Serena van der Woodsen

Serena van der Woodsen
Gossip Girl character
First appearance	Book Series: Gossip Girl TV Series: "Pilot"
Created by	Cecily von Ziegesar
Portrayed by	Blake Lively
In-universe information
Alias	S
Gender	Female
Occupation	Book Series: Actress Model Dutch Shipping Heiress TV Series: High School Student Face of Eleanor Waldorf Designs Socialite College Student Billionaire Heiress
Family	Book Series: William van der Woodsen (father) Lillian van der Woodsen (mother) Erik van der Woodsen (older brother) TV Series: Lily van der Woodsen (mother) Keith van der Woodsen (father) Bart Bass (step-father; deceased) Eric van der Woodsen (younger brother) Chuck Bass (adoptive brother) Scott Ronsson (half-brother)
Spouses	""Book Series"": Nate Archibald (ex-boyfriend) Dan Humphrey (Fling) Flo (fling) Aaron Rose (ex-boyfriend) Christian (fling) Drew (fling) ""TV Series"": Dan Humphrey (ex-boyfriend) Nate Archibald (lover)

Serena Caroline van der Woodsen is a character from the book series Gossip Girl and the television adaptation of the same name. Serena is described as a rich and popular girl who is quite often featured on the blog of the mysterious Gossip Girl. Originally intended as the book series' protagonist, she was given the supporting role in favor of Blair Waldorf, her friend and occasional competitor. The television character is portrayed by Blake Lively.

Book series background

Serena is described as tall, with blue eyes, blonde hair and she is 5'7 tall. Many of the girls at Constance Billard accuse her of using her wealth as a means to secure that everything goes her way. She is not incredibly academic, but is often told that she is not meeting her full potential. Her father runs the same Dutch shipping firm his great-great-grandfather created in the 1700s 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 and live at luxurious 994 Fifth Avenue, a ritzy, white-gloved-doorman building directly across the street from the Met and Central Park. The van der Woodsens own half the top floor, and live in a fourteen room penthouse, with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a bar-sized living room and staff quarters. Serena's elder brother Erik, whom she is close to, is a student at Brown University.

Overview

The book starts out with Serena as a student at Hanover Academy in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she partied and broke many rules. It is explained that she previously lived in Manhattan with her wealthy family and was the It Girl at the exclusive Constance Billard School for Girls. She was close friends with Nate Archibald, and best friends with Blair Waldorf.

Serena returns to New York City, arriving at the Waldorf Penthouse on Fifth Avenue, interrupting Blair and Nate's passion. Serena then becomes the target of Blair's hatred. Serena and Dan Humphrey had a slight involvement in the second novel after meeting in the first. Serena then moved on to Blair's stepbrother Aaron Rose. At the end of the series, Nate cannot choose between Serena or Blair so he leaves. The series ends with Serena staying in the city to do more acting and Blair leaving for her goal college, Yale.

TV series background

Serena "S" van der Woodsen was born to Lillian van der Woodsen, an heiress socialite and currently divorced; and billionaire Keith van der Woodsen. Lillian was a former groupie to Rufus Humphrey, father of Dan Humphrey and Jenny Humphrey. Like in the book series, Serena ruled the Upper East Side with her best friend, Blair Waldorf. Serena left suddenly for boarding school, making Blair the "queen bee" of the social scene. Serena has been friends with Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass and Blair ever since childhood and share a long history. Serena is a vixen who vainly tries to change.

Later in the pilot, it is revealed that a drunken Serena had betrayed Blair (also known as "B") and slept with Nate, Blair's boyfriend, at a wedding.

Serena and her family formerly resided at The New York Palace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan but currently resides in an ultramodern duplex penthouse on Park Avenue. She has a younger sibling named Eric van der Woodsen. Her parents attended Harvard University and Brown University.

Serena has also stated that her family is in the Hotel Industry, although this maybe in reference to her stepfather, Bart Bass.

