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Serena van der Woodsen
Gossip Girl character
Blake Lively as Serena van der Woodsen
First appearance	Novel: Gossip Girl Television: "Pilot" (episode 1.01)
Last appearance	Novel: I Will Always Love You Television: "New York, I Love You XOXO" (episode 6.10)
Created by	Character Cecily von Ziegesar Developed for Television Josh Schwartz Stephanie Savage
Portrayed by	Blake Lively
In-universe information
Alias	S, Queen S, Sabrina Television: Gossip Girl (step-in)
Occupation	Novels: Socialite Fashion model High school student Dutch shipping heiress Television: Socialite Fashion model (former) Publicist (former) High school student (at Constance Billard; graduated) College student (at Columbia)
Family	William van der Woodsen (father) Lillian "Lily" van der Woodsen (mother) Eric van der Woodsen (brother) Television: Bartholomew "Bart" Bass (stepfather) Rufus Humphrey (former stepfather/father-in-law) Scott Rosson (maternal half-brother) Charles "Chuck" Bass (stepbrother, adoptive brother) Henry Bass (nephew, via Chuck and Blair) Jennifer "Jenny" Humphrey (former stepsister/sister-in-law) Rick and Celia "CeCe" Rhodes (maternal grandparents)
Spouse	Television: Daniel "Dan" Humphrey (husband)
Relatives	Carol Rhodes (maternal aunt) Lola Rhodes (paternal half-sister / cousin)

Serena Celia van der Woodsen is a main character in the young adult novel series Gossip Girl and its television adaptation, in which she is portrayed by Blake Lively. Serena is featured on the blog of the series' mysterious narrator, "Gossip Girl." Serena is Blair Waldorf's best friend, and is a character that appears to easily get whatever she wants because of her good looks, energy, and charisma.

Novel series

She is tall, blonde, thin, and from the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Many of the girls at Constance Billard accuse her of using her good looks as a means to secure that everything goes her way. She is not particularly academically skilled, but she is often told that she is not meeting her full potential. Her father runs the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather founded in the 18th century, and her mother, Lillian van der Woodsen, is a socialite. Her parents are on the boards of all major charities and art organizations in the city. The van der Woodsens reside at 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-gloved doorman building directly across the street from The Met and Central Park. Serena and her family own half the top floor in a 14 room penthouse.

Serena is often seen as a threat to the other girls as she is mysterious and beautiful. Serena has a nail-biting habit and also cuts her split ends off herself, mainly during her classes at Constance Billard. Though exposed and aware of the on-goings in the fashion world, Serena, unlike Blair, is not as meticulous about her fashion choices and wardrobe. She is described to have an effortless way about her. Serena is charismatic, charming, talented, funny, kind, care free and laid back. These attributes help Serena to thrive and often attract men.

Despite all these attributes, Janet Malcolm of The New Yorker considers her "incandescently beautiful, exceptionally kind, and, in the end, it has to be said, somewhat boring."

Television series

Season 1

The first season introduces Serena as the beautiful, wealthy daughter of divorced parents who returns from boarding school. Her return sparks her old rivalry with her best friend, Blair. Serena's return is sparked by her brother, Eric van der Woodsen, who attempted suicide and is considered unwelcome by most of her peers, especially her best friend, Blair, who sees her return as a threat to her Queen Bee status. After Serena successfully reconciles old rivalries with Blair, Chuck reveals to Serena that he knows the details of Serena's absence, where the audience sees a flash back of a drunk Serena taking Nate's virginity during a wedding, and Chuck attempts to kiss her. Serena manages to escape and runs into Dan, a St. Jude's student from Brooklyn, who often expresses cynicism about the lifestyle his wealthier classmates lead. Serena also finds a friend in Jenny Humphrey, Dan's younger sister. Nate eventually reveals his tryst with Serena to Blair and Serena is ostracized in the first few episodes of the show. Blair and Serena consistently fight and reconcile throughout the show's subsequent episodes, often dealing with Serena's tendency to overshadow Blair. Serena and Blair reconcile after a heartfelt confrontation that prompted Serena to admit her mistake with Nate and leaving Blair in her time of need.

Serena encounters a myriad of problems as her mother becomes engaged to Bart Bass who forces her family to adjust living with Chuck, discovering her mother's relationship with Dan's father, Rufus Humphrey, and the complications of embarking on a relationship with Dan that are met with disapproval of her mother and her peers. Her relationship with Dan further reaches complications with the arrival of Georgina Sparks, a longtime friend who slowly reveals to viewers the real reason why Serena left Manhattan. Georgina drives her to commit the same mistakes she did before leaving Manhattan ranging from partying excessively to drinking heavily, causing Serena to miss the SATs. Serena confronts Georgina, only to draw her anger, prompting Georgina to destroy her relationship with Dan and blackmail her with knowledge of a particular event in the past: she accidentally killed a man. Serena's constant lying in order to keep Dan from discovering her past eventually takes its toll on their relationship and Dan breaks up with her.

