After eight long, glamorous seasons, it's finally time to say goodbye to the girls and boys of The U.E.S. and their magnificent hairdos. Or "hairdidn'ts," in the case of Vanessa Abrams (Lindsey Broad). It's been a strange road, kids: one full of twists, turns, friendly-fire rape, sexy dads, mustachioed moms, rock music lifestyles, stolen cashmere short-pants, Black & White Balls, unending discussion of Audrey Hepburn, and the occasional parrot and/or barracuda, but one thing's for sure: We Like It Like That. Now, join your intrepid guide to the Upper East Side as we revisit classic scenes that never actually happened.
Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester) finally achieves her ideal weight, after stepbrother Aaron Rose (Taylor Handley, God willing) is unable to locate her in a haystack (played by multiple Mischa Bartons). However, this triumph is somewhat ameliorated by the news from medical authorities that Audrey Hepburn's bizarre sticklike figure, much like the haystack's, was due to undiagnosed Androgen Insensitivity, rather than barfing up everything she ever ate, like Blair thought. Having been rejected from each and every college she's attempted to attend despite sleeping with recruiters, lunch ladies, and youth ministers in a web of sexual escapades so bewildering that she is required to learn Excel, Blair immediately resolves to head to Svalbard, Norway, in search of feminized testicles of her own.
Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) does something super fucking fascinating like lose her car keys at Starbucks, only to immediately remember where she left them. Then when she gets there, they give her a pony and make her Princess Of The Entire Universe. Then every college you've ever heard of starts holding gladiator battles in order to determine where she will matriculate. Eventually the escalating bloodshed is so intense that there end up being only four tenured professors left in the world. One of them runs to Monday Peer Group for protection, another joins the Court of Wintour, a third joins Blair on her trans-Scandinavian pilgrimage, and the final one is declared the victor.
Upon Serena's first week at Stanford, her roommate catches a glimpse of Serena's naked body in the mirror of their suite bathroom, and commits suicide out of envy. Serena receives a doctorate on this day, made of pure beaten platinum, with a blank where she can fill in whatever specialty she likes, in addition to full tuition reimbursement, a private jet, and a satellite phone so she can inform Blair of all these wonderful events.
Blair vomits discreetly, but her Sherpa can totally tell.
The mystery of Gossip Girl (Kristen Bell) is revealed when one of our own finally reveals her true identity: Veronica Mars, late of Neptune, CA, now a special investigator for the FBI. The events of the infamous GossipGirl blog are revealed as only coincidentally seeming to be following the events of the Upper East Side's hottest teens; in fact, they are coded messages back to Veronica's handlers with the Initiative. Under duress, Gossip Girl discloses that she was sent to New York when it was discovered where Serena's random suicidal younger brother (Eric van der Woodsen, played by Connor Paolo) actually came from.
Through pictograms and obscure word games, Veronica explains that the ancient Varvatos Order, a secret cabal of fashion monks, incarnated Eric from a mass of mystical energy called the Key, in the hopes that the combined forces of Serena, Blair, and Veronica, along with Mrs. Van der Woodsen's mustache, would protect him from the forces of evil (Eleanor Waldorf, played by Florencia Lozano). In a thrilling denouement far above the streets of Manhattan, Eleanor reveals herself to be posing as mild-mannered medical student Kati Farkas (Nan Zhang), now in her third year at Seattle Grace. Nobody seems to be able to keep it straight, but that could just be starvation talking.
Speaking of keeping it straight, who could have predicted Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick)'s sexual reassignment surgery in Season 7? Or that his transformation into Charlene (Rebecca Romijn) would so entrance Vanessa Abrams that she would desert long-term lukewarm lover Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley) for a walk on the Sapphic side? Not me, but then, I never really cared for Vanessa.
Left entirely without a left cranial hemisphere after Kati -- Rosencrantz to her Guildenstern -- went off to med school, Isabel Coates (Nicole Fiscella) languishes at Mount Sinai, attempting to remember how to do simple arithmetic. A contingent from the Monday Peer Group -- which, you'll recall, grew from a simple philanthropic résumé booster to a truly terrifying paramilitary organization under the vicious steel fist of Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen) back in Season 5 -- is dispatched to take her off the board, lest it be discovered that a birthmark (long since removed) on her lower back in the shape of the Louis Vuitton logo proves her to be the missing Heir of Wintour, whose control of weather patterns and ability to speak the language of snakeskin jackets, handbags, and ankle boots could be key to Manhattan's total domination.
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N. (Chace Crawford) was seen giving up drugs forever and ever after one scary night during spring break when L. (Kelly Rutherford) and R. (Matthew Settle) came knocking at N.'s parents' door at 3 AM to invite him into their bed. He dismissed them quickly, but I'm told the ensuing doubt and second-guessing were so, quote, trippy that he couldn't even deal. Could that be why he sold off his shares of Monday Peer Group Incorporated and headed to Norway? Or is he hoping to track down B. and help her track down those ancient testicular secrets of weight maintenance? Along the way, let's hope he finds some balls of his own. It could turn out he's really interesting and has valid opinions about things.
Would I lie to you?
In Season Four, as we know, a moratorium was declared on the original production mandate that Blair and Nate attempt to have sex -- only to be interrupted by her parents, Serena, or both -- at least twice in each episode. This did not, however, result in him actually closing the deal. Blair finally loses her virginity to a nameless townie early in the season, although we find out later that he's actually the younger brother of Lord Marcus Beaton-Rhodes (Ian Somerhalder), who hit town in a major way back in Season Three. Their reunion is bittersweet and takes place in the VIP room of somewhere so exclusive we don't even get to find out what it's called, because we would go deaf.
