'Gossip Girl' Reboot Surprises Fans With Villainous Return From Original Series

The name Georgina Sparks (Michelle Trachtenberg) has made a return in the HBO Max Gossip Girl revival. Fans remember the son Sparks gave birth to in the fourth season of the original series. While she originally told Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgely) the child was his, she eventually came clean and revealed that the child belonged to a Russian man named Serge Ivanov. Well, the baby (Milo) who's now 10 years old, makes an appearance in the fourth episode entitled "Fire Walks With Z."

Milo (Azhy Robertson) walks up to Zoya (Whitney Peak) on the steps of New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art after Julien (Jordan Alexander) wages war on her birthday and offers some assistance. "Clearly, you don't know who I am," he says. "My last name is Sparks — really Ivanov. But in this day and age, it's best to leave that out." He's met with the cold shoulder from Zoya, but he goes on anyway. "Google is your friend," he continues. "Once you use it, I will be, too." The duo then caught up with each other at his home, where viewers can see mom Georgina has an awful lot of photos centered around Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester). "My mom taught me early on that it isn't enough to go to war," he says. "Wars never end. What you need is a coup."

"The idea that Georgina has a shrine to Blair in her house is just so much fun," showrunner Joshua Safran explained to TVLine. "Of all these people she's around in her life, her target is still Blair. She has to see Blair's face every day to energize her. Or to be inspired to do evil." The decision to include a character from the original story came after some thought from the showrunner.

"At first, we were like, 'Do we bring people back from the original?' I would die to have Michelle on the show, but we made the decision—and I fully support the decision—to let the audience get to know the new characters before hopefully bringing some people back," Safran told TVLine. "So we thought of who we could bring back without making the audience feel like they were missing out if they didn't get a whole episode about them. If we were to bring back Serena for one scene, you'd say, 'No, I want a whole episode about Serena!' Until you know our characters, we can't take their real estate away. So we thought of someone we could bring in who wouldn't overtake the story. I've always been obsessed with Milo, having been there when he was invented, and the idea of where he would be now was too delicious to pass up."