Hulu‘s hit drama, Tell Me Lies, is back for its highly-anticipated Season 3, and once again, creator Meaghan Oppenheimer is bracing to get “canceled” by viewers.
Back in Season 2, Oppenheimer admitted that the way Lucy (Grace Van Patten) handled Pippa’s (Sonia Mena) sexual assault majorly divided the writers’ room. And in Season 3, the show dives so much deeper into that polarizing storyline that the creator actually received a warning from her loved one.
“My brother said I’m going to get canceled after Season 3, Episode 3,” Oppenheimer told Decider over Zoom. Why? Let’s break down the eventful episode and that absolutely jaw-dropping ending with help from the creator and Van Patten.
Spoilers for Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3 ahead.
Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3, “Repent,” shows Lucy and Stephen (Jackson White) navigating life after their emotional Episode 2 breakup. After learning that Lucy and Evan (Branden Cook) drunkenly slept together, Stephen told Lucy that the only way he could get past it was if she told Bree the truth. When faced with the choice between her relationship with Stephen or her friendship with Bree, however, Lucy choose Bree. (And the crowd went wild!)
When Stephen threatened to tell Bree himself, Lucy called his bluff, saying, “Tell her. Call her right now. You won’t do it. Because then you won’t have anything left to hold over me or Evan.” But when he followed through on his threat in Episode 3, Lucy changed her tune…
After Stephen started repeatedly calling Bree, Lucy ran to his room and begged him not to expose her secret. “I want to hurt you and I don’t know how else to do it,” he explained. So Lucy gave him some new ammo, admitting, “I lied about being sexually assaulted last semester… You can tell everybody I lied.” To raise the stakes even higher, Stephen decided Lucy should be the one to tell everyone — on camera. He manipulated her words until they were to his liking, then filmed her damning confession. An emotional Lucy left Stephen with the smoking gun he needed to take her down any time, and before the episode ended, she unlocked new levels of emotional and psychological darkness during a heartbreaking sex scene with Alex (Costa D’Angelo).
So why did Lucy make the deeply damaging tape instead of simply confessing to Bree? And what were Lucy and Alex searching for in Episode 3’s end scene? Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3’s ending explained has the answers.
Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3 Recap: Why Did Lucy Record The Tape?
Having a hard time accepting the fact that Lucy chose a NUCLEAR option over simply telling her friend she drunkenly slept with her boyfriend and is so sorry? You’re not alone! Heck, even Van Patten struggled to put herself in Lucy’s mindset.
“I agree. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around as well, but I think it just shows how clouded she is. She’s not thinking ahead,” the Tell Me Lies star told Decider. “And the worst case scenario in the moment would be hurting Bree. She’s so close with Bree at that moment, she feels like she has a really genuine friendship with her and she sees how much Bree has been hurt by the people around her. And I think it’s just the last thing she wants to do. That’s all she’s thinking of in the moment.”
When asked about the decision to make things worse for Lucy after her polarizing Season 2 storyline, Oppenheimer said, “It was definitely a risk, we all knew, to dig deeper into that lie that Lucy’s told about the sexual assault. But we felt like it made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons why to do it. So that was definitely something that was a little bit debated. There are always some writers in the room that think maybe I’m going too dark with things, but then there are also writers who don’t feel that way.”
As for her thoughts on why Lucy chose the tape over Bree, Oppenheimer echoed Van Patten, saying, “She does it because she’s so desperate not to hurt Bree any more than Bree has already been hurt by everyone, and also because she’s realized that friendship is one of the most precious things in her life. She’s also not thinking straight. She’s up against a wall. She’s cornered. And she had to make it an immediate decision. He literally has the phone in his hand. And he’s going to call her right now, so it makes sense why she would do something. Some might say stupid, but she did it for Bree.”
Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3 Ending Explained: Lucy And Alex’s Dark Sex Scene
In case Lucy’s on-tape confession wasn’t tough enough to watch, Tell Me Lies Season 3, Episode 3 ups the emotional ante, ending with Lucy/Alex having rough sex while she begs him to insult her. Tell Me Lies cuts between the sex scene and Lucy’s confession, stressing what a toll the events of the episode and her relationship with Stephen have taken on her mental well-being and self-worth.
“I think Lucy is just seeking shame and punishment, because she thinks that’s what she deserves,” Van Patten explained of Episode 3’s final scene. “She’s gotten into a headspace with Stephen where she’s so used to being turned on by toxicity that it’s hard for her to get away from that. And Alex is sort of a safe space for her to explore those darker impulses.”
“On the flip side, [Alex] is dealing with his own trauma,” Oppenheim added. “And that’s why he’s drawn to this role of aggressor, because he was in the victim role earlier on in life.”
As Tell Me Lies Season 3 progresses, viewers will continue to see the impact that Stephen’s newly acquired leverage has on Lucy and the other relationships in her life, including her intense connection with Alex.
Stay tuned for more Tell Me Lies Season 3 coverage on Decider.