Lucy and Bree Endings, Explained by Creator

[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the Tell Me Lies season three and series finale, “Are You Happy Now, That I’m on My Knees?”]

Take a moment and collect your thoughts after that head-spinning Tell Me Lies series finale.

Going into season three’s final episode that released on Monday night, creator Meaghan Oppenheimer had announced that the buzzy Hulu drama would be concluding with the season ender. The official confirmation that Tell Me Lies would be ending created even more suspense over how the showrunner would wrap up all of the chaos that has unfolded over 26 episodes, two timelines and three seasons in only 60 minutes.

But Oppenheimer knew exactly what she wanted to deliver.

“I went into this season saying, ‘We are going to wrap things up and give a satisfying ending and then see what happens.’ I always felt like three seasons was a perfect number,” Oppenheimer tells The Hollywood Reporter of her decision to end Tell Me Lies here. “I always knew that I wanted the final downfall in college to culminate with whatever happens at the end of the wedding weekend.”

In the 2008 timeline, Lucy (Grace Van Patten) gets expelled from Baird College after the videotape that Stephen (Jackson White) recorded of her — of Lucy admitting she lied about sexual assault — gets released. The biggest surprise, however, is that it was best friend Bree (Cat Missal) who released the tape, after learning that Lucy was who boyfriend Evan (Brendan Cook) cheated on her with, and after professor Oliver (Tom Ellis) cornered Bree into staying silent about their past affair. Yale also rescinds Stephen’s admission, thanks to Wrigley (Spencer House) revealing to the school that he blackmailed Diana (Alicia Crowder).

Then in 2015, all of that comes to ahead when it’s revealed how Wrigley and Bree’s present-day affair began — they slept together at her engagement party to Evan — and Stephen exposes all of the group’s lies during a mic-drop speech at Bree and Evan’s wedding reception. He both outs Wrigley and Bree’s affair, and names Bree as the one who released Lucy’s tape, nearly ruining Lucy’s life sophomore year of college. Lucy then decides to run away with Stephen. But in the end, he leaves her stranded at a gas station. Lucy’s reaction is layered, and ultimately one of laughter.

Below, Oppenheimer unpacks the entirety of that chaotic and revelatory season three finale, how they filmed the “cluster-f***” of a wedding reception, how she landed on the ending of the series with Lucy and Stephen’s gas station scene, and she if Wrigley and Bree actually get together post-wedding.

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Talk me through the decision to have Bree discover on her own that Lucy and Evan slept together, rather than Stephen telling her, given how long that had been built up.

I wanted Bree to be the person who had actually been the one who ruined Lucy’s life. She didn’t intend to, but I wanted there to be this group lore where everyone felt it was the worst thing Stephen ever did, and then to actually find out it was Bree. We needed Bree to find out about Evan and Lucy in order to justify that in her mind. We figured out what we wanted to happen pretty early on. It then took us a long time to figure out the actual mechanics of how and when Bree figures it out [about Lucy and Evan]. Then the finale was a clusterfuck to structure (laughs).

It was shocking when Marianne (Gabriella Pession) decided to defend husband Oliver, and how they came up with this whole plan to involve Bree’s mom (Emily Meade) to keep Bree silent about her affair with Oliver. Why let Oliver get away with it?

I’ve never really seen this show as being one where everything works out like it’s supposed to. In reality, abusers, especially abusers in positions of power, do get away with things — as we’re seeing right now in the world with everything happening. So it felt realistic, unfortunately. But also, we needed Bree to be completely at rock bottom. We needed all of her options for emotional stability to be taken away from her in order to not only have her do what she does to Lucy, but to lead her into Evan’s arms and to have her go back to him, thinking that he is the one safe place. But I know — it was brutal.

We had to shoot that scene out of order because of Tom [Ellis’] schedule, and I remember sending the character list of everyone who was in it to our line producer. I was like, “It’s Marianne, it’s Oliver, it’s Amanda [Iris Apatow], it’s Bree, it’s [the other student] Mary” And he was like, “Oh boy, what happens here?”

Marianne seemed shocked to learn that Amanda was only 17 years old earlier this season, but ended up defending Oliver at the end. Why can’t she stand up to him?

Two things can be true at once with Marianne, which is that she does know this is wrong. She does feel genuine remorse and shame, and she hates it. But on the other hand, she chooses Oliver over all of it. She chooses him over her dignity, her conscience — over the safety of other women. And I think that that is, unfortunately, a realistic thing I’ve seen happen a lot, especially when you’ve spent so much time with a person where you become resigned to who and what they are. She says it herself: “Choose someone who loves you a little bit more than you love them,” because she did the opposite. She loves Oliver more than he loves her, more than he’s capable of loving anyone. When you see that remorse, it’s genuine. In that moment, she’s like, “OK, I am going to do the right thing.” But then she’s an addict, and once she’s back in Oliver’s presence, she can’t betray this man that she loves. It’s a cautionary tale of what happens when you end up marrying your Stephen, basically.

Evan was kind of this golden retriever, nice guy character up until the end, when he starts to get a bit manipulative, like getting Bree’s mom drunk. What was the reason for that character shift? 

