Fans are still reeling over Bart Bass faking his death in Season 5 of Gossip Girl.
Despite the hit CW drama ending over 10 years ago, audiences still talk about the star-making teen series.
The show experienced a recent bump in popularity thanks to its arrival on Netflix, which introduced its heightened drama to a new generation of TV viewers.
Bart Bass' Gossip Girl Death Plot Explained
Fans either revisiting Gossip Girl or experiencing the New York-based drama for the first time on streaming might be shocked to pull the curtain back on the death of Bart Bass and his eventual revival.
Bart Bass (Robert John Burke) is the father of series mainstay Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) and a wealthy businessman who has made a few enemies.
In a shocking turn of events, in Season 2 (following Blake Lively's Serena coming back from boarding school), Bart was mysteriously killed off by way of a tragic car crash.
He then disappeared from the series for more than three seasons. That was until the character miraculously reappeared in Season 5, reviving him and bringing him back from the dead.
In the episode "Raiders of the Lost Art" (Season 5, Episode 22), Bart comes back into Chuck's life, revealing that he had faked his death and been living his own life the entire time.
He said that the car accident was real, but everything after that was a ploy by him to hide in the shadows.
Instead of dying in a hospital bed (like the series had alluded to in Season 2), he paid off the medical institution to announce his death so that his enemies in the business world would not go after his son, Chuck, and wife, Lily.
As part of this plan, he lurked in the reeds, watching everything as it played out over the last couple of years. Part of this was getting his business rivals arrested (as they had planned to murder Bart), which finally allowed him to come out of hiding.
Bart's reemergence completely turns Chuck's life upside down. While early on, Ed Warwick's character is excited to finally have that void of a missing father figure filled, that does not last long.
The newly-revived Bart becomes one of the series' biggest antagonists in the latter seasons, as he tries to cut Chuck out of the family company and remove him from the seat his death had provided his son.
This culminates in Season 6, with a final confrontation between Chuck and his father. Arguing over Bart's nefarious acts atop a New York City, Bart accidentally slips from the rooftop, plummeting to his (second and final) death in the series.
Gossip Girl is streaming on Netflix.
