I published an article a few days ago, comparing the similarities between Jenny Humphrey from Gossip Girl and Cassie Howard from Euphoria, but a couple people mentioned in my comment section that Serena van der Woodsen from Gossip Girl might be a little more similar to Cassie than Jenny!

And I have to say, I absolutely agree. It’s 100% true that Serena and Cassie have an endlessly long list of similarities.

I’m an independent pop culture journalist, and I’ve seen every single episode of Gossip Girl and every single episode of Euphoria, so here is my analysis of why Serena and Cassie are damn near the same character.

Serena & Cassie are both blonde bombshells

Starting with appearances, Serena and Cassie obviously have a lot in common. From a baseline perspective, they are both beautiful, blonde, young women with blue eyes, pouty lips, pristine makeup, and slender hourglass figure bodies with big boobs.

As far as their fashion senses go, Serena and Cassie, both dress the part to come across as it girls on their high school campuses.

Serena could have been held back by her schoolgirl uniform at Constance, but she never was because she knew how to accessorize her uniform every single time she had to walk across campus.

And she also dressed to the nines anytime she was off campus going on dates, socializing with friends, going to parties, and everywhere else. Cassie was never held back by a uniform, and her fashion sense was typically always on point, just as much as Serena‘s.

The way they BOTH dressed allowed them to hide some of their insecurities. I’m not referring to the obvious wearing baggy clothes to hide their bodies. Because neither of them were ever insecure about their bodies.

But Serena‘s style served as strategic emotional armor. We know that Serena was constantly feeling insecure about her reputation following her everywhere.

She went and the fact that she had a lack of direction for her future. So her clothes worked as a shield to distract the world from judging her as hard as she thought the world was judging her.

For Cassie, dressing in revealing clothing to show off more skin. All the time is an obvious sign that she wanted to appeal to people as much as possible, based on her looks, likely out of the fear that no one would ever want her or want to be around her if they didn’t think she was pretty enough. The cause of both their insecure feelings were a bit different, but they both dealt with insecurity nevertheless.

Serena & Cassie’s insecurities made them both crave male validation

So let’s talk about how their insecurity translated into their need for constant male validation. Starting with Serena.

Serena‘s track record on Gossip Girl with men was beyond chaotic, and no one can deny that.

Pretty much every single relationship Serena found herself in was toxic AF. Her relationship with Ben Donovan was a problem because the first time they met, he was her teacher at boarding school.

Even though he rejected her advances while she was a teenager, they eventually started dating after she graduated, which was bizarre. Her relationship with Gabriel Edwards was also problematic because he ended up being a con man and grifter who swindled her closest friends and family out of their money.

Her relationship with Vanderbilt wasn’t affair because he was a married politician while she was a freshly 18-year-old girl working on his staff.

Her relationship with Carter Baizen always read me the wrong way because Carter was generally never a good person through the majority of gossip girl. And the list goes on and on.

Even Serena‘s ultimate love story ending with Dan Humphrey was toxic. She married the man who stalked her, cyber bullied her, and humiliated her for years.

As far as Cassie goes, we witnessed her go through two complex, romantic connections, so far in the show. Her relationship with McKay showcase a clear example of how insecurity plays out in a relationship and the way unspoken expectations will quietly destroy intimacy between two people.

On the surface, they looked like a normal couple, but beneath the surface, they were never actually aligned.

McKay struggled with masculinity since he tied his entire identity to being taken seriously as a black athlete, navigating a predominantly white and hyper competitive college sports environment.

He always felt pressured to prove himself, and his own insecurity leaked into his relationship with Cassie, causing him to consistently push her away. And because of that, it sent Cassie spiraling down the path of questioning her own self-worth.

And then her relationship with Nate was far worse than her relationship with McKay because she felt like she had to perform to be good enough for him at all hours of the day.

We saw evidence of this when she woke up at four in the morning to start her beauty routine in order to make herself pretty enough to match up to Nate standards.

Then the fact that they kept their relationship a dirty little secret added another layer of toxicity.

Serena & Cassie were both willing to betray their besties

Which brings me to the third similarity between Serena and Cassie, which is that they were both willing to betray their best friends in pursuit of attention from boys.

