The Tell Me Lies season 2 finale had everything from plot twists to deaths to breakups — but what does that mean for season 3?
Based on Carola Lovering’s novel of the same name, Tell Me Lies follows the messy relationship between college students Lucy (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen (Jackson White). Their problematic on-and-off romance ends up lasting eight years — and everyone around them is affected by Lucy and Stephen’s ups and downs.
Season 2, which debuted in August, picked up months after Stephen blindsided Lucy by ending their toxic relationship. That split is just the beginning because by the end of her sophomore year they are once again an item. In present day, meanwhile, Stephen and Lucy cross paths again and have sex despite both being in serious relationships with other people.
Stephen has something up his sleeve though because it turned out he knew that Evan (Branden Cook) and Lucy hooked up in college. While at the time he seemed cool with it, he waited until Evan’s wedding to Lucy’s friend Bree (Cat Missal) to blow everything up. There is also Wrigley’s (Spencer House) story line which ended in tragedy after he finally reunited with Drew (Benjamin Wadsworth) in the season 2 finale — only to have his stepbrother die by accident from an overdose.
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Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer spoke to Us Weekly about how the writers’ room juggles the story lines that happen across two timelines.
“I always had a sense of where they are in 2015 and what their dynamic is and what secrets everyone is holding. Once you at least know what people know and what they don’t know, that gives you a lot of space to play,” she noted. “But the way that we constructed it is we definitely did the 2008 storyline first in the room. We kind of mapped out the whole season and then we did 2015 as its own thing.”
Oppenheimer continued: “I knew where I wanted to end the season, though, in 2015. I knew where it needed to get to.”
Tell Me Lies has yet to be renewed for season 3 but keep scrolling for answers to some of our biggest questions so far:
Was It Always the Plan to Kill Off Drew?
After a year-long estrangement, Drew came back into Wrigley’s life. It didn’t last long though because their night out took a turn when Drew mixed alcohol with some pills Wrigley gave him and ultimately died from an overdose.
“It’s funny because I actually thought initially that Drew would die at the end of season 1. That was my plan always from the beginning,” Oppenheimer revealed to Us. “It just didn’t work that way so I decided to keep it open. But I knew that he needed to die eventually, which was so sad because Ben is so lovely and such a good actor.”
Oppenheimer actually considered changing the direction of the story, adding, “At the start of season 2, I was like, ‘Does he have to die? Could we bring him back for more?’ But there was no way to incorporate that story because he’d been kicked out of school. It was one of those sad things that had to happen.”
House, meanwhile, wasn’t immediately clued into where Wrigley’s journey would go.
“I figured Drew was going to die — I think we all did — but they kept that from me for a while,” he admitted to Us. “Then once I learned how he dies, it did affect the 2015 storyline. Just with how we talked about [Wrigley] being drunk is a little darker and there’s a lot more weight to it.”
Despite Drew’s death being an accident, House said he saw Wrigley blaming himself for the rest of his life, adding, “He does kill him. It’s not on purpose. And people who work on the show will disagree with me, but Wrigley is with his brother at a bar. He gives him a pill that he’s not prescribed and it kills him. So he does kill his brother. He doesn’t mean to but that is a thing he’s always going to carry with him for the rest of his life.”
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How Do Those Twists Set Up Season 3?
Oppenheimer couldn’t give much away about how Stephen alerting Bree to Evan and Lucy’s past hookup will potentially derail the wedding.
“I haven’t planned it but I do think that everyone would probably like to see Bree get some sort of revenge,” she teased. “Because she’s really been done dirty by everyone. She deserves that, and she probably wants it.”
Will Oliver Return After His Split From Bree?
Season 2 showed Bree getting into a relationship with a professor (Tom Ellis) that didn’t exactly end on a good note. Bree subsequently received calls on her wedding day from a mystery person — but is it Oliver?
“I don’t know that those voicemails are from Oliver. That’s probably what people think, but I think it’s probably someone more surprising than that,” Oppenheimer told Us.
Meanwhile, Missal added in a separate interview with Us, “It’s a little juicy, isn’t it? I’m going to let people have their theories and we’ll kind of see how it plays out. It’s really exciting to not know and be surprised at what happens.”
Ellis agreed with his costar that viewers will have to “wait and see” how the story unfolds.
Where Does Diana Go From Here After Orchestrating Her Breakup From Stephen?
While the audience — including Us — thought Diana (Alicia Crowder) was doomed to always be caught in Stephen’s spell, she surprised everyone by planting seeds for their inevitable split.
“It was really interesting. I was like, ‘OK, how am I going to play this?’ There was never any discussion of maybe Stephen has some inkling. It was like, ‘No, he really believes that she f—– this up.’ The way that I went about that, it was really challenging,” Crowder told Us. “But then the way that I feel like I cracked it was the playing of the sadness and the brokenness of failing the LSAT — it was really the sadness and the brokenness of having to admit this failure.”
Diana had to come to terms with how “she failed with” Stephen before pushing him to call it quits.
“Where we see her crying or we see her upset, she’s looking down at herself for failing at having a successful relationship,” Crowder noted. “It’ll be interesting. I’m interested to see if anyone predicts that she’s lying about this.”
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Will Wrigley Get to a Better Place in Season 3?
“Now that we’ve done the spiral [with him], I would like to see some sort of path in a positive direction. We know how that ends,” House said to Us in reference to the show’s present day timeline not giving Wrigley a lot of growth yet. “He’s a little bit onto everything that’s going on. It’s up to the writers, but I would love to just do something different than another spiral. I love doing it, but I would like to see hope.”
The actor added: “Maybe in a 2015 storyline you would see if he gets better. But also we don’t spend a lot of time there, so I don’t know how they’re going to do that. I’ll do my job as always, and we’ll see how it goes.”
