Gossip Girl: How Old Blake Lively’s Serena Is At The Beginning & End

The main characters in Gossip Girl were a lot younger than they looked, but exactly how old was Blake Lively’s character, Serena van der Woodsen, through the series? Gossip Girl is a teen drama series based on the novel series of the same name by Cecily von Ziegesar, and developed by Josh Schwartz (The O.C) and Stephanie Savage. The series premiered on The CW in 2007 and came to an end in 2012 after six seasons and a lot of drama between the main group.

Gossip Girl follows the lives of privileged upper-class teenagers living in Manhattan’s Upper East Side and narrated by the unknown but omniscient blogger known as “Gossip Girl” (voiced by Kristen Bell). Though the series focuses on the group of Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford), Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick), and Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), the lead is none other than Serena, whose return to the Upper East Side kickstarts the events of the series.

Gossip Girl begins with Serena’s return from a boarding school after disappearing all of a sudden a year earlier, and she soon finds that readapting is not easy, more so as she’s hiding a couple of secrets. At the beginning of the series, the group is in high school, and Serena’s date of birth is listed as July 14, 1991, meaning she was 16 when the events of Gossip Girl begin. In season 1, the group celebrates Blair’s 17th birthday, which makes the ages of the rest way easier to follow. Blair’s birthday parties are actually the best way to keep track of everyone else’s ages, as in season 2 she throws another big party to celebrate her 18th birthday, with Cyndi Lauper showing up.

Each season of Gossip Girl covers a year, once again confirmed by Blair’s parties, so by the end of the series, Serena was 21-22. However, the series finale had a time-jump of five years, in which the group reunited for Serena’s wedding with Dan. Taking that into account, Serena was 26-27 by the (actual) end of Gossip Girl. As it happens with most movies and TV shows with teenage characters, the actors weren’t exactly teenagers as well, and that was the case with Blake Lively, though the difference wasn’t too big. Lively was 20 years old when the series was shot and released, meaning she was 25 when the series ended – around the same age as Serena when she married Dan.

The lives of the main characters in Gossip Girl don’t really match the perception of 16-year olds, as they pretty much lived in a world of their own, but at least there wasn’t a big age difference between Serena van der Woodsen and Blake Lively, which certainly helped her performance as she brought a good balance of maturity and freshness.

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Adrienne Tyler
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Adrienne Tyler is a features writer for Screen Rant. She is an Audiovisual Communication graduate who wanted to be a filmmaker, but life had other plans (and it turned out great). Prior to Screen Rant, she wrote for Pop Wrapped, 4 Your Excitement (4YE), and D20Crit, where she was also a regular guest at Netfreaks podcast. She was also a contributor for FanSided’s BamSmackPow and 1428 Elm. Adrienne is very into films and she enjoys a bit of everything: from superhero films to heartbreaking dramas, to low-budget horror films. Every time she manages to commit to a TV show without getting bored, an angel gets its wings.

When she’s not writing, you can find her trying to learn a new language, watching hockey (go Avs!), or wondering what life would have been like had Pushing Daisies, Firefly, and Limitless not been cancelled. Breakfast food is life and coffee is what makes the world go round.

Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once. It was great.

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