Other returning guests include Flow (Crazytown's Bret "Epic" Mazur), performing his hit "Butterfly Carb-Free Baby"; the Raves (the Vines, with Howlin' Pelle Almqvist on vox); Andy Dick as Dan's friend Greg; gross-ass Brett Ratner as moviemaker Ken Mogul; Isabelle Huppert as that weird French chick; Bai Ling as wacky bisexual chemistry teacher Miss Wisteria; and Kurt Russell as Captain Chips.
But you want to know how it all ends, right? Okay, it's like this. Simple Minds' 1985 smash "Don't You Forget About Me" -- remixed by Crystal Castles so it's not all cheesy, but retaining the same guitars and vocals in the mix so it's not gayer than Blair's dad -- is playing when the lights come up on the final scene: a graduation party at the Yale Club, thrown by the Socials & Munitions Subcommittee of the Monday Peer Group (a.k.a. the Monique Lillehammers). Blair is wearing a deep blue velvet Ungaro with a wide satin ribbon reminiscent of an obi. Serena is wearing this really weird, flowy thing that's kind of golden, but rusty? Or I guess rosy? It's hard to explain the color but it looks really hot. She looks really curvy in it because it's got all these sheer layers, and also her hair has looked super great since it started growing in again. She's got a silver belt on, but not that fat kind, it's super thin, like maybe a filigreed chain or something, and she's got a little silver bag, because apparently purses are back or she's got her period or something. Jenny Humphrey is wearing some godawful Hermione Granger-looking potato sack and we still haven't located her boobs. And there's Nate, desperately trying to find them with his bloodshot eyeballs, face permanently crumpled from trying to have a whole face in addition to the eyebrows. He's wearing some kind of deconstructed joke about tuxedos and you know he's going commando. Dan Humphrey is wearing an ascot; actually, he and Chuck are wearing matching ascots, but who knows what the hell that's about. Dan's is a creamy peach that really complements his eyes, Chuck's is some British color that really complements his sexual deviancy.
Based on what she's wearing, I'd have to say Vanessa Abrams is protesting either dances, parties, or clothes. I don't even want to go into it. Also, her lipstick makes her look like a big stupid bald drag queen. Lily and Rufus are dancing together, and they look magnificent: she's in this beige Azzedine Alaia that made Posh look like a wigwam, but she's an actual woman, and can pull it off. Rufus is wearing like a black leather tuxedo-cut jacket, but it's soft calfskin, so it's more like Serpico and less like Rock Of Love. He looks totally hot, as usual. They're doing something Miss Wisteria refers to as "the Kid N Play," but who knows what grownups are talking about, ever. Eleanor Waldorf and her stupid husband Cyrus are in stocks over by the punch table -- Serena's gift to Blair, as Princess of the Universe -- and she's wearing a classic ivory Vera Wang. He's wearing this too-tight Paul Smith thing that he probably thought was a tuxedo but actually makes him look like a member of the Fat Dork Army. Hunched over like that, you can tell that they're really in love.
"Give In" by the Bravery starts playing, and a million balloons in Yale Blue and Grey fall from the ceiling. They are full of fifty-dollar bills and blood diamonds. Serena and Blair stare across the room at each other for like a million years, then slowly their shoulders drop as they realize there was…never actually a problem. They were just being stupid drama queens the whole time. As the song speeds up, they make their way across the crowd -- losing sight of each other, pointing and laughing at the less fortunate, catching sight of each other again -- and everybody else seems to melt away. Finally they meet: first their hands, then their cheeks, then their lips. Blair and Serena begin to make out furiously in the middle of over eight million American dollars in couture that will never be worn again, and never even see the poor people busting down the door, led by Vanessa's older sister, opening fire. "Your wasteful lives are at the expense of everyone in the bottom 99 percent income bracket! You feast on our blood! Welcome to The U.E.S., bitch!" they scream. Finally the screams reach their ears, and they try to run -- but begin slipping and sliding in the fat of every liposuction ever performed in the borough! You cannot get traction when you're swimming in ass-fat! This is why freedom fighters don't wear Blahniks! Holding hands, these two luminaries of the social set, these muses to rock stars, fashion designers, and filmmakers, finally go down in a hail of bullets. And the last thing Serena says, her hand casually brushing her BFF's right breast, is: "OMG. Conscious neglect is totally equal to perpetration."
Blair awakes in a sweat, choking on fear and bulimia! It was all a dream! Push that WASP white guilt down, down, down! This is America! "It wasn't even a funny dream, it was just weird," she grumbles, climbing out of her REI Couture sleeping bag and into some fur-lined Choos. She reflects on how much she's grown in the past few months, and how little she cares for fashion, here in the land of the Midnight Sun.
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Who was that spotted trip-trapping over the snow, chewing patiently on the last bit of Nate jerky? Why, our old friend B., asking her Sherpa and professor if they believe art of lasting value and social commentary can really be accomplished with what amounts to a handful of vapid, feral paper dolls. The Sherpa [played by an inebriated Patton Oswalt] simply shrugged, my spies tell me, but the last tenured professor in the world [Enrico Colantoni] apparently went on at length about the subjective quality of entertainment and the etymology of π or some shit. Eventually B. set off into the Antarctic wastes alone, with only his endless droning echoing in her ears. "When I get back," she was heard to murmur, "I'm totally going to get a bestselling ghost-written series out of this." I think she might make it after all.