Why did Gossip Girl decide to have Chuck’s father Bart Bass fake his own death in its second season, only to bring him back and kill him off again in season 6? Gossip Girl (2007-2012) was practically a wealthy American teenage soap opera with its intense relationships, overly dramatic plotlines, and seemingly random deaths and family members that appeared out of nowhere. The rich group of teens in New York’s Upper East Side even deal with their parents’ drama and relationships almost as much as their own.

Bart Bass was suddenly killed off in Gossip Girl’s second season. Bart had married Serena Van der Woodsen’s mother Lily and hired a private investigator to dig into her past. At the end of the season 2 episode “It’s a Wonderful Lie,” Bart is apparently killed in a car crash with the private investigator. For three seasons, Bart is believed dead. In season 5, Bart returns, claiming he faked his death to protect his family. The death of Bart Bass in Gossip Girl originally made for an emotional episode, but bringing him back was not a popular storyline for fans.

The Reason Gossip Girl Killed Off Bart Bass

The Series Didn’t Need Chuck’s Father

Gossip Girl writers killed Bart in season 2 as a way to move different plot points forward. Bart’s death was a way to resolve Lily and Rufus getting together, see Chuck irresponsibly handle vast wealth, and throw another wrench in Chuck and Blair getting back together. Bart never really contributed much besides an interesting way to bring the Basses and Van der Woodsens together, and killing him off led to several dramatic storylines for the rest of the second season.

Chuck’s father wasn’t really needed throughout Gossip Girl considering he was never really a parental figure to Chuck who was practically a 30-year-old stuck in high school for the first half of the series. Bart’s marriage to Lily was never going to work out considering she was reluctant to marry him in the first place and was planning on leaving him for Rufus, so he was bound to be essentially written out anyway – a death just called for more drama.

The episode centering on the aftermath of his death, “O Brother, Where Bart Though?” is actually one of the best the show has to offer. Chuck spends much of the funeral for his father drunk, wallowing in his conflicted feelings, since he knows he should mourn the loss of his father, but also knows his father has always treated him poorly. It’s one of the best Chuck and Blair relationship episodes with the performances of Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick being standouts during Chuck’s emotional roller coaster.

Gossip Girl Made The Bart Bass Death Worse By Bringing Him Back

Fans Did Not Like The Return Of Bart Bass

To make one of Gossip Girl’s more ridiculous plot lines even more unrealistic, the writers decided to bring Bart back at the end of season 5 to become a bigger threat to Chuck. Bart’s original death was sudden and left mostly unexplained by Gossip Girl, but, in a major twist, he is found alive and well in a hotel room when Chuck and the gang investigate Diana Payne.

Bart explains that he survived the car crash and faked his own death. He paid the hospital to announce he was dead, so his competitors wouldn’t go after Chuck and Lily. Bart’s real estate competitors are apparently the kind of people who kill the families of those they want to beat to expensive pieces of property. Chuck then seeks out Andrew the P.I. and his competitor who wanted to murder him, having them arrested so that Bart can come out of hiding, not knowing his father is about to become one of Gossip Girl’s biggest villains.

Bart’s first death wasn’t quite dramatic enough even though it gave Ed Westwick great material to play, so Gossip Girl crafted a second series death for Bart that involved none other than his son Chuck. Bart returning meant Chuck could finally have a father again, but he ended up betraying him and completely cutting Chuck out of the company he just spent years running. Bart was turned into a cartoon villain for this second outing for the character, even trying to kill his own son, kidnapping Blair, and threatening Lily’s life when he had previously wanted to protect her.

The turn in Bart’s character to turn him into a supervillain is one of the hated storylines in Gossip Girl. In fact, both of Bart’s deaths are consistently voted among Ranker’s worst Gossip Girl storylines by fans because of their connection to one another even years after the series concluded.

In the final confrontation between Bart and Chuck in Gossip Girl season 6, a physical argument breaks out on a roof where Bart accidentally falls off the building. As he hangs onto a ledge, he begs Chuck and Blair to save him, but they let him fall to his death, ending his reign over the company and their lives. It also ended Bart’s time on the show, but it came right before the series finale, not allowing the audience to have another decent chapter of the series without the threat of Bart breathing down the necks of the characters.

Bart Bass’ Death Isn’t The Only Gossip Girl Plot Hole

Gossip Girl Often Ignored Continuity For The Sake Of New Storylines

Gossip Girl was a series that relied heavily on the drama of its relationships to create the stories for the show. As a result, there were quite a few plot holes in the series. Bart being alive again without the faking of his death making any sense was really the least of the show’s worries.

Bigger questions that viewers had while watching the show included things like what happened with Rufus and Lily’s son who vanished after attending their wedding. Or who really was Chuck’s mother since he mentioned her in the pilot, but then said she died in childbirth, and then thought he found her, only for that to be a lie? Gossip Girl didn’t always have the best continuity, preferring to retcon different story points in order to create maximum drama.

Of course, the biggest plot hole in Gossip Girl had to be the reveal that Dan Humphrey was actually the person behind the Gossip Girl blog. The reveal in the series finale created the biggest problem for most fans. Dan being Gossip Girl meant that he intentionally sabotaged his own relationships with both Serena and Blair, almost ruined his sister’s life, and actively stalked all the people he made friends with in high school. What’s worse was that the series had shots of him reading the Gossip Girl blog posts and reacting as if they were brand-new information, despite him being the person who wrote them.

It’s clear that during the Gossip Girl run, the writers changed their minds about different storylines, like bringing Bart Bass back to the show or making Dan Gossip Girl. As a result, plot holes might have been created for discerning fans, but the series still excelled at creating dramatic and emotional storylines to pull the audience in and keep them watching right up until the last episode.

Other TV Characters Who Were Killed Off More Than Once

Bart Bass Dying Twice In Gossip Girl Was Interesting, But Not Unique

Bart Bass may have died twice in Gossip Girl, but he’s not the only character in a TV show who died more than once. Bart’s fake death in Gossip Girl was a shock (to most fans, though some simply found it frustrating), but there have been many other death fake-outs on the small screen. Some notable examples include Michael and Sara in Prison Break, Ali in Pretty Little Liars, and Hopper in Stranger Things.

However, the fact that Bart then died for real does put the Gossip Girl death fakeout in a slightly different category. Few characters who had a fake death then went on to die for real. One of the most notable similar examples is, perhaps, Glenn in The Walking Dead. Early on in the show, an episode of TWD ended on a cliffhanger that seemed to indicate Glenn had been consumed by a mob of zombies.

This turned out to be a red-herring, as Glenn revealed that he escaped and was still alive and well in the following episode. However, Glenn then died for real in the season 7 premiere, “The Day Will Come When You Won’t Be”, when he was beaten to death by Negan. Bart Bass in Gossip Girl and Glenn in The Walking Dead remain rare examples of a fake death foreshadowing a real one in a TV show – though there are, of course, many characters on the small screen who have had multiple real deaths without any fakeouts.

TV show characters who really die multiple times more-or-less exclusively appear in sci-fi and fantasy shows, or sitcoms with particularly absurdist leanings. Kenny in South Park is perhaps the most famous example, as for many seasons it was a running gag that he would die in every single episode.

Another example is Alaric in The Vampire Diaries, who died a total of 9 times in TVD and its various spinoffs. However, given that Kenny exists in a show which doesn’t pay any mind to realism, and Alaric is in a universe where immortals and resurrection are commonplace, they can’t truly be compared to the two deaths of Bart Bass in Gossip Girl.