not the ggwriters

Gossip Girl | Spotted: A body bag on Gossip Girl?! Sources confirm that the CW soap’s penultimate episode will feature a plane crash! The flight manifesto is being kept under tight wraps, but the Inside Line is that at least one major character is on board. Who do you suspect/fret might buy it before GG says goodbye? Hit the comments with your predictions.

9 pm Gossip Girl (The CW) | Final season premiere: Chuck and Blair make a promise to each other that winds up with them apart, Dan and Georgina (?!) work together on a scathing tell-all and Serena’s gone missing — though when the group finds her, there aren’t enough OMG!s in the world to adequately describe their shock. Barry Watson (7th Heaven) and Andrea Gabriel (Lost) guest-star.

Gossip Girl, which is entering its final, 10-episode season, might wrap things up with a retrospective special à la One Tree Hill‘s own send-off. “I’m a big believer in retrospectives and a big believer in allowing the audience to say farewell to their shows,” the network boss said. “It’s important for us on this side of the fence to give a satisfactory ending.” Would the GG cast tape talking-head segments for any such special? “I hope so,” answered Pedowitz. “It would not be as good of a retrospective special [without them], would it?”

Question: Seeing as how Gossip Girl is starting filming very soon, have you got any new info you can share with us? —Danielle
Ausiello: Things are looking up for the drug-addled, friendless basket case that is Serena: I’m hearing she’ll be getting a major new love interest for the sixth and final season — one with the potential to sweep her off her feet and ride her… off into the sunset. What did you think I was going to say?

Question: Your latest Blind Item about the fall wedding — is it an ABC primetime show? Jacklyn
Ausiello: Sure ain’t. The show in question airs on The CW.

WARNING: If you have yet to watch Monday’s season finale of Gossip Girl, avert your eyes now. Everyone else, you may proceed….

Broken hearts, sex tapes and a whole lot of texting — it must be finale time on Gossip Girl. But while some relationships came to an end in Monday’s Season 5 capper, an old one started to rekindle when Blair finally admitted that her heart belongs to Chuck. So will the couple get their happy ending? Are things really over with Dan? And will Serena spiral? Executive producer Stephanie Savage weighs in on all of those questions and previews what’s in store during the farewell season.

THE FINAL GAME PLAN | As the series heads into its final season, it’ll be going back to its roots. “Getting ready for Season 6, everybody rewatched the pilot,” says Savage. “We talked about what our favorite episodes were, some of our favorite dynamics. … We’re leaving it all on the floor. We really want [the last episodes] to count and to be really special.” Part of the mission statement is focusing on the core characters. “The gang that you see in that final act [of the Season 5 finale] is going to be the main players when we come back.” And yes, that includes Georgina, who Dan called upon to help him eviscerate the Upper East Side in his new book after getting dumped by Blair and used by Serena. So just how nasty will his quest get? “When you call in Georgina Sparks, you’re not looking to [play nice],” hints Savage.

BLAIR’S HEART | The former princess may have chosen the Dark Knight, but Chuck was tired of putting her first and losing everything, including his Bass Empire. Still, Blair showed up at a Parisan casino where Chuck was gambling to earn back his fortune. “It was Blair coming to declare that she was in it to win it with Chuck and leaving that [relationship’s future] as the question of Season 6,” previews Savage. And for the Dair ‘shippers out there, we’re afraid we don’t have good news for you. “We crafted the last act of the episode to set us in a certain direction next year,” says Savage.

RELATED | Gossip Girl Renewed For Shortened Final Season, Sara Goodman to Succeed Josh Safran as EP

SERENA’S DOWNFALL | In a deliberate echo to the pilot, Serena took off on a train and went back to her old, bad habits, using drugs and hooking up with strangers. “Feeling like she’s lost Blair, lost Dan, she’s all by herself again,” explains Savage. “It’s going to put her in a pretty precarious situation.” Meanwhile, that sex tape she made of herself and Dan may rear its ugly head again. “Well, if somebody had a sex tape on their cell phone, and they said they deleted it, but you never really saw that it was deleted…” the EP trails off. Yeah, we can do the math on that one.

NATE: YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME | Nate will “be tracking down” the mysterious figure in the video Diana sent him, who could be Gossip Girl. But unraveling the indenity of the infamous blogger “is something that has larger implications to the franchise beyond just our series,” explains the EP. “That reveal requires conversations at the highest level.” While Nate may have gotten a major clue in the war against Gossip Girl, he won’t be so lucky in the romance department next season. Ella Rae Peck, who plays Lola, is starring in NBC’s new drama seriesInfamous, so “it seems like she’s not going to be available to do the show next year.” Poor Nate, will he ever find lasting love? “That’s something that’s a big part of his series arc, and something that we’re going to be exploring next year.”

A MARRIAGE ON THE ROCKS | With Lily deciding to get annulled from Rufus and stay married to Bart, that love triangle will be put in an “interesting spot… That’s something that’s really exciting for Season 6, to see how that is going to shake up and what’s the endgame for those two characters.”

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Spotted: The finish line.

The CW has renewed Gossip Girl for a sixth and final season of 11 episodes, TVLine has learned.

RELATED | Gossip Girl Season Finale First Look — Blair Chooses… [Spoiler]

What’s more, showrunner Stephanie Savage — who developed the show with Josh Schwartz — has promoted Co-EP Sara Goodman to exec producer, replacing Smash-bound Josh Safran.

Gossip Girl joins fellow returning CW dramas Supernatural, Hart of Dixie, The Vampire Diaries, 90210 andNikita.

TVLine’s 2012 Renewal Scorecard has been updated with the news.

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Question: When will Dan and Blair say those three magic words to each other on Gossip Girl? They will say them, right? —Lolita
Ausiello: One of them will. The other one won’t be quite ready to go there.

Question: Why so awesome, Ausiello? Is there some kind of vitamin you take or were you just born that way? Can I now have a Gossip Girl scoop? —Alice
Ausiello: An extraordinary ass-kissing begets an equally extraordinary scoop: In an upcoming episode, the role of Blair will be played by… Blake Lively. Now go ahead and decipher that little brain teaser in the comments. I’m very curious to see what you come up with.

Question: I’m loving all the Dan/Blair stuff we’re getting right now on Gossip Girl. But can you give us anything about Dan and Georgina’s supposed scene in the finale? – Grace

Ausiello: LOL!!!!!! Oh, sorry. I’m still laughing at that joke about me possibly being wrong. I crack myself up sometimes. Anywho, I don’t have any intel on Dan/Georgina, but I can tell you that there is huge twist coming that (I have to imagine) will impact the Dan/Blair/Chuck triangle.

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Question: Give us a scoop about a Gossip Girl/Dair moment in the future that you can’t wait to see? —Ivana
Ausiello: There’s a fairly epic kiss on the horizon. That should be pretty cool. Also, look for Dan to make a pretty big professional sacrifice during May sweeps — in the name of love.

Question: Do you know anything about Gossip Girl and the possible reunion of Blair and Chuck? Give us some hope for true love. —Gabby
Ausiello: Would you settle for some truly heartbreaking news regarding another GG duo? You would? Awesome. Thanks for being so flexible. Exec producer Josh Safran confirms that Lily and Rufus are headed for a rough patch — and it’s caused by their recent move across the East River. “There is a lot of relationship drama [coming up] for Lily and Rufus,” he says. “Let’s just say a tree may grow in Brooklyn, but Lily van der Woodsen does not. She is a Manhattan girl at heart and her transition is not going to last very long.”

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