What an entrance Blake Lively made at the Met Gala ball on Monday night.

Only hours after the humiliation of settling the lawsuit she brought against former co-star Justin Baldoni, she ascended the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in archival 2006 Versace – waving an imperious finger to make sure that her male attendants arranged the train of the gown correctly.

The optics were everything. Garlanded with diamonds loaned by Lorraine Schwartz, she was here to reclaim her status as a gilded member of the elite, almost before the ink was dry on the agreement with Baldoni.

Inside, further power plays.

Lively was at one of the tables hosted by Anna Wintour – the Vogue boss is an old friend, and also happens to run the Met Gala, this year in conjunction with controversial sponsors Amazon billionaire founder Jeff Bezos and wife Lauren.

Nothing could more sweetly reaffirm that Blake was back with a capital ‘B’.

Seventeen months after launching the extraordinary lawsuit against Baldoni’s Wayfarer Studios accusing him of sexual harassment, Lively was inviting – or maybe commanding – that everyone should not only bow the knee to her beauty, style and connections but also forget the staggering ‘mean girl’ behaviour which was revealed in her megabucks lawsuit following the filming of the 2024 hit movie It Ends With Us.

Namely, how she’d removed control of the film from director Baldoni, whom she described to pal Taylor Swift as a ‘doofus’ and a ‘clown’; how she insisted on editing the film and on her edit being used, even though an executive at Sony said she was behaving like a ‘terrorist’; and how Baldoni and his family were not even permitted to watch the premiere in the same auditorium as Blake and her husband Ryan Reynolds, but ended up sitting in the basement.

‘The move of going to the Met Gala was not a business-as-usual move from Blake Lively, but actually just proved exactly what Wayfarer has been dealing with in terms of her character,’ says a source, who remains angry at this attempt to put a Blake-centric gloss on a long, ugly, expensive legal ordeal.

They add that this case has always been ruled by Blake’s ‘giant’ ego, so plainly on display on Monday.

‘Lives have been wrongfully put on hold due to what amounted to nothing more than the whim of an overinflated ego,’ said the source.

The joint statement announcing the end of the case, which was released on Monday afternoon, ran: ‘The end product – the movie “It Ends With Us” – is a source of pride to all of us who worked to bring it to life. Raising awareness, and making a meaningful impact in the lives of domestic violence survivors – and all survivors – is a goal that we stand behind.

‘We acknowledge the process presented challenges and recognize concerns raised by Ms Lively deserved to be heard. We remain firmly committed to workplaces free of improprieties and unproductive environments. It is our sincere hope that this brings closure and allows all involved to move forward constructively and in peace, including a respectful environment online.”

Since then there has been a brave, if unconvincing, attempt by Blake’s PR team, presumably at the urging of her uber agent Ari Emanuel at WME, to sell the end of the saga as a win.

The respected entertainment website Deadline – which relies on advertising from big film studios – reported: ‘Baldoni blinked’ in their coverage of the settlement.

But let’s look at the facts. Blake Lively brought the legal action, claiming to have suffered sexual harassment on set followed by a poisonous PR campaign against her. She has dropped it one month after a disastrous judgement which threw out ten of her 13 claims on the grounds of harassment, defamation and and conspiracy.

Judge Liman let three remaining claims stand: breach of contract, retaliation and aiding and abetting in retaliation.

Justin Baldoni and the team at his film studio Wayfarer have not apologised to her. Nor have they paid her a single dollar.

The agreed statement also makes no mention of the instances of sexual harassment by Baldoni which Lively introduced into public view, nor does it refer to the ‘retaliatory campaign’ which she insisted Baldoni set in motion.

Baldoni’s argument was that Lively’s ‘mean girl’ behaviour before the film and around its release was to blame for the media discourse, not the crisis PR team whom he hired when – sidelined at the premiere and unfollowed by Lively and his co-stars – he feared his reputation was heading for the shredder.

There are a number of important things to note about the end of the saga. One is that the parties are not bound, as would be customary, by a non disclosure agreement.

I can also reveal that while they aren’t allowed to discuss the terms of the settlement, beyond that they are not gagged. And Baldoni is determined to have his say in the coming weeks and months.

There will be a full sit-down interview to come – he’s yet to decide in which outlet. He then plans to write a book which will be at least in part about this extraordinary saga which saw one of the most powerful women in Hollywood apparently hell-bent on destroying somebody no one had much heard of before the film.

During legal action the actor, director and producer moved with wife Emily and their two young children from California and they are now based in Nashville, Tennessee.

‘He very much likes Nashville and they are looking forward to making it their home,’ says a friend.

He intends – hopes – to pick up the threads of his film making career.

I am told: ‘He will carry on working, he still has his film studio.’

But will anyone want to work with him?

A ‘high level’ female studio executive told US entertainment website Page Six: ‘Justin doesn’t have enough value in the market to overcome the suspicion that he may have created an unsafe set. I’m not sure he could cast a movie right now.

‘Blake will have to take a break and take a cut on her first paycheck, but she’s still a movie star.’

But not everyone thinks that he has come out so badly. A male talent manager tells the outlet: ‘Most of Hollywood knows what’s up. Yeah, maybe he’s a weirdo, but he didn’t commit any crime. Blake did this to herself whether they will admit it or not.’

Another male executive says: ‘I think she can be in some TV show, but she’s hurt the worst since he can finance his own movies.’

In the immediate future, of course, there is a very big bill to pay.

Both sides hired teams of lawyers from a number of different firms, all extremely expensive.

Lively actually added a team from premier litigation firm Sussman Godfrey in the final weeks while the settlement was being thrashed out.

Because the fight included a defamation action (thrown out by the judge) against the New York Times for first reporting the lawsuit and another legal action for defamation and extortion (also thrown out by the judge) against Blake Lively by Wayfarer, not to mention legal actions between rival publicists, it has been expensive beyond belief.

Industry papers are reporting a final bill of $60 million. However I am told that the sums involved are actually ‘over $100 million.’

Who pays? They both do. Under the terms of the confidential settlement, it can be revealed that each party will be responsible for their own fees. This is very bad news for them both, although Blake’s husband Ryan Reynolds is worth $400 million thanks to his investments in tech and gin. Baldoni’s portion is being underwritten by billionaire Wayfarer co-founder Steve Sarowitz.

Reaching the ‘stalemate’ settlement has been extortionately expensive.

Those close to the fray say that Blake Lively has been ‘desperate’ to settle ever since the ruling by Judge Doug Liman on April 4th.

This puts a new context on the ‘victorious’ statements released by her and her attorney immediately after the ruling.

Lively’s attorney Sigrid McCawley said: ‘For Blake Lively, the greatest measure of justice is that the people and the playbook behind these coordinated digital attacks have been exposed and are already being held accountable by other women they’ve targeted.’

Lively also responded on Instagram, saying: ‘The last thing I wanted in my life was a lawsuit, but I brought this case because of the pervasive RETALIATION I faced, and continue to, for privately and professionally asking for a safe working environment for myself and others.

‘I hope the Court’s decision shows others that, as unfathomably painful as it is, you can speak up.’

Behind the scenes, even after claiming a ‘moral victory’, I’m told Lively was ‘desperate’ to settle and didn’t want to go to court to try and prove that she had been a victim of retaliation.

A source says: ‘Everyone on the legal team told her to settle as so much was wrong with the case. She was desperate to settle. She and her legal team were the ones pushing for a settlement even one where no money changed hands at all.’

The issue seems to have been that it was a technically flawed case – the harassment suit was thrown out because Lively had not signed her Actor Loanout Agreement [a contract where an actor’s personal service company contracts with a production company to provide the actor’s services, rather than the actor contracting directly] so she wasn’t technically an employee of Wayfarer.

But aside from this, the wealth of texts and emails showing Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds apparently aggressively spinning and scheming against Baldoni - one email from Reynolds referred to Baldoni as‘a bucket of dumb dumb juice’ - only reinforced the impression that she was the aggressor, not him.

As my source says: ‘The world can see what she did by her own words and the texts and emails she wrote.’

It’s been wisely observed that if Blake had done nothing after the premiere of the movie in 2024, her reputation would have been largely intact and the drama of the controversial press tour – with the cast unfollowing Baldoni and Lively drawing criticism for selling the domestic violence picture as a chick flick – would have passed.

‘It was for no good reason except to show that Ryan and Blake had power and he and his team didn’t,’ notes the source of the legal action, adding that the couple appeared to want to ‘destroy’ Baldoni.

Meanwhile Baldoni has contended with damaging allegations that he was a sexual creep which the judge found unconvincing.

Judge Liman wrote of Baldoni’s conduct in a complained-of scene: ‘He was acting in the scene. Assuming he was improvising, the conduct was not so far beyond what might reasonably be expected to take place between two characters during a slow dancing scene…’

Lively’s complaints about fat shaming, when Baldoni had asked her personal trainer how much she weighed, were also not harassment said the judge. ‘The conduct cannot reasonably be viewed as expressing hostility to Lively as a woman or to women in general.’

Baldoni’s team are now concentrating on the remaining legal action, which is between PR boss Stephanie Jones whose firm was representing Baldoni and Jen Abel, an employee of Stephanie’s who left her service, taking Baldoni with her.

Jen Abel is suing Stephanie Jones for defamation after Jones handed over messages from Abel’s company mobile phone to Blake Lively’s publicist.

‘She lit the match,’ says the source of Jones.

The expectation is that Blake Lively will do an interview in which will carefully talk about her charity work, revolving around online behaviour. She has notably not mentioned the issue of sexual harassment since the judge’s ruling in April.

Will people buy into a concern for online niceties from the woman who – notoriously – snarked ‘congratulations on your little bump’ to a (not pregnant) journalist who offered congratulations to her? Time will tell.

My source says: ‘Everyone is ecstatic about the result this week, but it is bittersweet.

‘She has put so many women and their children through the shredder for two years because she couldn’t handle that people don’t like her.

‘That’s all it amounted to. She couldn’t bear that.’