Unbeknownst to Lily, Rufus offers Ivy a do-over on their contretemps, but then Lily goes behind Ivy's back to screw her out of everything. Rufus actually notices, for once, goes into a Humphrey huff that's actually well-earned, and by episode's end Ivy is broke and homeless, Lily is back home in PRADA... And Rufus is still in Brooklyn.
Blair's resistant to sign her divorce papers -- her princesshood being one more thing to mourn, as she notes later -- but when Dan goes to Nate for advice, he learns that Chuck actually paid off Blair's dowry, and Georgina had nothing to do with it. Assuming her reticence is related, Dan accidentally tells Blair what Chuck has done, which puts a much different spin on her harsh words to him when he visits her about his mother storyline. In the end, there are apologies all around, but the real upshot is that Dan and Blair can finally go public.
Serena, having decided to anoint Lola the new It Girl with her Gossip Girl powers, suffers a surprising recoil when Lola uses their relationship to leverage herself Natewise against the returning Diana Payne. Confronted with the non-hypothetical possibility of losing the spotlight forever, Serena opts to tempt GG 1.0 by holding onto that laptop just a little while longer, the better to wage new war against her cousin and frenemy.
So all in all, a few big reveals and some juicy twists. While the payoffs are a little contrived -- Nate's secret plan with Lola to discredit Diana ends in a kiddie porn stalemate and handshakes all around; Dan's panacea for Blair's princess panic is a ludicrously low-budget restaging of the Met Steps Monarchy -- the pieces continue moving into more and more delightful positions for the season's final movement. Blair's royalty retcon has never felt so organic, Lily's inconsistent behavior makes a lot more sense now that CeCe is dead, and of course there's nothing I like better than watching Serena go from passive-aggressive to aggressive-aggressive, even though it's always sound and fury by the end.
Meanwhile, all three of the players in the D/B/C triangle have never looked so lovely -- or so comfortable; Meester continues to be a joy to watch -- and there's a newfound feeling of consequences that lend the nonstop suds a bit more of that gravity it's been missing. Even without Ivy's ten steaming miles of mess this week, Lola more than makes up for it as her character -- and its Venn Diagram relationship to Jenny, Vanessa and Serena herself -- becomes more and more clearly delineated. All in all, a sharp hour for a show that's spent this winter half moving back into some smart, even sometimes moving, territory.