Season 1

Serena returns home to Manhattan from boarding school to see her younger sibling Eric, who is in the Ostroff Center after a recent suicide attempt. Due to her mother's efforts, nobody knows what Eric did, although much of the Upper East Side is talking about Serena. Serena was the most famous girl at school, a free-spirited party-goer, the best friend of Blair, Nate, and Chuck Bass, and everyone is wondering why she left and why she has returned. Blair is infuriated with her after learning that a drunk Serena had sex with Nate, and also for leaving without saying goodbye. Hurt and betrayed, Blair cuts Serena off from the group.

Serena's mother, Lily, is eager for Serena to rejoin her former social circle, pushing her to attend Blair's Kiss on the Lips party (which Serena was not invited to, due to Blair's anger). Serena instead goes on a date with Dan Humphrey that night, which is cut short when Dan's sister Jenny is almost sexually assaulted by Chuck, resident bad boy of the Upper East Side. Serena and Dan hurry to the rescue, which upsets Chuck and Blair for different reasons. Blair felt like Serena crashed her party to steal her crown once more after having left without any ado and Chuck is simply furious with Serena and Dan's intrusion.

The following Sunday, Serena asks Dan to the Sunday Brunch at the Palace, a hotel owned by Chuck's father, Bart Bass. At the brunch, Chuck and Blair reveal to Dan, Serena's drunken fling with Nate.

Later, at an Ivy Mixer at Constance, in a rush to get back at Serena and secure her spot as Queen Bee, tells the audience that Serena is an out-patient at the Ostroff Center due to a drugs & sex addiction( the "proof" comes from pictures Chuck snapped of Serena entering the building to see Eric. Serena then joins Blair on stage & agrees with her, to protect Eric. Once Eric reveals to Blair that he and not Serena is a patient, Blair meets up with Serena at Central Park and reads her a letter that she addressed to Serena but never sent, while Serena was at boarding school. The letter details Blair's sadness over her parents' break-up, and her immense loneliness, it also includes pleas for Serena to come home. The two girls say apologize and reconcile their friendship.

Season 2

Like Serena mentioned in the Season 1 finale "Much 'I Do' About Nothing", Serena spends her summer in the Hamptons. It is revealed that Serena and Nate are pretending to see each other so that everyone would leave Serena alone about her break up with Dan, and so Nate could do whatever he wants. Serena is still very sad and lonely without Dan, and spends most of her time alone, but with the encouragement of best friend Blair, she goes out on a date with a lifeguard who had asked her out earlier. The morning after the date, Serena's tells Blair that nothing happened on their date. Except she forgot to mention that she saw Nate run out of married Catherine Mason's house, half naked and that they almost ran him over. When Serena confronts Nate about it, she told him when he says his secret affair is older, she thought college. But when Nate promises it's over, she leaves him alone. She is angry when later she finds out that she still has to pretend that she's going out with Nate and attend the White party with him just so Nate could see Catherine's husband up close. However, Serena understands since Nate and her have a "history," and takes him to the White party as her date. At the party, she helps Nate get Catherine jealous by kissing him, only for Dan to show up and witness the whole thing. She's in the middle of trying to apologize when two girls come over and starting shouting at Dan. As Serena helps clean up the drink that one of the girls threw at him, he admits that he over reacted and they kiss.

They try to keep their relationship a secret, but they're caught kissing on Gossip Girl, meaning everyone knew they were back together before they intended for anyone to know. Everyone seems happy they're back together, except for Blair. Blair tells Serena that they should talk about why they broke up in the first place, and if after talking about their issues, they are still together, then Blair will be happy for them. In the citywide blackout, Dan and Serena are trapped in an elevator, and are forced to talk about their issues. After they realize they keep having the same fight, they decide to end their relationship, despite how much they really care about one another. After the elevator door closes, Serena says, "I love you" one last time to Dan.

