Gossip Girl: 9 Unpopular Opinions About Serena (According To Reddit)

Incredibly charming and beautiful, Serena Van der Woodsen was one of the main highlights of Gossip Girl, if not the biggest one. The privileged teen was played perfectly by Blake Lively, who brought forth her perfect life and her allure, along with the shortcomings of her character. A recovering party girl, Serena was someone who was intent on redeeming herself but found herself being a product of the Upper East Side more often than not.

The Gossip Girl fanbase has always been divided between the willowy blonde It Girl and the old-world grace of Blair Waldorf about who is the main character, so some contentious opinions are bound to turn up on the internet, naturally.

9 Serena Was A Terrible Person

The It Girl of Manhattan gets a lot of hate till date for her entire character and personality, which people find annoying and horrible. Redditors like monsterrad89, FLAWLESS123456789, and Cykossis all are of the opinion that she would do really terrible things like sabotage Blair’s wedding, become Gossip Girl, and get wasted and never take accountability for her actions. They felt that “Her character would pretend to be grounded and above Blair’s childish games but if she was even slightly provoked she would resort to them or worse herself.”

Like all other characters, Serena was flawed. She tried her best to be a good person, but she needed to get the big guns out because of the catty world that she belonged to. As a teen and then college-goer, she was too young to know better, and her general nature was quite lovely. Serena did as many sweet things for Blair and her family as she did annoying ones, and she can’t be vilified for being human.

8 Lily And Rufus Were Better Than Serena And Dan

The parents played important roles in the show, but it is surprising to see that the parental couples are compared to the teen ones. In this case, a deleted Redditor thought that Lily and Rufus were a better romance than Dan and Serena, and would have liked to see them last as opposed to the Derena endgame. They said “They shouldn’t have divorced just to force back Derena.”

Both couples had several flaws, but Lily and Rufus had too many that spanned over decades. Lily had lied to Rufus about their child, William managed to come in between them very easily, they both were cheating before Bart and Lily got married, and Rufus then slept with Ivy. They were pretty broken and had little room for repair, so it only made sense that Dan and Serena ended up together as opposed to a middle-aged couple in a teen show.

7 Her Wedding Dress Was Bad

In a seriously controversial take, one viewer on Reddit thinks that not only Serena’s, but also Blair’s, wedding dresses weren’t great. Serena’s golden extravaganza didn’t suit the tastes of Dazzling_Ambition878 who said “I don’t like both Blair’s and Serena’s wedding dresses, found them ugly.”

While taste is very subjective, Gossip Girl was known for its fantastic fashion on both the protagonists. The gilded George Chakras gown was unanimously loved and hailed as one of Serena’s best dresses, so it was definitely far from being ugly. It suited her personality perfectly, because Serena loved being in the spotlight.

6 Juliet Should Have Taken Her Down

Like every season of Gossip Girl, season 4 had a big bad villain whom the Upper East Side gang teamed up against, and that was Juliet Sharp. She was intent on avenging her brother, and some viewers supported Juliet’s drive for vengeance against Serena. Kaguraa felt that she was a great villain and “i cant lie, it was fascinating to watch how far she would go for her brother.”

While Juliet’s motivation made sense, she lost her way in the glamor and corruption of the Upper East Side. She was confused and distracted, and would take it all out on Serena in the worst way. Moreover, she didn’t even bother finding out the whole story about Lily’s coverup, which meant that she was targeting someone innocent by making them overdose on drugs, which can never be okay.

5 Dan And Serena Were Great Together

Some of the biggest criticism that Gossip Girl gets is that Serena ended up with Dan, but the netizens of Reddit seem to like the pairing, despite its flaws. Thewaywetalk202 went so far as to say that the two were their favorite characters and “I also love that they ended up together, though I didn’t agree with making Dan GG.”

Canonically, Dan was Gossip Girl and no amount of wishful thinking can change that, and that very fact is what makes Dan and Serena a truly messed up couple. Dan essentially stalked, tormented, and harassed her for years, and inserted himself into her life under false pretenses, and Serena chose to get married to him. He was the last person she should have chosen.

4 Her Reaction To Georgina’s Entry Was Too Much

The reappearance of nasty Georgina in Serena’s life led to a whole host of lies and cover-ups on her end, especially with Dan. Some fans thought her actions after seeing Georgina as “Sarah” with Dan were too dramatic, and she could have just told Dan the truth about her instead of playing along and telling more lies. According to ComfortableSevere794 “She created her own issues by lying, playing along with Georgina’s “Sarah” character, and telling Dan she cheated on him.”

At the time, Georgina was Serena’s biggest threat because she was scared and carrying around the guilt of “killing” a man. She was ashamed of her past and trying to be better, but her former classmate was about to blow the lid off of a big secret. It was but natural that she tried to cover it all up.

3 Her Treatment Of Lola Was Hypocritical

Serena had quite a widespread family tree, with half-siblings Scott and Lola turning up over the course of the show. She had been very welcoming of both her brother and sister, until she turned on Lola, which Redditors like Ok-Principle7256 thought was a double standard. They thought that she saw Lola as a threat to her popularity which was why she treated her badly — “One of the worst sides of her I’ve seen throughout the series, was how she treated Lola.”

Scott was Rufus and Lily’s child before she had met Serena’s father, while Lola was a product of William cheating on Lily with another woman. It would be expecting too much from Serena to be okay with a half-sibling who existed because of her father’s infidelities, and her reaction to Lola was as human as it gets.

2 Her Whole Arc Was Based On Men

Certain viewers of Gossip Girl are of the impression that Serena was pretty one-dimensional, and the only thing that defined her were her relationships with men. Besides that, she was really boring and had no other plotlines going on. In WWBlairWaldorfDo’s words “Her inability to be single for all of five seconds is so insanely boring.”

Just because a character has many love interests, does not mean that they have nothing else going on during the show. Instead of slut-shaming Serena for dating people, fans should focus on her storylines where she wanted to leave behind her drug-fueled past, struggled with college, looked for her father, took care of her best friend, and even carried out epic takedowns.

1 Serena And Carter Were Cute

In Serena’s hunt for her father, an unlikely man became her helper and then turned into a romantic interest. The relationship was unexpected, and some fans loved this unusual pairing, surprisingly. Carter did help Serena a lot and Naive_Shallot said “Serena and Carter actually are cute together minus his slimy ways.”

The problem here is his “slimy ways”. Carter was never someone who could be trusted, and even though he had genuinely liked Serena, he had left Bree’s sister at the altar and done a lot of fraud and crime which could never leave him. He would drag Serena down with him, which was evident when he didn’t show gratitude when she got him out of Bree’s punishment for him.

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