🚨 Warning: Read on for spoilers about the ending of “Tell Me Lies” Season 2.
Have Stephen and Lucy changed by the end of Season 2 of “Tell Me Lies”? Perhaps — they’ve gotten worse.
The second season of the Hulu series, based on Carola Lovering’s novel of the same name, continues Stephen and Lucy’s toxic entanglement, starting in college in 2008 and through to their friends’ wedding in 2015.
“I really hope (the show) has made audiences more prepared to deal with Stephens of the world,” executive producer and showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer tells TODAY.com in an interview. “Hopefully watching the show will help people recognize some of those red flags.”
While the showrunner says Stephen was not mean to be “so completely sociopathic that there was no real love in him,” his behavior on the show is often alarmingly cold. In an interview with The Wrap, actor Jackson White described his character as someone who hurts the people he loves because it “feels good.”
Stephen grapples with being a “bad person” in Season 2, as he puts it. In Lucy, he finds someone who will not only see and accept his badness, but love him despite it — and, at certain points, match it.
“How much has that relationship inherently altered her DNA, and how far can she ever get from from some of those impulses that have been brought out in her?” Oppenheimer asks.
The finale, which aired Oct. 16, shows Stephen falling to even lower depths. Plus, it sees the other characters in the ensemble drama also dealing with their own traumas and tragedies.
Below, we’ll recap what happened and get Oppenheimer’s thoughts on that last twist.
What happens in the Ending of ‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 2?
Weddings. Deaths. Breakups. Get-back-togethers then breakups. The finale of “Tell Me Lies” Season 2 had it all, with the strands coming to tragic and shocking crescendoes, both in college and at Bree (Catherine Missal) and Evan’s (Branden Cook) wedding.
Wrigley faces another tragedy with his brother. How does Drew die?
Wrigley (Spencer House) reconciles with his brother Drew (Benjamin Wadsworth) in the finale, at last. He had been absent this season following last season’s drama.
Drew, as you’ll remember, was driving one of the cars during the accident that killed Macy, Lucy’s roommate. (Stephen was driving the other car, with Macy in the passenger seat). Lots ensues on this front in Season 1, but it’s worth remembering that Wrigley and Drew got into a fist fight and Wrigley fell off of a balcony, ending his football career.
Wrigley and Drew go out to celebrate the ice between them melting. In the party spirit, Wrigley gives him some of his pain meds. Drew overdoses and dies. The pills, Wrigley explains, were time-release, meaning their effect wasn’t immediate — so Drew kept taking more.
“Spencer just absolutely blew me away in the last two episodes. He made me cry, which doesn’t happen very often,” Oppenheimer says of House’s wrenching performance in the lead-up to Wrigley and Drew’s reconciliation and its tragic end.
In the aftermath, Stephen takes the fall for the anonymous letter that Lucy wrote about Drew’s role in Macy’s death, but that Pippa (Sonia Mena) had been blamed for. Wrigley forgives Stephen.
Drew’s death had been foreshadowed earlier on in the show. After she remarks on Wrigley’s behavior in the lead-up to their wedding, Evan tells Bree, “It was his brother’s birthday yesterday, so maybe take it easy on him.”
In an interview with Variety, Oppenheimer shared that originally, Season 1 was going to conclude with Drew’s death, and that she wanted Wrigley to end the season “destroyed” to explain how his future plays out.
Bree realizes the truth about her professor’s marriage
After her breakup from Evan, Bree becomes involved with her professor’s husband, Oliver (played by Oppenheimer’s real-life husband, Tom Ellis). He makes it seem like their relationship is a secret from his wife, Marianne (Gabriella Pession).
Turns out she is completely aware and and they have an open marriage. Oliver had been manipulating Bree into thinking they had an emotional connection. Further, Marianne knows details about Oliver’s relationship with her. Bree leaves the entanglement feeling betrayed.
“He obviously ends up being very terrible, very manipulative and a very, very much a different kind of abuser,” Oppenheimer says. “I think it was interesting to see the different types of mental and emotional abuse, and power dynamics and relationships.”
Oppenheimer says viewers were meant to change their minds about Oliver throughout the season.
“We never wanted people to know for sure how they felt about that character. We wanted it to feel a bit like they were getting whiplash, because that’s how Bree is experiencing it,” she says.