When they return to school, Serena and Dan compete to see who can date first. Dan snags a new girl named Amanda, although it turns out that Chuck paid her to date Dan in a complicated scheme to eventually win over Blair. Serena and Dan have a huge fight at a bar when Dan is on a date with Amanda and Serena meets up with a random guy that her friends introduced her to. At the end of the episode "The Ex-Files", it seems that the real Queen Bee Serena has returned after leading the entire school to shun Dan.

During Fashion Week, Serena attends Eleanor Waldorf's fashion show with Poppy Lifton to order to boost the amount of press and publicity. Blair, hurt that Serena would break their tradition of watching the fashion show together backstage to sit in front row with Poppy and that, once again, her mother had chosen Serena over her, nearly ruins the whole show by persuading the catwalk models to leave. However, it turns out Serena, Poppy and her socialite friends end up making perfect models for Eleanor's designs further infuriating Blair. Serena is then given Jenny's homemade dress to wear on runway by Blair in an attempt to ruin show once again. But all is well as the dress unexpectedly earns rave reviews. After the show, Blair tries to talk to Serena in the dressing room. Serena tells her she will not hold herself back anymore just because Blair is insecure and Blair can either support her as a friend or not.

The school is visiting colleges and, of course, Blair is visiting Yale. Serena was, as planned, going to visit Brown. However, after Blair tells her that the only Ivy League schools are Yale, Harvard and Princeton, Serena gets back at her by going to Yale herself and impressing the Dean of Yale and being invited into his intimate gathering dinner party. When Blair hears, tensions are high as she herself was not invited, but manages to bribe an invitation anyway. The party comes to a halt when Blair, again hurt by Serena's betrayal, does her best to humiliate Serena by revealing to the Dean and all the other possible Yale attendees Serena's secret about the guy she killed. The night ends in a cat fight but in the morning they make-up after both take the blame for the night's mishaps. The episode ends with them saying that maybe the only reason they fought was because they were both afraid of being separated next year.

Serena is sick of Lily and Bart's new house rules for the kids and rebels against it thinking that it's all about Bart taking over the family like all of Lily's ex-husbands used to. She's shocked to find from Chuck that the only reason for all of rules is because of one of his dad's business deals with people that value family. In the end Serena blames her mom for all that's happened, but in the end Serena realises that they are a family and reconciles.

Later in "Pret-a-Poor Jenny", she meets her new love interest Aaron Rose, an artist whose work is being exhibited at Rufus' art gallery. The two have an instant attraction. Aaron then invites Serena to dinner, an date offer that Serena turns down due to her previous relationship. Aaron gives her a second chance at dating him by asking her the fate of Cecil the Caterpillar. Serena then encounters Dan who ruins Blair's opportunity to tell Chuck that she loves him and justifies his actions by saying that Chuck and Blair toyed with Vanessa and that the two were bound to go wrong at some point in their relationship. Serena is infuriated with Dan while he explains that he helped Blair for Serena's sake. Dan later apologizes while Serena suggests he be honest with her. The two move in to an honest conversation as Serena reveals her feelings for Aaron. At that moment she realizes that she had met him before at summer camp in Europe where she and other campers would sing a song about Cecil the Caterpillar. She recalls her friendship and pretend marriage to Aaron at summer camp. Serena goes off to find Aaron while Dan gives her his blessing. She eventually finds Aaron only to see him with another girl on his motorbike. After finding out that the girl on the motorbike was not Aaron's girlfriend, he asks her to be the muse for his art collection. In episode "The Wrath of Con" Lily has Serena arrested for stealing their grandmother's diamond bracelet. . In "Goodbye Gossip Girl" Serena made up her mind and choose Brown University. In the closing moments of the season finale, Carter Baizen returns and informs Serena that he has located her father in Fiji.

Reception

Blake Lively has won two Teen Choice Awards for her performance as Serena van der Woodsen.