Blair eventually retaliates against Georgina with the help of Chuck and Nate and the intervention of Vanessa, successfully driving Georgina out of Manhattan. Serena finally tells Dan the truth only to discover during Lily's wedding, that he wants to end their relationship. A disappointed Serena attempts to move on throughout the summer.

Season 2

The second season shows Serena spending the summer with her family and Blair in the Hamptons, attempting to move on from her failed relationship with Dan. During a dramatic party, she and Dan briefly reconcile their relationship and return to New York.Their relationship becomes public again but ends sooner than expected during a blackout as both are unable to move past the problems that previously ruined their relationship.Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page). Serena's relationship with Carter earns the disapproval of her peers but discovers redeeming qualities in him. Lily first assumes that she's preparing to go to Brown but defers from entering, preferring to stay in the city and find herself. During Lily's wedding, she discovers Carter's previous transgressions and she loses him when he chooses to make amends for his mistakes, breaking her heart in the process.

Serena eventually makes her time in New York useful by taking a job as a publicist, one that is short-lived as her relationships with both her friends and her family begin to erode. Her friendship with Blair and Nate crumble due to her job but finds even more trouble when she falls for Nate's married congressman cousin, Tripp Vanderbilt (Aaron Tveit). Her relationship with him is tumultuous as both Nate and Blair fail in persuading her from continuing the affair. The affair ends when an offer to become a mistress from Tripp's wife makes her come to her senses. As Serena and Tripp return to New York, their car crashes, leaving her hospitalized. She survives and Nate proves his love for her and the two begin a relationship.

When Chuck's mother returns, Serena's resolve to find her father is reignited. Her decision slowly damages her relationship with Nate as she reconnects with Carter who is back to his old habits. Knowing that he has information regarding her father, the two work together to find him but is no longer interested in a relationship with Carter. Jenny's growing feelings for Nate also threaten her relationship with him when she makes every effort to steal Nate from her. During Dorota's wedding, Serena leaves with Carter and gives Jenny a message telling Nate that she has found her father. Serena soon finds out that Carter has been delaying her in an attempt to get close to her and leaves him, flies alone. Upon arriving, she is shocked to find her mother answering the hotel door, assuming that she had been in Canyon Ranch the entire time.

William van der Woodsen (William Baldwin) returns, making Serena happy but is unknowingly dragged into her father's plot to win back his ex-wife. The plot nearly works until Jenny, Blair, Nate and Chuck scheme against William, who had been trying to frame Rufus for adultery and intentionally misdiagnosing Lily, and William leaves. Her father's departure leads to Dan comforting her and reignites her feelings for him. Serena sleeps over at Dan's and wake up to find themselves in a compromising position, one that Jenny photographs and sends to Gossip Girl. As the photo spreads, Nate and Serena temporarily end their relationship and Serena joins Blair for a summer in Paris.

Season 4

Serena is seen spending her summer in Paris with Blair, reluctant to tell Blair that she has enrolled in Columbia, something that Blair fears will have them return to their high school pettiness and receives news that Chuck might be dead. After a disastrous double date involving a handsome royal, Blair eventually forgives her. Chuck's arrival and a visit to a Parisian morgue confirms that he is alive but Serena pursues him in hopes of convincing him to return to New York when he tries to run away to London. She returns to New York having made her decision between Dan and Nate but her decision becomes irrelevant when she sees them with their new respective significant others, Vanessa and Juliet Sharp (Katie Cassidy), a girl with a personal vendetta against Serena.

Serena's enrollment in Columbia has her face Juliet's many attempts at getting rid of her ranging from excluding her from an exclusive society along with driving Blair against her, exposing her relationship with her professor, Colin Forrester (Sam Page), who happens to be Juliet's cousin to get her kicked out, and spreading various rumors about Serena, who manages to evade these attempts. Juliet then recruits Jenny and Vanessa and succeed in gaslighting her into toying with Dan and Nate's feelings, attempting to take a foundation position from Blair, and returning to her old partying habits. Serena is rehabilitated while Dan and Blair subsequently discover Juliet's reasons for ruining Serena. Serena was supposedly in a relationship with Juliet's half brother and Serena's high school English teacher, Ben Donovan (David Call) and was arrested when Lily forged an affidavit that falsely accused Ben of statutory rape, out of concern for Serena.