We saw Serena do this to Blair Waldorf, who was supposed to be her all-time best friend forever.

She drunkenly hooked up with Nate Archibald at the Shepherd wedding, even though she knew that Nate and Blair were promising to save their virginities for each other.

Serena was kind of an attention whore and she didn’t consider the pain she would cause her own best friend when she decided to make the drunk and sloppy decision to hook up with Nate.

Obviously, Nate is at fault for cheating on Blair as well, but he is not the character I’m analyzing right now.

Instead of thinking about the future of her friendship with Blair, Serena only thought about herself which was selfish and immature.

Cassie is incredibly similar to Serena because she did the same exact thing to Maddy.

She knew Maddy and Nate had an extremely complex connection since they were off and on, but she still decided to hook up with Nate anyway, knowing that Maddy would eventually most likely have plans to reconcile with Nate.

She tried to justify her decision by arguing that Maddy and Nate were broken up before she slept with them for the first time, but what she did was still inexcusable in the eyes of anyone who understands what girl code is.

Serena & Cassie BOTH struggled with daddy issues

Let’s talk about the way their daddy issues heavily influenced both of them to turn out the way they did. Starting with Serena.

Serena’s dad, William left the family which caused a slew of problems in the household.

Serena turned to a promiscuous lifestyle of hooking up with guys, dabbling in illegal substances, and not really practicing much self-love.

Her little brother, Eric, attempted to self-unalive himself. And their mother, Lily was left to try and pick up the pieces on her own.

William’s choice to abandon his fatherly duties left a seriously messed up mark on the family, and it’s one of the big reasons why we saw Serena making so many mistakes with boys.

Girls you grew up with daddy issues tend to make poor decisions in their love lives.

We have so many shares of evidence backing up Serena‘s daddy issues connecting to her messy love life.

In Euphoria, Cassie‘s dad struggled with addiction and decided to abandon his family as well.

Cassie was left feeling unwanted, unimportant, and as if she had no value.

Her daddy issues caused her to start feeling incredibly insecure, pushing her in the direction of trying to seek as much male validation as possible to fill the void her father left in her life.

She wanted to fill the hole that was in her heart with attention from guys so that she wouldn’t feel so rejected an empty from the actions of her father.

Serena & Cassie were both humiliated on Gossip Girl & Euphoria

Another massive similarity between Serena and Cassie is the fact that they both went through extreme humiliation at different times in their lives in front of people who they feared being judged by.

In Serena‘s case, she went through constant and consistent humiliation with different Gossip Girl rumors always being posted about her on the Internet for the world to see.

There’s a long list of times Serena did super cringe things, including the time she got addicted to posting as Gossip Girl when she went on a short lived power trip, the time when her own mother had her arrested for theft, and the time when she tried to seduce and record a hook up with Dan Humphrey, who caught her in the act and shut her down before she could get away with it.

And that’s barely scratching the surface with all the times Serena went through humiliating moments and experiences.

For Cassie on Euphoria, two of her most humiliating moments happened when Rue Bennett told everyone that Cassie was secretly sleeping with Nate Jacobs, which was the moment Maddy also found out and started threatening physical violence against Cassie.

And secondly, when Cassie‘s little sister Lexi put on the school play and showed off some of Cassie‘s most embarrassing moments, including the time Cassie pleasured herself on a carnival ride in front of a bunch of random people.

Cassie was so distraught that her own little sister would expose her that way that she ended up storming under the stage and having a massive meltdown which actually made her moment of humiliation even worse.

Serena & Cassie both messed with drugs on Gossip Girl & Euphoria

The sixth similarity between Serena and Cassie is their willingness to actually consume illegal substances.

When I compared Jenny and Cassie in a separate article, I mentioned Jenny’s willingness to sell illegal substances, but Jenny never actually consumed any of it for herself.

Serena on the other hand had a history of doing way more than just drinking alcohol.

She messed with some of the most serious and illegal things you can think of, and it actually caused her to have one of the most dramatic night of her life when a guy she was friends with named Pete accidentally OD’d in the hotel room, she was partying in.