Bree, Pippa and Lucy take bats to his car, which is parked on campus, as revenge. No word on if anyone presses charges.
Leo, Lucy and Stephen have a love triangle
After hooking up with Stephen, Lucy immediately goes to Leo, her recent ex, and tries to win him back. Then, Stephen confronts Leo at a party and tells him what had happened between them. They get into a fist fight.
In the present day, Lucy feels yet again torn between Stephen and another man — this time, it’s Max (Edmund Donovan).
Diana frees herself from Stephen
Don’t underestimate Diana (Alicia Crowder)! She escapes her love triangle with Stephen unscathed; the same can’t be said for Lucy.
Diana seems to know that the only way she could get Stephen, the shark, off her scent is by becoming a failure, in his mind. He views her as an elevator to the upper class – and used her dad to hook her up with a law school internship. She lies about failing her LSAT to make him uninterested. She also makes it seem like her father cut off her credit card.
“You know Stephen. I had to make him think it was his idea,” Diana says when her dad picks her up from campus.
By the time of the wedding, Diana is with Pippa, Wrigley’s ex.
Stephen finds out about Lucy and Evan
Bree and Evan broke up at the start of Season 2 when he admitted that he had been unfaithful to her. What viewers know, and what Stephen later learns, is that he had hooked up with Lucy the night of the Hawaiian party.
After Lucy and Stephen get back together in the finale, Evan confesses to Stephen. Stephen seems to take the news calmly — but instead holds the information until he can get revenge.
When he returns, he records Evan’s confession.”You’re going to tell Bree and ruin my life?” Evan asks. Stephen replies, “Not today.” He meant that literally. (More on that in a minute).
Stephen meets Lydia again
After Evan’s confession, Stephen runs into Lydia (Natalee Linez), Lucy’s childhood friend – and the woman he’s engaged to at the time of the wedding.
In the episode before, Lucy falsely says she had been sexually assaulted by Lydia’s brother, Chris, ending their friendship. (Chris had indeed assaulted other women, but the charges had been dropped).
Lydia apologizes to Stephen for treating him badly earlier on. She was going off of Lucy’s stories. “You can’t believe a word that comes out of Lucy’s mouth. She honestly just hates men,” Lydia says.
It appears she finds Stephen at just the right (or wrong) time — he’s hungry to get back at Lucy for sleeping with Evan. What better way than to get together with her childhood best friend?
They part, but we know there’s more to come. In the present day, Lydia tells Lucy she will “never forgive” her for “any of it,” implying she means what happened with Chris.
What happens at Bree and Evan’s wedding — and what comes next?
In the present day, at Bree and Evan’s wedding, Lucy succumbs to Stephen’s allure. But then, her “on-again” paramour doesn’t show up to the wedding.
As Lucy searches for Stephen, Bree hears from him. Right before Bree is about to walk the aisle, she gets a text from Stephen with audio of Evan’s confession from college.
Wearing her wedding dress, moments from walking down the aisle, Bree hears the news that her fiancé slept with her best friends years ago.
Oppenheimer says Stephen’s “fatal flaw” is his need for revenge. “Anyone that really, truly hurts him, he’s going to find a way to hurt them more,” she says.
“He’s been planning it from the moment Evan told him. I think he knew, ‘I’m going to use this information when it is the absolutely most damaging.’ He’s been in it for the long game,” Oppenheimer says.
Initially, Oppenheimer says the plan was to have Stephen confront Bree in person before the wedding and say, “I need to tell you something.” Then, the scene would cut to black. Then, Oppenheimer had a revelation.
“When were filming the penultimate episode, I was like, ‘We have to have him actually tell her what it is.’ Because, in reality, Steven is never going to be there and tell that bomb. He’s going to drop that bomb when he’s already even miles away in a getaway car,” she says.
At the very end of the season, Lucy approaches Bree and they look at their reflections in a mirror. “You ready?” Lucy asks.
Looking ahead, Oppenheimer thinks Bree “deserves a little bit of vengeance.”
“We really put her through the wringer. She’s the one innocent in the whole (show),” she says. “If there’s a Season 3, I hope Bree gets some sort of war path.”
Oppenheimer can’t decide if Bree gets married — “but if she does, I don’t think it’s good.”
“I think it would be interesting to see her go through with the marriage and still get her vengeance after that. Bree is also someone who’s probably capable the long con,” she says.
First appeared on www.today.com