I don’t think he’s an evil guy. He’s basically a good person with some extremely flawed characteristics, and some really bad moments. But even in season one, you see moments of him that are shitty. You see him be angry at Lucy for not liking him back, which is completely unfair. You see him be kind of shitty with her after she rejects him, which is uncool and unfair. He is someone who prioritizes what he wants and is used to getting what he wants, just in his family. But he also feels like he needs to be the good guy.

We talked a lot about being the only Black male among his friends; the standards he has to live up to are so much higher than everyone else because he has to be a little bit better. He has to follow the rules more because the world is so unfair for him. By season three, he gets really sick of seeing other people not follow the rules and get away with things he doesn’t get away with. When he has that moment with Oliver, it’s like a flip switches and he decides, well, if I can’t beat them, I’m going to join them, and I’m going to copy some of their behavior essentially. And unfortunately, he gets rewarded for it. It does work for him, until it doesn’t.

In the finale, Lucy tries to play Stephen by telling the Yale rep about him, but it ultimately backfires. Why do you think Lucy thought she could actually play Stephen, the master manipulator? 

In that moment, she’s not even trying to play a game because when she tries to trick him in the episode before, she realizes, “I can’t trick him.” In the finale, she’s sort of putting games and trickery aside, and going to just try and tell the truth about this man to an authority figure. I think it’s because of what Diana says. She sees Diana so broken and so sad, and Lucy realizes just how unfair it is and that she can’t handle it. It’s a testament to the fact that Lucy is actually a good person at her core. So much of what she does isn’t even in defense of herself, but in defense of other people. And I think that’s why she does that. It’s a moment of desperation and it, obviously, really doesn’t work out well for her.

I was so concerned for Lucy’s mental health throughout this season, especially once the tape was released. Can you talk about slowly bringing Lucy to her breaking point?

I always knew that whatever happened in Lucy and Stephen’s college relationship, whatever that final breakup was, it needed to be something that resulted in a true public humiliation — apublic downfall that actually derailed her life and derailed her academic future. Partially because I think it’s really important that people understand that these relationships, even though they’re happening at a time when we think things are very temporary and fixable, can permanently damage you and permanently alter your opportunities. One of the saddest things I see with young women is them throwing away opportunity and good things because of a boy. I’ve seen it so many times. Certainly when I was younger, I absolutely did it. So I wanted those consequences to be real and significant.

I always knew that it was going to be a mental thing, because you see Lucy in the very first episode of the taking the pills, and people are like, “You’re doing a lot better now.” So I always knew it was going to be some degree of a mental health thing. Getting her to that point was a fine line to walk, making sure that we weren’t being exploitative ithat she’s suffering, and that we really are feeling for her. I almost wanted the audience to feel like they were in her shoes, kind of losing their minds with her, questioning reality.

That moment when he’s like, “You’ve released the tape,” and she was like, “Wait, did I?” was because she doesn’t know what’s real or not. We wanted the audience to wonder that too, for a second, if she released the tape. Grace is just such an insanely good actress. I’m hoping this season people really appreciate how talented she is. It was so easy to get her to that place because of Grace’s ability to go there. Her emotional availability as an actor is striking and really rare. It’s quite incredible, especially because she’s so sane in real life.

Viewers fell in love with Costa D’Angelo’s character Alex this season. Did you anticipate that, and do you think he was maybe the perfect guy for Lucy out of all three seasons?

I knew people were going to love Alex because I’ll tell you, everyone on set loved Alex. We had a lot of amazing actors on this show. There were some crew members who were down bad for Costa, I’ll just say that. I was like, “girls are going to be shrieking in the streets when they see this man,” because he’s just so talented and he’s so good. The character has such a quiet confidence; it makes me happy they love him.

He cared so much about the character, and he brought such a vulnerability. I was really happy that we had the opportunity to show a man who’s dealt with sexual trauma, because we’ve shown a lot of sexual trauma and sexual violence against the women in the show, so to see how that manifests in a male character, even though we touch on it pretty subtly, I was really happy that Hulu and 20th allowed us to go there.

Do you think Bree expected Lucy to get expelled from school when she released the confession tape? Did she actually understand what she did?

No, I think she was in a trauma response when she released the tape. She was at rock bottom. Bree was spinning, she was in complete fight or flight and was not thinking about the future, and certainly did not think she was going to get Lucy expelled. But also, when she watched the tape, she took it at face value. She didn’t know that Lucy was lying for Pippa [Sonia Mena]. She thought Lucy just lied about rape. So in that moment, she’s like, “Who the fuck is this person? I don’t even know who this person is.” As soon as she realizes the truth, she feels horrified. And when she realizes Lucy got expelled, she’s beside herself.

We have to unpack Stephen’s insane wedding speech, dropping tea on everyone. You told me during our pre-season chat that the wedding scene was fun to film and that everyone was super giggly. So was filming it as chaotic as watching the final version? 

