Serena van der Woodsen

Infobox character
colour = #DEDEE2
colour text =
name = Serena van der Woodsen


caption =
series = Gossip Girl
caption =
first = Book Series:
Gossip Girl
TV Series:
Pilot
last = Book Series:
"Don't You Forget About Me"
cause = End of Series
creator = Cecily von Ziegesar
portrayer = Blake Lively
fullname = "Book Series":
Serena Caroline van der Woodsen
"TV Series":
Serena Celia van der Woodsen
alias = S
gender = Female
age = 15-18 (Book Series)
17 (TV Series)
born = July 14 (book series)
death =
specialty = Modeling, Acting
occupation = Book Series:
Actress
Model
TV Series:
High School Student
Face of Waldorf
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)
Bart Bass (stepfather)
Eric van der Woodsen (younger brother)
Chuck Bass (step-brother)
pets = ""Book Series"":
Guppy (Golden Retriever; deceased)
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)
residence = 994 Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side of Manhattan (book series)
The New York Palace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan (TV series)

Serena Caroline van der Woodsen is one of the main characters in the book series "Gossip Girl" and the television adaptation of the same name. Serena is described as a beautiful, polite, and popular girl who is featured prominently on the blog of the mysterious Gossip Girl. Originally intended as the series' protagonist, she was later supplanted in this role by Blair Waldorf, [McAdam, C. [http://sundayheraldsalon.com/salon/2008/03/chatter_in_classes.html "Chatter In Classes", Cecily von Ziegesar interview] . "SundayHeraldSalon.com". March 15, 2008. Retrieved on August 28, 2008] her friend and occasional competitor. The television character is portrayed by Blake Lively.

Book series background

Serena is described as having pale, long blond hair and enchanting navy blue eyes. She is extremely smart, but is often told that she is not working to her full potential. She was the 'It girl' of Constance Billard School for Girls and the talk of Manhattan, which made her a constant fodder to the rumor mill. 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. Serena's older sibling Erik, whom she is close to, is a student at Brown University. Her birthday is on 14 July, also known as Bastille Day.

Overview

Serena van der Woodsen was a student at Hanover Academy in Hanover, New Hampshire, where she partied a lot and broke many rules. 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, with whom she shared many experiences, including urinating on classmates' stoops, partying in the Bass Suite at the Tribeca Star Hotel, and leaving Blair's sibling, Tyler, in the Lower East Side, making him walk home to the Upper East Side.

Serena returns to New York City, arriving at the Waldorf Penthouse on Fifth Avenue, interrupting Blair and Nate's passionate scene. Serena then becomes the target of Blair's disgust, which turns Serena into a social outcast, starting or keeping rumors of Serena going, including her having a baby that's in a fancy French convent school, making marks above the bed for every time Serena did a boy at Hanover, and selling her own drugs with "S" stamped on them.

But Serena always seemed to shine brighter then Blair; for example, Blair and Serena tried out for the role in "Breakfast at Fred's", but Serena got the part. Serena also got into all the colleges that turned Blair down (including Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Wesleyan, Vassar, and Yale, Blair's dream school), even though Blair was an excellent academic student and participated in many extra-curricular activities and charity events, while Serena was a below-average student and had only participated in the Film/Drama club.

Serena and Upper West Sider Dan Humphrey dated throughout the first and second novels, but Serena's taste for wealthy men and Dan's growing crush on outcast Vanessa Abrams proved too much. Serena then moved on to Blair's rich step-brother Aaron Rose and Dan and Vanessa would go on to be an on/off couple.

At the end of the series, Serena turns down college to be a full time actress and Blair goes off to Yale, her dream school. Nate, not wanting to chose between the two girls who finally made up for good, opted out of college to sail across the world with a family friend, Captain Chips White.

TV series background

Serena "S" van der Woodsen was born to Lillian van der Woodsen, an heiress socialite and currently divorced. Lillian was a former groupie to Rufus Humphrey, father of Dan Humphrey and Jenny Humphrey. Rufus described Serena's father as a billionaire. Like in the book series, Serena ruled the Upper East Side while her best friend, Blair Waldorf, was also pretty but less appealing than the gorgeous 'It girl'. However, Serena left suddenly for boarding school, making Blair the "queen bee" of the social scene for a while. Serena has been friends with Nate Archibald and Blair Waldorf ever since childhood and share a long history.

Later in the pilot, it is revealed that Serena had betrayed Blair "B" and slept with Nate, Blair's confused boyfriend, at a wedding right before she (Serena) left to go to a boarding school in Paris.

