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OMG, LOL, XOXO: The 'Gossip Girl' is a guy: Dan Humphrey
Photo credit: Getty Images | Actor Penn Badgley attends the premiere of "The Dark Knight Rises" at AMC Lincoln Square Theater in Manhattan. (July 16, 2012)
To heck with the obligatory “spoiler alert:” Dan Humphrey — Penn Badgley — was, is, and forever will be the “Gossip Girl.”
The big reveal came in the closing minutes of last night's finale and I have waited until this very moment, in the incredibly remote chance that there is someone out there who still does not know, to break this monumental news. Surprised? Was anyone? Of course not.
First, Dan's a writer — the writer — and the assumption has to be, has to have always been, that someone who writes a clever blog full of fairly concise observational detail, is almost certainly someone who writes or hopes to write.
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Second, a guy. Clever — but in the end, obvious. Much better to have that final ironic twist where the “girl” is actually a “guy,” standing on its head, that old cliche that women are catty; hey, why can't us guys be catty too?
And, finally, three: Dan offered his reasons last night, but in retrospect, think about the character — the outsider from Brooklyn, who sought the inside, yet who always had enough ironic detachment to know just how bad the “inside” was. Over the years, Badgley did a good job walking that line in this show, which both loved and loathed its characters and their milieu in equal measure. That he, Dan Humphrey, should be the final arbiter of this silly, little, upper east side world seems like a nice sort of perverse poetic justice.
Tags: Penn Badgley , Dan Humphrey , gossip girl
