The Gossip Girl revival show premiered in 2021 and rode on the back of the original show's success to pull in record viewership numbers on HBO Max. The streamer had hoped to duplicate the success achieved with the revival of fellow legacy shows like Sex and the City, and Pretty Little Liars, but unfortunately, Gossip Girl struggled to replicate the magic that made the original show a major hit. Critical reviews for the show's first season were mixed and though it improved with the second season, HBO Max was clearly not impressed by the numbers it was receiving on its backend.
Tooled as a sequel to the original, the new Gossip Girl iteration was set within the same New York private high school, introducing viewers to a new generation of teens and beginning its plot eight years after the events that closed out the original show which ran for 6 seasons. The revival followed the same sequence as the original with the return of the narrating omniscient blogger whose identity is now revealed to the audience but still hidden to the Upper Eastsiders entangled in her unending web of scandals. The new show introduced a diverse set of cast to Gossip Girl's social surveillance and was lauded for including queer stories.
“We are very grateful to showrunner/executive producer Joshua Safran, and executive producers Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz for bringing us back to the Upper East Side and all the scandals at Constance Billard,” HBO Max said in a statement. “Although we are not moving forward with a third season of ‘Gossip Girl,’ we thank them for the enticing love triangles, calculated backstabbing and impeccable fashion this series brought to a new audience.”
In his own statement addressing the show's cancelation, Safran expressed sadness at the streamer's decision while remaining grateful to the studio for their "faith and support." He equally thanked the cast and crew adding that the show was "honestly the greatest set I ever worked on, top to bottom." He concluded by offering some glimmer of hope to fans revealing that "we are currently looking for another home, but in this climate, that might prove an uphill bottle, and so if this is the end, at least we went out on the highest of highs." HBO's decision it seems is one that was reached before, or midway through the second season given that Safran concluded his address by hinting that the episode finale will offer some conclusion to the story so far.
Gossip Girl revival featured an ensemble cast including Jordan Alexander, Eli Brown, Thomas Doherty, Tavi Gevinson, Emily Alyn Lind, Evan Mock, Zion Moreno, Whitney Peak, Savannah Lee Smith, Johnathan Fernandez, Adam Chanler-Berat, Todd Almond, Laura Benanti, Grace Duah and Megan Ferguson. Kristen Bell the narrator from the original series returned to reprise her role.
The show was produced by Fake Empire and Alloy Entertainment in collaboration with Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios. Safran wrote and served as executive producer alongside Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (from the original show), Leslie Morgenstein, Gina Girolamo with Lis Rowinski as co-executive producer.
Gossip Girl Season 2 finale will air on HBO Max on January 26. Check out the trailer for Season 2 below: