Once everyone has gathered themselves, checked the locks on the door, and taken a cold shower, perhaps we should talk about the Tell Me Lies season 3 ending. Because yeah, a lot happened.
We were all so innocent when we first met this crew of miscreants back in season 1. Wrigley and Pippa were in love. Bree was shooting her shot with Evan. And Lucy and Stephen’s nightmarish situationship had only just begun. To say that everything has changed by the season 3 finale episode would be a major understatement.
As series creator Meaghan Oppenheimer wrote in a letter to fans confirming that season 3 would be the final installment of the show, it was always going to end this way.
“I think I was very grateful to everyone at Hulu and 20th for allowing us to go darker and weirder and twistier and more surprising,” Oppenheimer tells Glamour in a post-mortem interview. “This season, they really trusted us.”
So let’s dive in. This is the Tell Me Lies ending, explained.
What happened with the tape?
First things first, we have to talk about that incriminating tape Stephen coerced Lucy into making. In the video Lucy admits to lying about being sexually assaulted and says she did it for attention. In the penultimate episode, Stephen returns the tape to Lucy, and she thinks she's free. But in the end, it gets released anyway.
Lucy initially thought that Stephen had made a copy of the tape and released it himself, but it turns out, it was actually Bree.
Having just discovered that Evan cheated on her with Lucy in freshman year, Bree is out for blood. She found the tape in Lucy’s things, we assume, and released it as revenge—not knowing that Lucy had been covering for Pippa the whole time.
Did Stephen ever get punished?
Everyone agrees that Stephen should have to pay for his crimes, but no one knows how to go about it. Lucy tries, and fails, to warn a Yale Law representative at a welcome brunch. Yet, in the middle of the episode, Stephen gets a call from the university, informing him that his acceptance has been rescinded after they discovered his unbecoming behavior.
Pippa had just told Wrigley about Stephen sending nude photos of Diana to her father. And apparently Wrigley passed this information on to Yale. The university representative tells Stephen his acceptance was revoked because they discovered he had been disseminating pornographic material of his classmates.
According to Oppenheimer, there was a lot of discussion in the writers's room about the way that men of this age tend to defend each other's worst behavior. “It is something that really devastates me about the world,” Oppenheimer said. “And so, it was just really important for me to have Wrigley break out of that, because he has been sort of turning a blind eye to Stephen, but he's now becoming more and more aware…Someone needs to stand up for these women, you know?”
What happened with Bree, Wrigley, and Evan?
The show tells us that Bree and Evan go through with their wedding ceremony before her affair with Wrigley had been resolved. Now we know that Wrigley and Bree never picked up where they left off after their first kiss. Not until Bree and Evan’s rehearsal dinner, which is when they have sex for the first time.
Oppenheimer says the Bree and Wrigley romance was a possibility from day one. “Which is why we threw in the line day one of episode one of, 'I'm stealing your wife. I'm stealing your wife.'”
After the ceremony, a few months later, Stephen grabs a microphone and reveals the truth to everyone—including about Wrigley and Bree’s affair. In response, all hell breaks loose, of course, including Evan getting in Wrigley’s face. However, throughout, Bree and Wrigley are seen gazing at each other across the dance floor, leading the audience to assume that they’re going to make their relationship official pretty soon.
Lauren Conrad, Britney Spears, and Avril Lavigne were on the mood board for Lucy.
What happened with Pippa and Diana?
At some point they must have gotten back together after their breakup in 2009. After the wedding ends in Stephen’s drama, the two of them leave together. So one can only assume they are happy.
Did anything happen to Oliver?
He and Marianne, with Amanda’s help, convince Bree’s mom that Bree has made their affair up in her head. They basically threaten to destroy Bree’s academic career if she tries to report Oliver. This was especially brutal coming from Marianne, who seemed for a moment to have taken pity on Bree.
“But it is just a nightmare," says Oppenheimer. "We had to push Bree to her absolute rock bottom, and have everyone in her world betray her, in order to get her to do what she does to Lucy, and also to choose to be with Evan, because she's going to do the safest thing, because everything that she thought she could trust, including her own mom, fails her.”
Did we ever find out why Stephen was sabotaging the wedding, by the way?
He’s Stephen. Does he need a reason?
“I had the story of the scorpion and the frog in my mind from day one with this season,” Oppenheimer tells Glamour. “This person who we're always asking, is he going to change? Is he going to do the right thing? Is he going to hurt her again? And I think the answer at the end is, of course. It was always inevitable that he was going to, because he's Stephen, and he's someone whose desire to win and to punish is stronger than his desire for his own happiness.”
Are Lucy and Stephen back together?
After Stephen reveals that Bree is the one who released the tape at Bree and Evan’s wedding, Lucy is feeling betrayed. So when he asks her to leave with him rather than stay with her friends, she does.
Of course, it’s not the happy ending she was picturing. They are barely out of town when Stephen abandons her at a gas station, proving that he only ever wanted to win. He never really loved her at all. So in one way, Lucy did get back together with Stephen at the end. In another, hopefully more permanent, way they are definitely not together anymore.
“Lucy, her laughter, it's just a moment of like, ‘Oh my God, of course.’ And I think I like that it's a moment of her maybe seeing the light, hopefully,” says Oppenheimer. "Maybe she's going to go on to happiness and actual healing now. Maybe she had to have that last blow of disappointment to finally be happy. Happy in the future."
Show creator Meaghan Oppenheimer had previously teased a continuation of the college-set melodrama.
