A little over a month since its second season began, HBO Max's Gossip Girl revival has been canceled. The series' finale will arrive on the platform on January 26.
“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 made to Variety. “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.”
The reboot, which premiered in 2021, was created as a standalone sequel to the hit television show of the same name that aired on The CW. Based on the novel by Cecily von Ziegesar, the new series brought the story to the digital age with a more diverse cast and more explicit themes being explored due to airing on HBO Max. The ensemble cast featured Jordan Alexander, Whitney Peak, Tavi Gevinson, Thomas Doherty, Eli Brown and many more.
Despite the series drawing in a record number of viewers the weekend it premiered, the first season received poor reviews from critics. The second season was reviewed significantly better.
Fans and critics alike weighed in on the news:
\u201cGossip Girl GET UP OMG\u2026\ud83d\ude2d like i can\u2019t rn HBO Max when I catch you trust you will be dealt with #GossipGirl \u201d— onna\ud83e\udef6\ud83c\udffd gg spoilers (@onna\ud83e\udef6\ud83c\udffd gg spoilers) 1674147913
\u201cwith the gossip girl reboot ending here's a moment of silence for the character's instagram accounts which i thought was a BRILLIANT marketing technique\u201d— ModernGurlz (@ModernGurlz) 1674154567
\u201cgossip girl reboot's first problem was making the teachers gossip girl. then the second problem was wasting the GOOD actors/characters on the show. third problem was not letting the big, messy events marinate. a big messy event should last 3 episodes, not 3 seconds.\u201d— cuff it. (@cuff it.) 1674154455
Gossip Girl is the latest in a wave of cancellations by the streaming giant. Westworld, FBoy Island, Los Espookys and Close Enough also got the axe. Several other projects were shelved following Warner Bros. merging with Discovery. The company intends to combine Discovery+ and HBO Max into its own streaming service.
Photo courtesy of HBO