The most jaw-dropping Gossip Girl twists never come from those you'd expect. Forget about Kate Keller cozying up to Zoya's dad, Max sending a sex tape to Gossip Girl, or Julien and Obie making out mid-protest. The real juicy cliffhanger in the Gossip Girl mid-season finale came when Aki's dad asked his son to stay away from Julien.
"Just for a little while at least, stay away from Julien," Aki's dad Roger said in his ominous message. "If you call me back, I'll talk you through it." Talk about a curveball. I didn't even realize Roger knew who Julien was. At first, I thought maybe he was asking Aki to stay away from Julien because he saw her at the Navy Yard protest. She has a lot of followers, so seeing her publicly protest Obie's mother's development and Aki's dad's potential involvement could be bad PR. But then, it was Obie who was organized the protest in the first place. He was the one live-streaming from the Navy Yard, not Julien. Why would Aki's dad go out of his way to mention Julien and not Obie if what he was really concerned about was the optics of the protest? No, there must be more going on.
To be clear: it's hard for me to take anything Aki's dad says too seriously. This is the man who, hours before leaving this cryptic voicemail, outed his son as "gay" on national television, despite the fact that he never even talked to Aki about it (and that his son self-identifies as bisexual). However, in this instance, Roger Menzies might actually know what he's talking about. Thanks to Zoya's confrontational nature, we know that Roger runs a global "right wing propaganda machine" and that his publications have been accused of wiretapping (it's all very Rupert Murdoch). In other words, he's got access to information others wouldn't have, and lots of it. If you have a secret, Roger is going to know about it.
So, what is Julien's big secret and why in the world would Aki's dad even care? According to Gossip Girl showrunner Joshua Safran, whatever Roger is talking about has something to do with Monet and Luna. "I don't want to give too much away," he told Teen Vogue. "But I just think that Monet and Luna have a perspective on Roger's voicemail at the end of Episode 6 that ends up becoming this big thing in the back half."
OK, there's a lot to unpack there. First, the promise that this voicemail becomes a "big thing" in the second half of the season suggests that whatever it is goes beyond Julien's presence at one random protest. Second, the idea that Monet and Luna are involved coupled with Roger's wiretapping past has me thinking that Roger is warning Aki about a potentially huge Julien scandal. My guess is that one of his many publications (probably a Daily Mail-esque tabloid) is about to publish something very unflattering about Julien, possibly tied to her bullying ways and her cutthroat path to becoming an Influencer with Monet and Luna's help. Maybe Monet, still angry with Julien, leaked something Julien wanted to keep hidden — something that could ruin her and the people around her.
Whatever it is, it sounds like it's going to get worse before it gets better, starting with the fact that we have to wait until Gossip Girl returns with new episodes on November. "XOXO," indeed.
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Image: HBO Max