It's the beginning of the New School year in Manhattan and Gossip Girl is on top of everyone's return to the city with the help of her readers.
As the show starts the infamous Serena Vander Woodsen returns to New York City after disappearing off to boarding school for a year.
At the same time the little known Humphrey's also make an appearance, returning for the start of the school year.
Serena gets off to a running start and makes an appearance at Blair Waldorfs start of the school year party, where she lets Blair know that she is back for the school year.
When Nate finds out he thinks Serena has returned for him and goes looking for him, later confessing to Blair that he slept with Serena before she left.
In the meantime we find out that the real reason Serena returned to the city was because her brother, Eric, attempted suicide and is now in a rehabilitation center.
Serena takes her brother out shopping and runs into Sarah Humphrey shopping for Blair's party, Sarah gives Serena an invitation after Blair refused to.
After running into Dan and dropping her cell phone, Dan heads to The Palace to return it and Serena ends up asking Dan out in order to get out of Blair's party.
Jenny is ecstatic to be invited though and attends, but quickly finds herself the center of Chucks attention.
When Jenny is not able to deal with Chucks attention she texts Dan for help and he and Serena head over to rescue her off the rooftop.
Blair sees Serena at her party and is pissed that she is there, and goes off looking for Nate to make sure he does not speak to her.
In the meantime we find out that Dan's father Rufus and Serena's mother, Lily have something of a past, but neither is saying just how much - yet.