Serena and her family currently reside at The New York Palace Hotel in Midtown Manhattan. She has a younger sibling named Eric. Her parents went to Harvard University and Brown University.

eason 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 formerly the most popular girl in school, a free-spirited partier and bed-hopper, the best friend of Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald, and Chuck Bass, and everyone is wondering why she left and why she has returned. Blair is infuriated with her after learning that a drunken Serena once had sex with Nate, and also for leaving without saying goodbye. Blair cuts Serena off from the group and makes her a somewhat of a social outcast. Early on in Season One, Serena expresses interest in Nate after what happened to the two of them before she left but does not encourage a relationship with him mainly because she does not want to hurt her best friend, Blair Waldorf, again, and refuses to accept any of Nate's advances. However, it is obvious that she still wants Nate in her life. [http://www.tv.com/gossip-girl/show/68744/episode.html 'Gossip Girl' Episode Recaps] . "TV.com". Retrieved on August 28, 2008]

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 Bass, 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 that Serena had sex with Nate. Dan is disgusted to hear that Serena would betray her best friend, and a rift grows between them.

Blair continues to do her best to make Serena's life miserable. At an Ivy Mixer, Blair tells the audience that Serena is a patient at the Ostroff Center (since Chuck snapped pictures of Serena entering the building to see Eric) and is an out-patient due to a drug addiction. Serena joins Blair on stage and reluctantly agrees with her to spare her brother's embarrassment. Eric, trying to defend Serena, later shows Blair the cuts on his arm from his attempted suicide. Blair is shocked and appalled by her actions. She meets up with Serena and reads her a letter that Blair addressed to Serena but never sent, revealing Blair's sadness and loneliness over her parents' break-up, and her pleas for Serena to come home. The two apologize and reconcile their friendship.

Serena and Dan also reconcile and build a fairly solid relationship, but Dan continues to be bothered by the disparity in their finances and by everything he learns about Serena's pre-boarding school lifestyle. However, Serena does her best to show Dan that she has changed- she parties less, avoids drugs and alcohol, has a steady relationship, doesn't concern herself with the social hierarchies of school. She sees Dan as a chance for a fresh start with someone above all of the superficialities of the Upper East Side, and she attempts to hide her former-bad-girl-self from him, wishing to have one person in her life who does not know about her former indiscretions.

At Blair's birthday party, Serena learns that Blair and Nate have broken up, and that Blair and Chuck have started to see each other secretly. She tries not to judge Blair, but cannot conceal her disgust that Blair has slept with Chuck. Serena and Blair fight on Thanksgiving, but later reconcile when Blair's bulimia flares up again. Also at Thanksgiving, Serena learns that her mother, Lily, and Dan's father, Rufus, were involved in the past. When Lily and Rufus attempt to restart their relationship, Serena begs Lily not to get involved with Rufus again, believing that the relationship will be short-lived (like most of Lily's relationships) and will only result in Serena and Dan's relationship being damaged. Lily therefore agrees to marry Chuck's father, Bart Bass.

Serena starts to receive a series of troubling gifts- pornography, hand-cuffs, champagne, and, finally, cocaine. She blames Chuck, and, as a result, his father forces him to leave their house and live at the Palace Hotel, not wishing to disturb Lily while she is making wedding arrangements. Serena later finds out that the gifts are from Georgina "Gigi" Sparks, her former partner-in-crime in her bad girl days. Georgina proceeds to sabotage Serena's new lifestyle, by persuading her to come out to dinner and drugging her drinks. She also has a video tape of her and Serena accidentally killing a boy before Serena left, and she plans to use it as blackmail. After crossing the line by outing Serena's brother at the dinner table, Serena instructs her to stay away from her. But Georgina then deceives Serena's boyfriend Dan, using the alias Sarah. Dan and "Sarah" become close friends, and Serena can't tell Dan or Georgina will show him the tape. She eventually reverts back to her old lifestyle, and tells Dan that she cheated on him so that Georgina has no incentive to show him the tape. Dan and "Sarah" then get together.

Blair, Chuck, and Nate reunite in order to help save their old friend. Blair reassures Serena that she can tell them anything because the four of them (Serena, Nate, Blair, and Chuck) are the Non-Judging Breakfast Club.

Nate tells Vanessa, Dan's close friend, about Georgina. She in turn tells Dan. Blair and Chuck create the plan that Dan will lure "Sarah" into the park, and her parents will be waiting there, ready to take her off to reformatory school. In this process, combined with the wedding of Serena's mom and Chuck's dad, the "Non Judging Breafkast Club" reunited to support and save each other.

Dan and Serena agree to keep things ended at the wedding, deciding that too much has happened between them. Dan can't let Serena's past go. The two officially end their relationship. Serena is last seen in the Hamptons, hanging out with her former flame and now friend-once-again, Nate.

eason 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 everyone would get off of Serena's back for being so sad about her break-up with Dan, and so Nate could do whatever he wants. Serena is still very sad and lonely without Dan, and tries to spend most of her time alone, but with the encouragement of best friend Blair, she goes out on a date with a hot lifeguard who 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. When Serena confronts Nate about it, she told him when he says his secret affair is older, she thought college. But Nate says that it's over, so Serena stops confronting him. 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 to see that Dan was there, and saw the whole thing. He's very angry while she tries to apologize. Moments later, after Serena saw the argument with Dan and his two girlfriends, he apologizes, saying he overreacted, and the two made up.

