Kristen Bell Teases a Twist in HBO Max's 'Gossip Girl' and We Have a Hunch What It Is

The 'Gossip Girl' narrator teased that the show features a 'really different' twist in the first episode. What could that be?

If you haven't heard already, Kristen Bell went back to the booth to voice our favorite anonymous troublemaker, Gossip Girl, and she's pretty excited about it. 

"It's such a fun show to watch... I'm really excited," Bell told ET back in November 2019, soon after HBO Max announced that she was reprising her voiceover role for the reboot. 

Bell explained that the narrator is really "the catty version" of her voice, to complement the nature of the show, and she couldn't wait to get back into it. And as the producers of the new HBO Max series said when they dropped the news of her return, "Kristen Bell has always been and will always be the voice of Gossip Girl." 

Finally, on Wednesday, the first trailer for the reboot aired and reintroduced fans to Bell's too-cool-for-school Gossip Girl who's more than ready to shepherd viewers through a new round of shenanigans. The new series takes place nine years after the original website went dark (and after Penn Badgley's Dan Humphrey revealed himself to be Gossip Girl) as a new generation of New York private school teens are introduced to the social surveillance of Gossip Girl. The reboot will address just how much social media -- and the landscape of New York itself -- has changed in the intervening years. The crux of the new Gossip Girl won't revolve around the mystery of who the gossip maven actually is, but rather another twist. 

"The new show is really cool because it talks all about how social media has changed us and it's more risque because it's on HBO Max," Bell teased on Wednesday's Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. "And there's a twist at the end of episode one that's really different." 

Although the actress didn't divulge what exactly the twist is, there's one idea that could truly set the new series apart from the beloved classic: what if the first episode ends with the reveal of Gossip Girl's identity? 

Since the sequel series is less focused on the mystery of who the anonymous gossip truly is, it would make sense if they got that secret out of the way from the beginning. That leaves nine one-hour episodes to center whatever other twist remains in the wings. And, as we learned in the original series, Gossip Girl never really works alone so it isn't as if there aren't multiple people that could be unmasked as the season progresses. 

Revealing Gossip Girl's main identity in the final moments of the first episode would be a great way for the new series to make its mark, but we won't know if that's the aforementioned twist until the show debuts on July 8 on HBO Max. Until then, watch the video below for more on the upcoming series.

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