It felt chaotic. Every take felt insane, but we choreographed it all like a dance. The thing that felt the craziest was Brandon having to fall into the cake, but we only had three cakes. And we also only had three wedding dresses and I think three tuxes, so we felt like we couldn’t fuck it up. But yes, it was chaotic. It felt weird, even though it wasn’t the last week of shooting, it felt like the final party. It really felt like the big culmination of everything. It was very, very fun. And it just went so well.

In the final moment with Bree and Wrigley at the wedding, they looked at each other happily amid the chaos. Is it safe to assume she and Evan get a divorce or annulment, and she and Wrigley ultimately end up together?   

I will state on the record as fact that Bree and Wrigley end up together. Evan and Bree get annulled. I don’t even think they get a divorce. He’s like, “I’m annulling this marriage.” Fair enough. And Bree and Wrigley end up together. I think after they’re like, “What have we got to lose? We need to just give it a shot.” I wrote it into the action lines in the script. I was like, their eyes meet across the room and they smile and we realized that despite all the carnage, we get a sense that these two are going to maybe work it out.

I know you’ve previously talked about how important music is for you when developing this show, so how long did you know you wanted “Toxic” by Britney Spears for the reception scene? 

Actually, not right away. I auditioned a few songs. A lot of times, we record with a certain song. It was not the case for that. “Toxic” was always a song that I was like, “When are we going to fucking get ‘Toxic’ in? I can’t believe we haven’t gotten it in.” I’d put it in other places and taken it out because it was so on the nose. Then we tried it and my editor, Jen, was like, “If we’re going to use it, we’re going to use it now.” And it was on the nose, but in the best self-aware way. We were just cackling. Another song we tried that actually really worked well together was [“I Gotta Feeling.”] It worked beautifully in the moment, but then we were like, it’s got to be “Toxic,” because it’s just so funny.

Did you always know you wanted Pippa and Diana to be the most sane pair walking out of that wedding? 

That made a lot of sense for me. I can’t remember when I decided on that moment, but I always felt like those two were the most stable couple. Because Diana doesn’t hang out with this group, she already has that layer of sanity. She’s like, “I’m not hanging out with these people.” She’s only with them because Pippa is still talking to them. So yes, they have a happy ending.

Pivoting to the ending scene with Lucy and Stephen, how did you decide on Stephen fooling Lucy one final time, and leaving her at the gas station? Why not bring him to justice?

The first day of the [season three] room, I told the writers, “The fable of the scorpion and the frog is going to be the fable of our season.” That to me was the thing with Stephen. When I first started writing the show, I was like, Maybe Stephen will get justice. But then I very quickly decided that was not going to happen. I wanted Stephen to be so committed to winning and to beating Lucy and to inflicting pain on her and having the last word, that it undermined his own happiness. So he does destroy all of his relationships. He also has fun with Lucy. If he was a saner person, he could have been like, “You know what? I’m just going to not be a dick to you,” but he can’t help himself. So he’s always going to be miserable because his desire for destruction is stronger than his desire for happiness.

I didn’t know exactly what the last scene was going to be, but sometimes I get an image that’s more symbolic than what’s actually going to happen. So I said to the room, “I want her to choose him one last time, but it’s as if he just leaves her on the side of the road and drives away.” And they were like, “He could literally just leave her at the side of the road and drive away.” Once we found that, it felt really perfect. I realized that as satisfying as it would be for Lucy to have the last word and reject him, that would not have actually freed her because Stephen will always come back unless he gets to be the one to reject someone. He will always come back if he’s rejected because he has to have the final word. He did with Diana, he’s done it with Lucy. So this actually is the one thing to free her.

When we spoke after the season two finale, you said you liked the idea of ending a show on a forever cliffhanger. How long have you known season three was going to be the final season, and did you make the series finale feel more conclusive for that reason?

During season two, really not knowing if we were going to get a season three, and as much as I was like, this could be a great cliffhanger ending, I knew it would be incredibly unsatisfying. My worst fear was having an ending that didn’t feel like an ending, that left too much out in the open. That would be a betrayal of the fans. So I went into this season being like, “We are going to wrap things up and give a satisfying ending and then see what happens.” I always felt like three seasons was a perfect number. I always knew I wanted the final downfall in college to culminate with whatever happens at the end of the wedding weekend. I always felt like that really was the framing device. And my writers, directors, and also the cast, we all felt really creatively good about it.

Obviously, the fan reaction has been so amazing. It’s so much fun making the show that we did talk about, “Is there an organic way to keep it going?” But I just kept coming back to, “I don’t think we’re going to beat this ending. I don’t think we’re going to beat this season.” Anything that happens beyond this will feel like a different show. It will start to feel repetitive. And my job has always been to protect the creative quality of the show over everything else, over a lot of other reasons you could make a decision. I wanted to make a creative decision, not a business decision. I wanted this to be a complete story. It was always the question of, “What happens to a group of friends who come of age with this toxic dynamic at the center, and what happens when they reunite years later?” We answered that.

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All episodes of Tell Me Lies are currently streaming on Hulu. Check out all of The Hollywood Reporter‘s Tell Me Lies season three coverage here.