They try to keep their relationship a secret, and when they're finally ready, they're already caught kissing on gossip girl, meaning everyone knew they were back together before they even told people. Everyone seems happy they're back together, except for Blair. Blair tells Serena that they should talk about their problems, and if they talk about their problems then 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 problems. 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 letting Dan get shunned by the entire school.

During Fashion Week, Serena is convinced into attending Eleanor Waldorf's fashion show with Poppie Lifton to order to boost the amount of press and publicity. Blair, jealous at the attention Serena is receiving and hurt that Serena would break their tradition of watching the fashion show together backstage to sit in front row with Poppie Lifton, she nearly ruins the whole show by persuading the catwalk models to leave. However, it turns out Serena, Poppie and her friends end up as the ones to be modeling Eleanor's clothing designs. In a moment of hesitation, Serena expresses her doubts about going on stage in fear of hurting Blair's feelings but on Poppie's insistence, she decides to be herself and do her best. Serena is given the wrong dress to wear on stage by Blair; Jenny's homemade dress. But all is well as the dress unexpectedly earns many raves. After the show, Blair confronts Serena backstage in the dressing room. Serena, sick of always letting Blair take the spotlight, tells her she won't hold herself back anymore and Blair can either support her as a friend or not.

Differences between the novels and TV series

* In the books, her sibling Erik (spelled Eric in TV series) is older (three years), heterosexual, and attends Brown University; in the TV series, he’s younger (two years), a high school student, and gay.
* In the books, Serena came home from boarding school because she got kicked out for not returning for the beginning of senior year; in the TV series, the television version of her sibling, Eric, attempts suicide, compelling Serena to return home (in her junior year).
* In the books, Serena’s parents are still married and her mother, Lilian, never spoke to Dan Humphrey’s father, let alone dated him; In the TV series, Serena’s mom dated Dan’s father, Rufus.
* In the books, when Serena returns, she still wants to party and have things return to normal. In the TV series, Serena is focused on changing and becoming a better person.
* In the books, Serena left because her parents wanted her to and because she had sex with Nate and because she realized that what she had done could really hurt both Blair and Nate, and even herself. In the TV show, she left because on the night she slept with Nate, she offered cocaine to a guy that she was fooling around with, and he died. The death was caught on tape by Georgina, who had secretly set up a camera so as to film Serena having sex.
* In the books, Nate and Serena hooked up when Nate and Blair had just started their relationship and continued to be off and on after that. The series state that they only hooked up at the wedding.
*In the books, Serena and Nate were in love before he and Blair ever hooked up, and before they had sex. In the series, it is suggested that Serena and Nate only had Sex because they were drunk at the wedding.
* In the books, Blair and Serena have a few moments of romantic interest, but it is merely a fling that the girls did once to seduce Nate into staying at a party and once spontaneously when they were drunk. In the TV show, no such relationship is portrayed.
* Serena's relationship with Dan is very brief in the book series; in the TV series, it is longer and more serious.
*In the books, Serena and Nate have sex after Serena returns to the city from her holidays because Nate asked her to, with the intention of them hooking up. They had sex in Nate's parents' bed, in the Archibald residence, in private. In the series, after the two got drunk at a wedding, had sex in a deserted bar. Chuck also witnessed this from a balcony.
*In the books, Serena leaves because she is riddled with guilt about having sex with Nate and because she couldn't bear to see her best friend and the boy she is in love with together, nor does she want to see her best friend get hurt even more. Her parents wanted to send her to Hanover Academy before she finally decides to leave. In the series, it is implied that she only left because "she didn't know how to be her friend after what she did", and also due to the fact she had just inadvertently killed someone.
*In the books, Dan is more obsessed with Serena than he is in the TV series, as in the books she is his muse for his poems.
*In the books, Serena's middle name is different, as stated at the top of the page.
*In the books, Serena and Nate were actually a couple, but in the second season of the TV show, they are only pretending to be together, in order to cover up that Nate was briefly having sex with a cougar, and Serena is still hung up over her break-up with Dan.

Flings and romantic relationships

Book series

*Nate Archibald (heat of the moment fling- but was also in love with)
*Chuck Bass (forced)
*Dan Humphrey (fling)
*Flo (fling)
*Aaron Rose (ex-boyfriend)
*Christian (fling)
*Drew (fling)
*Blair Waldorf (fling)

TV series

*Dan Humphrey

**First Relationship:
***Start Up: "Pilot" (101)
***Broke Up: "Woman on the Verge" (117)
****Reason: Serena lied to Dan about cheating on him.
**Second Relationship:
***Start Up: "Summer Kind of Wonderful" (201)
***Broke Up: "The Dark Night" (203)
****Reason: They finally decide that they aren't ready to jump back into a relationship and break up for good.

References