Blake Lively Just Made a 'Gossip Girl' Reference on Instagram, Proving Serena Lives On

Blake Lively proved she's both a fan of and remembers 'Gossip Girl' by writing a reference to the show on Instagram today. See? Serena lives on!

It's hard to forget Gossip Girl, the soapy CW series in which a scraggly, coffee-drinking Brooklynite, played by Penn Badgley, conned Blake Lively and Leighton Meester with his laptop and lies. (Yes, people: Dan Humphrey is Gossip Girl, and you don't get a spoiler warning because, (a) it's been six years, and (b) it's honestly so, so ridiculous.) The show turned Lively, Meester, and Badgley into household names and has since developed a cult following. Like, every five seconds a 26-year-old visits the Met and posts a photo to Instagram with the caption "You know you love me." It's how the world is nowadays—we're just a bunch of Dan Humphreys trying to be Serenas.

Well, one of us isn't: Blake Lively, because she actually was Serena van der Woodsen for five long years. She wore Serena's couture gowns, attended cotillion, put up with her mother saying the word gauche. Lively has literally walked a mile in Serena's (Christian Louboutin, probably) shoes. And a photo Lively posted to Instagram on Wednesday (February 21) proves she still has a little Serena inside her. In fact, it low-key proves something we've known since 2012, when Gossip Girl wrapped: that Blake Lively will always be Serena van der Woodsen, no matter how many movies she makes where she plays a blind brunette who regains her sight.

What did Lively post, you ask? Oh, ya know, just a photo of her passing the Brooklyn Bridge—seeing Lincoln Hawk, perhaps?—with the caption "Spotted," which is what Gossip Girl would notoriously say on her blog before spilling the tea. Lively's really leaning into her Serena-ness in this pic—even more than Vanessa leans into statement jewelry. Check it out for yourself, below:

Bless you, Blake Lively, for subtly admitting there will always be a part of you that wants to pretty-cry with Leighton Meester under an archway in Central Park. This photo is more extra than Rufus Humphrey's scarves, and we love it.

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