The holidays has Serena trying to figure out how to release Ben from prison and her relationship with Lily is yet again strained. Serena and Dan put a possible return to their relationship on hold, knowing that they might not have the same chance of loving and trusting each other. Meanwhile, Ben's release from prison reignites Serena's feelings for him and they pursue a loving yet troubled relationship. Serena's relationship with Ben slowly erodes when she receives news from Vanessa that he is responsible for hurting Nate's father in prison and Ben's mother, Cynthia raises Ben's personal troubles while at the same time seeking to exonerate him and Serena's realization of having a relationship with him. Serena becomes proud of her mother when Lily decides to face the consequences of sending an innocent Ben to prison. Serena and Ben's relationship eventually ends due to family complications.

Serena's cousin, Charlie Rhodes, comes to stay with Serena's family for a while. Charlie helps Serena find out that Dan and Blair have had a secret romance, causing a fight between Serena and Blair. Serena continues to use Charlie as a spy until noticing that Charlie is starting to act exactly as Serena and steals Serena's dress. In the season finale, Serena gets Charlie help with a medical condition, though it is later revealed that Charlie is really Ivy, and Ivy is just acting. While walking, Serena gets offered a job in Hollywood where she decides to move to.

Season 5

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At the start of season 5, Serena has been working in Los Angeles as an assistant to a film producer while spending time bonding with Nate and Chuck. She struggles to please her boss, Marshall, but his boss, Jane, grants her a promotion after completing a difficult task that Marshall could not. She soon runs into Charlie and convinces her to move back to New York with her.

When Dan brings Serena, Nate, Blair, Chuck, Rufus and Lily together and reveals to them that he wrote a book about his life and all of their parts in it, Serena is offended when he portrays her as a self-centered, promiscuous, party-girl and is even more upset when Blair tells her that's exactly who she's been. After this revelation, she stops speaking to Dan. This cannot last, however, when her boss, Jane, requires Serena to get the movie rights to Dan's book, he refuses, promising them to someone else, but Serena kills the deal, effectively alienating Dan.

After being fired by Jane, Serena is hired by Nate's boss, Diana Payne, to start a blog based on her life in order to take down Gossip Girl. Later, Nate and Serena discover a list of sources for Gossip Girl which would be the silver bullet in Diana's campaign against Gossip Girl. They struggle over whether or not to use it and ultimately decide it would be too damaging to release. The list is leaked anyway and the two accuse each other before Blair discovers that it was Louis who leaked Gossip Girl's list of sources. Charlie encourages Serena to start dating in order to motivate her for her blog and she begins dating a guy named Max that she met on the street, not knowing that Max is actually Charlie's ex-boyfriend. Diana arranges for Max to meet Serena at the opening of Chuck's premiere of 'Sleep No More' in order to make it look like Max has stood her up. Serena forgives Max for standing her up, and the two begin dating.

Charlie finds out the two are dating and convinces her to slow down the relationship. Serena's aunt Carol returns and Serena overhears an argument between the two about Carol forcing Charlie to live under the name 'Ivy Dickens'. Serena makes the connection between Max and Charlie when she remembers that Max's ex-girlfriend's name was Ivy. She demands the truth from Charlie and Max. Ivy as Charlie and Carol manage to convince Serena and the family that Max is lying and Serena tells Max to leave before she calls the police.

As Serena and Lily prepare Charlie for her debut into New York society, Dan tells Serena that he is going to tell Blair how he feels about her. In order to make Dan see that Blair's happy ending will be with Louis, she sends Louis to the Humphrey loft. When she finds Dan with Blair and Chuck later, she realizes that he gave up his desire for Blair for Blair's own happiness with Chuck and realizes that Blair is still in love with Chuck. Later that night, after Charlie's debutante ball, Serena receives a call from Nate that Blair and Chuck have been in an accident. This causes Serena to declare war on Gossip Girl using Nate's power at the Spectator and Dan.

With Gossip Girl gone, Serena finds that Gossip Girl's tipsters have begun sending their blasts to her via her blog. Nate encourages her to use the blasts productively, but Serena is reluctant to become the next Gossip Girl. Meanwhile, Serena is concerned for Blair's well-being and confronts her at Nate's New Year's Eve party where Blair tells her that the accident was God's way of telling her that she and Chuck are not meant to be together and that she made a promise with God that if Chuck lived she would marry Louis and that Dan has been going to church with her since. In order to cover Blair, Serena pretends that she has rekindled her romance with Dan. This "romance" becomes the focus of her soon-to-be-launched blog which causes problems for Dan, while Dan thinks that their romance is fake, Serena is shown to have genuine feelings for Dan again.

