Why Lily Bass Is The Worst

Rewatching some of my favorite TV shows and movies as an adult has shifted my perspective on certain characters. Some characters I understand more, like why Stanley from The Office is so excited about Pretzel Day or why Charlie from Twilight is wary about Edward (let’s be real, Charlie is the most rational character in the series). Or why Rufus Humphrey in Gossip Girl is so hard on Jenny during her rebellious phase and why he sacrifices so much to provide his kids with the best education possible.

But other characters have become less understandable – and less likable – to me as I’ve aged. Specifically, characters like Lily Bass. Don't get me wrong, I think Lily is a fascinating character. She's fabulous (the older I get, the more I love her style) and messy enough to be on The Real Housewives of New York City, but she's certainly not a good person. You could argue that Gossip Girl is full of morally gray characters (at best), but Lily should be held to a higher standard than the teenagers, not only because she's an adult but as a parent of two teenagers who need their mother to guide them. She justifies most of her actions as “protecting her family,” but really, she’s just trying to protect her reputation in New York society.

The Three Worst Things Lily Bass Ever Did

As a show that’s famous for flawed characters and crazy plotlines, it's hard to decide which Gossip Girl character is the worst. After an extensive investigation (i.e., rewatching every episode), I've come to the conclusion that the absolute worst character of the whole show, hands down, is Lily Bass, Serena van der Woodsen's mother.

She Lied About Eric’s Hospitalization

During the very first episode, we learn that Eric, Lily's son and Serena's brother, is hospitalized at a mental health facility for attempting to take his own life. Instead of supporting him, she keeps it from her friends in New York high society by telling them he moved in with her sister in Florida. This enrages Serena (she has her flaws, but there's no denying she's a great sister to Eric), who feels like Lily is keeping him in the center long after he has recovered to maintain the facade of him moving away.

This incident demonstrates Lily’s primary character motivation, which is also her main flaw: She cares more about her image in society than about her family’s well-being. The good news is that she eventually comes around and supports Eric, but, sadly, it took Serena pressuring her to realize that she cared about her image more than her son’s mental health.

She Lied to Rufus About Their Son

One of the biggest plot twists in the second season of Gossip Girl is when we find out that Lily not only got pregnant with Rufus' baby when she was young but also kept it from him. While it's clear that Lily was young and scared when she was pregnant, she let her mother's prejudice toward Rufus' economic status and job as a musician convince her to have the baby in secret and give the baby up for adoption.

While Lily (and her mother) were likely convinced that this was best for everyone involved and preserved Lily's reputation, it hurt both Rufus and their son. After learning the truth, Rufus is understandably upset and does everything in his power to find him. The adoptive parents tell Lily and Rufus that their son died, but we learn in the third season that he's still alive and created a fake identity to meet his biological parents. While it was heartwarming to watch them all meet in the third season, the heartache could have been avoided if Lily had been honest with Rufus from the start.

She Sent an Innocent Man to Prison

In the fourth season, we learn that, in true Serena fashion, her time at boarding school was rife with scandal. The rumor that she was having an affair with her favorite teacher had the potential to ruin her (and her family's) reputation back in Manhattan, so of course Lily took the situation into her own hands.

Instead of letting the rumor blow over after learning that there was no affair, Lily forged Serena's signature on an affidavit accusing the teacher of statutory rape. This not only caused the teacher to be imprisoned for a few years for a crime that he didn't commit, but Lily was put under house arrest when she finally confessed to the crime. While she was later remorseful for what she did and claimed she was protecting her family, her lack of empathy toward an innocent man is jarring, to say the least.

Closing Thoughts

When it comes to Lily, I understand her even less as an adult than I did as a teenager. She claims that many of her problematic actions are to protect her children, but it's clear that she cares about her reputation and image more than them or the innocent people she hurts. While she grows throughout the series, it appears that she'll always put her image above everything else.

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