Gossip Girl reboot: Julien and [spoiler] are sisters?!

The Gossip Girl reboot dropped its first episode, “Just Another Girl on the MTA,” on Thursday, July 8, and we’re obsessed!

Our new crew–Julien, Obie, Monet, Luna, Aki, Audrey, and Max–have arrived on the pop culture scene with a fresh but familiar take on the series that inspired their revival. The Upper East Side is still the Upper East Side but these teens are incredibly close to one another with betrayals nowhere in sight…or so they think.

There’s no infighting even if true feelings are hidden, and they’re more like a pack of privileged, pampered puppies than anything else. Sure, they’ve got both bark and bite, but their relationships don’t start derailing and being set on fire until Gossip Girl is revived.

Though, to be fair, Julien’s the one whose secret is the kindling for their bond to be set aflame. If she had only told them the truth about her sister, maybe the newly arisen gossipmonger wouldn’t have had the ammunition she needed to start dismantling their group.

Spoilers ahead for Gossip Girl episode 1

Who is Julien’s sister on Gossip Girl

While the HBO Max reboot lets the audience in on Julien’s close relationship with Zoya Lott, a freshman at Constance St. Jude’s, early on, her friends are kept in the dark. They’re aware the two are related, but they assume that Julien is wary of her because their dads hate one another.

See, their mom left Julien’s dad for Zoya’s and they’ve been kept apart because of this. But, thanks to the internet, they connected years ago. In fact, Julien’s the reason why Zoya convinced her dad to move from Buffalo, New York to the city, so she could attend the same school as her sister.

Julien, however, has a hair-brained scheme that spells trouble from the moment the girls go over the plan. She wanted to ease Zoya into her friend group, painting a picture of ice thawing between the two and allowing her friends to get to know her sister without feeling obligated to like her.

Of course, the plan inevitably fails, but none of these teens would have guessed it’d be because of Gossip Girl. When it’s revealed that Julien’s the one who got Zoya her scholarship into Constance St. Judes and that she’s been lying to her friends about their supposedly tepid relationship, things begin to snowball out of control.

It’s a moment that sets up the rest of season 1 for these two sisters and, let us tell you, the games this show is set to play is bound to hurt feelings and reputations.

Julien let Monet and Luna humiliate Zoya to save face after her sister and her boyfriend, Obie, were caught in a compromising position. It’s a decision that has the kind of consequences that’ll mess with her love life, her bond with Zoya, and her position at the school.

Zoya isn’t a wallflower, and she’s not scared of her sister. Watch out, Neo-Queen J, looks like Z is liable to bring your carefully curated world crashing to the ground, and the joke is she doesn’t even care about the crown.