Not knowing that Nate has made a deal with Gossip Girl, Serena is told that the time is not right for her blog, but Serena finds the emails from Gossip Girl and realizes that Nate shut down her blog because of Gossip Girl, when Nate reveals the nature of the emails, that he shut down Serena's blog in order to learn the truth about Blair and Chuck's accident, Serena doesn't believe Nate's story that Trip caused the accident and confronts Trip at Blair's. This is revealed to be a set-up brought about by Nate, Serena and Nate's grandfather as a way for Trip to admit that he was behind the accident thinking that Nate was going to be in the car instead.

Following this, Serena finds out that Blair was arrested at her bachelorette party and rushes to her aide. After learning that Blair is okay and that Blair is going to go through with her marriage to Louis, and that she no longer needs to pretend to be with Dan, she lies to him that Blair needs them to cover for her until the wedding.

On Blair's wedding day, Serena tries to convince Blair not to marry Louis. Blair goes through with her wedding anyway, even after Gossip Girl launches a video of Blair professing her true feelings to Chuck. After the vows are said, Serena, Dan and Nate confront Georgina and she blames each of them in a vague manner before leaving. When Blair goes missing after her wedding, Serena and Chuck search for her, and find her in a motel in Queens with Dan, which upsets Serena as she still has feelings for him. When Georgina arrives, Serena is revealed to have Georgina's video camera that was used to record Blair's confession and she takes the fall for the video.

Following this, Blair and Serena are in yet another rut, but forgive each other and Serena is unknowingly set up on a blind date with Dan, after she told him her feelings and he rejected her. At a party later, she and Georgina find Dan and Blair kissing, which causes another rift between her and Blair. After her grandmother's death and shocking news of her will, Serena starts a vendetta against Ivy trying to win back her family fortunes and in a surprising turn of events gets a package from former Gossip Girl, Georgina Sparks. It is later revealed that Serena is now the current Gossip Girl.

After losing the reins to Gossip Girl and her unintentional role in exposing Blair's diary to the Upper East side, now Serena attempts to deceive Blair by having sex with Dan. The plan almost works only for Dan to realize what has happened. Serena once again tells Dan that she loves him but Dan tells her that he does not feel anything for her. A depressed Serena is last seen leaving the city with one of Damian Dalgaard's drug dealers, a flashback to her days before she returned to the Upper East Side in season one.

Season 6

In Season 6, Dan tells Serena that the reason he didn't give her an answer to the "I love you" was due to the fact that it was easier to focus on his anger at Blair, then to face the possibility of getting what he always wanted in the fear of losing it again. Dan and Serena throw their first Thanksgiving as a couple together, where Serena affirms her love for Dan by rejecting both Steven and Blair by saying that Dan is her soul-mate and the only love of her life. Dan also solidifies his love by telling Georgina and Rufus that he had a plan all along to win and that there is no winning without Serena.

In the Finale, Dan reveals to Serena their first meeting at a party, where Dan first spoke to her and fell madly in love. Dan realized at that party that he could never pull Serena out of her world but he couldn't give up either. He realized that the only way he could get Serena was to write himself in to the UES by using a blog to create a legend, the blog came to be known as Gossip Girl. Dan then revealed his secret to all by giving Nate his final chapter to publish in the struggling Spectator. Revealing to all that the only purpose of Gossip Girl was the love Dan had for Serena. Serena was joyed at the revelation, stating that Dan through Gossip Girl, wrote her and everyone else a seven year love letter and made her realize that she belongs in the UES with Dan.

Five years later, Dan and Serena get married, surrounded by their closest friends and family.

Reception

References

1. Malcolm, Janet (3 October 2008). "The Wicked Joy of the Gossip Girl Novels". The New Yorker. Retrieved 7 September 2009.
2. Stack, Tim (17 May 2010). "Gossip Girl". Entertainment Weekly. {{cite web}}: Check |archiveurl= value (help)
3. "Gossip Girl: "The Wild Bunch"". Zap2it. Retrieved 2009-8-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
4. "'Gossip Girl' Embraces Friendships, Reality". New York. Retrieved 11 October 2007.
5. "'Gossip Girl': There Are Only Eight Colleges in America". New York. Retrieved 4 October 2007.
6. "A Very 'Gossip Girl' Christmas". New York. Retrieved 20 December 2007.
7. "Gossip Girl: "Desperately Seeking Serena"". TV Guide. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
8. ^ "Gossip Girl: "Woman on the Verge Episode Recap"". TV.com. Retrieved 16 June 2010.
9. "Gossip Girl: "All About My Brother"". TV Guide. Retrieved 25 August 2009.
10. "Gossip Girl: "Much I Do About Nothing"". TV Guide. Retrieved 2009-8-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

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