For Cassie, we watched her papa pill, no questions asked, and with zero hesitation at the school, carnival, which just served as proof that she’s kind of down to do whatever and try whatever at any given time without thinking too deeply into the long-term repercussions.

And we also saw her get so drunk on the night she was hanging out with her friends in the hot tub that she threw up on everybody when the conversation between Nate and Maddy started making her feel sick to her stomach.

Serena & Cassie both had slightly jealous siblings to deal with

A major similarity between Serena and Cassie is that they both deal with younger sibling jealousy.

In Serena‘s case, she generally has a good relationship with her younger brother Eric, but he did admit that living in her shadow was never an easy thing to deal with.

Eric is a quieter and more grounded character in gossip girl compared to Serena, who is a total it girl with a dramatic lifestyle that garners constant attention from everyone in the world.

Eric always fades into the background compared to Serena, and it’s something he actually noticed and mentioned in the pilot episode of the show when he was still hospitalized for his self-unaliving attempt.

And in Cassie’s case, we know that her younger sister Lexi had a lot of unspoken jealousy living in Cassie’s shadow.

Lexi is also beautiful girl with a lot going for her as an intelligent high school student with creativity in the theater department, but visually speaking, it’s obvious that Cassie stands out a lot more in comparison.

And that unspoken jealousy from Lexi came to the surface with her school play.

The BFF dynamic in Gossip Girl & Euphoria

Eighth, they both have powerful and equally beautiful best friends who seem a lot more sure of themselves.

For Serena, having Blair as a best friend wasn’t always the easiest thing to deal with, not because Serena was ever super jealous of Blair, but simply for the fact that Blair was so sure of herself, confident in her skin, and willing to aggressively take charge to maintain control over her life.

Serena in comparison was constantly spiraling and allowing her life to fall apart in one way or another.

Blair‘s bold and fearless confidence often made Serena look chaotic and unstable in comparison.

And in Cassie‘s case, having Maddy as a best friend actually did cause Maddy to second-guess herself, since she was well aware that Maddy is an incredibly powerful, beautiful, and dominating energy in every room she enters.

Because Maddy’s fearlessness is impossible to ignore or deny, Cassie was always left to question herself in comparison to Maddy, even though Maddie was never even trying to compete with Cassie.

Cassie & Serena were always idealized by men

Ninth, they’re both idealized by guys who place them on unrealistic pedestals and project ridiculous fantasies onto them.

However, when they both make mistakes and are seen as human beings, they are resented for not living up to the perfect and flawless fantasy.

Because of this, they have both internalized the importance of the male gaze and learn how to play into the male gaze.

Seeing themselves as objects to be desired instead of humans to be respected became super normal for both Serena and Cassie.

For Serena, specifically, Dan Humphrey put her on a pedestal and thought she was perfect, which is why he initially made her the star subject of his Gossip Girl blog.

But as he got to know her on a deeper level and actually got to know her as a person, he started idealizing her less and less.

And with Cassie, we’ve seen evidence of Nate idealizing her, specifically in the dream sequence he had of her becoming his wife and the mother of his future child.

Ultimately, no one is perfect, and that includes Cassie, and the dream sequence he envisioned of her stemmed from his own fantasy world of expectations that may or may not ever materialize.

Unhealed trauma plagued both Serena & Cassie

Tenth, they’re both brimming with unhealed trauma that negatively impacts their mental health.

For starters, they’re both very good at avoiding accountability. They lean into playing the damsel in distress with tears and confusion as their shield instead of being willing to apologize when they know they’re wrong.

They both have deep seated fears of being ordinary, so they cling to their outward beauty and desirability as being the only thing that makes them special.

They are both extremely guilty of self sabotage because they are more comfortable in chaos than stability and stability often makes them feel bored or like they’re doing something wrong because it lacks passion.

They both struggle with placing boundaries of respect on other people, whether those boundaries are emotional, sexual, relational, or something else.

Lines meant to separate Serena and Cassie from other people end up getting blurred very fast.

They both use their sexuality as currency because they believe their beauty is what makes them worthwhile, and even if this isn’t something they’re doing consciously, it’s something they do instinctively.

All in all, I really do believe that Serena and Cassie have a lot in common in their respective shows.