Tell Me Lies

Hey everyone, and welcome, today we will be talking about the third and final season of Tell Me Lies. Spoilers ahead. Fun Fact: Creator Meaghan Oppenheimer is married to Tom Ellis, who plays Oliver on the show. This season came out in 2026 and stars Grace Van Patten, Jackson White, and Catherine Missal, and was created by Meaghan Oppenheimer. So without further ado, let's get right into it.

Tell Me Lies follows a toxic group of friends who reunite for one of their friends' weddings in 2015, and through flashbacks to 2009, we see how they all met in college and the drama that unfolds that is still unresolved. Season 3 sees more of the past unfolding, and as we switch to the future, we see how there are more secrets than we thought, for now.

Tell Me Lies is a show that follows a group of friends who have an unlimited supply of drama and secrets. It has similar vibes to Big Little Lies, Pretty Little Liars, or Elite.

Tell me lies is a show that I have been invested in since the beginning because I love a show that does a how we got here story. In this season, we meet new characters and get even more drama that makes you hate some of the older characters even more. This is probably the worst group of friends because there are so many secrets, backstabbing, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, and abandonment. The group of friends all need therapy because they are allre all bad at dealing with their issues. As much as I hate the group of friends and never would want to be their friend, the characters are all well-acted.

Catherine Missal plays Bree, who is the shy one of the group, who, in the past, hasn’t done much that I would say is bad. This season sees her trying to protect Amanda, a girl sleeping with the professor predator, who is named Oliver. She has good intentions, but she comes at the girl so intensely that I think she scares her away. Throughout the series, we have seen in the future that she marries evan and before this season, they were broken up in the 2009 timeline, and they get back together at the beginning of the season. In this season learns who he cheated with and stays with him. I wondered why she stayed with him, but Marianne says to her that it’s better to be with someone who loves you a little more than you love them, and she takes that to heart with Evan. She reconnects with her old foster brother, Alex, which was nice, but he gets involved with Lucy, which I was hoping wouldn’t lead to anything bad because he seemed nice, and I didn’t want him ruined by this group. We meet Brees mom, who left her as a child, and I think it offers some closure for her. She gets a better understanding that her mom wasn’t there like she thought she was as a kid; she wasn’t ready to be a mom, and still isn’t, and isn’t someone Bree needs in her life. Marrianae, Oliver, and Amanda use her mom to try to ambush her, and her mom doesn't back her up, and it made me happy that she cut ties then because her mom couldn’t even protect her there and sided with random people. I think with this interaction and finding out that Lucy slept with Evan, made her release the tape because she was just fed up with being walked over. I do think her tears and shock when Lucy gets expelled are real because I don’t think she thought it would lead to her being expelled. I do love seeing her and Wrigley have a blossoming romance, and later in life, falling back in love after addressing some skeletons in the closet.

Evan is played by Branden Cook, who is trying to win Bree back, no matter who he hurts. He starts off dating Molly, but tells Bree if she wants him, he will break up with Molly, which he does. Stephen rubs off on him, and he becomes a dick to Molly and manipulates Bree. In his quest to get Bree back, he figures out that Bree was hooking up with Oliver, even though Oliver declines and first confronts him, then seeks his help. He ends up manipulating Bree to make her feel like he’s all she has. When her mom comes to visit, he knows she’s a struggling alcoholic and asks if she wants a drink and gets her drunk before the exhibit, which causes problems, which is just what he wanted, but then he tells Bree, “she was like that when I picked her up”. I did have hope that maybe he wouldn’t be so bad, but to do that to someone so vulnerable is sad and really ruined the experience for Bree and her mom. He doesn’t see where Bree is coming from when it comes to her mom, and it seems like he just wants her to himself. At the end of the season, he finds out about Bree and Wrigley during Stephen’s drama dump and tries to tackle him, but misses and tackles the cake, which was hilarious. In the end, he will end up alone because one of his friends was screwing his fiance and his other best friend exposed his secrets in front of everyone at his wedding.

We are introduced to drug dealer Alex early on, played by Costa D'Angelo. He is a nice guy who is Bree’s old foster brother, and he and Lucy start hooking up. I liked him, but I was worried Stephen would get him in trouble and kicked out, which I’m happy he didn’t. When he finds out about Lucy being assaulted, he tries being nice and respectful to her, which made me wonder if it was because of some past trauma of his own, and this situation brings up bad memories. After the video leaks, he wants nothing to do with her and seems really upset that she would do something like that. Bree asks him how he protects himself, and he says give them less, which seems like just keeping them in your circle still, but not letting them too close so they can’t hurt you, which just leaves you on the edge. I’m happy in the end; he supports Bree and focuses on something else. I wish we could’ve seen him at the wedding because i wouldve loved to see him and Bree still be friends.

Pippa is a character who is a mixed bag, who is played by Sonia Mena. Pippa has a fear of being alone, so I think that’s why she’s so overprotective of Wrigley at the beginning of the season. She was sexually assaulted last season, which she is still dealing with, but wants to keep it a secret. She is dating Wrigley, but she starts hooking up with Diana, which I rooted for. When Wiggley breaks up with her because the relationship isn’t working, I think most people thought she would be releived and she isn’t, and she tells Diana, who is also confused but is also dealing with a lot of her own stuff snf breaks up with her too, and Pippa spirals a bit. I think that Pippa did love Wrigley, so I don’t think the breakup is a shock, but moreso the fact that he says they don’t love each other because she does love and care for him, but I don’t think at that moment she realizes that it’s more like close friends, not lovers. She later coerces him to have sex with her, which was very uncomfortable considering they were broken up, and it’s not something he wanted, but agreed to after seeing her in a fragile state. I knew in the future that they were still friends after the breakup and that she was dating Diana, but I just didn’t know when that happened. In the finale, she tells him that she is gay, which he takes well. She also brings up a big point to Wrigley, which is why don’t any of you guys who are his friends call him out for his behavior, which is one frustrating thing about the people hanging with him. One thing I often see online about this show is that people hate Pippa because of how she treats Lucy, which always pisses me off. There is always someone saying that she should have said something about her assault, or she shouldn’t be mean to Lucy, but at the end of the day, she has to deal with the assault in her own way and shouldn’t feel pressured to announce it to the world. The only reason Lucy gets shit about the assault is that Pippa confided in her, and then Lucy couldn’t keep her mouth shut and said someone was assaulted, which she shouldn’t have, and she says it was her when it wasn’t to deflect from Pippa. It’s nice of her to take on that burden, but she wouldn’t have been in that situation if she just kept her mouth closed.  We see how the other girl Chris assaulted gets bullied, and Lucy later, because people think she is lying. This is something that prevents people from reporting because it adds to the trauma, and especially with Pippa is scary to see. Later this season, Lucy then tells Chris that he assaulted Pippa, which makes him confront Pippa about it, and she is clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation and just says no, he didn’t, out of fear. I get that Lucy wanted to help her, but that action has just caused a string of issues for Pippa that made the situation worse. Later, when Lucy tells her about cheating with Evan, she says it’s time to end that friendship because it’s how to do you cheat with your best friend’s boyfriend or ex-boyfriend, and how selfish Lucy is. Its honeslty what Lucy needed to hear because out of all the people, your friends, man. In the end, she ends up with Diana, which made me happy because, at the very least, Diana knew this group was just toxic and kept her from engaging in more drama.

Diana, played by Alicia Crowder, has been a character I hated up until this season. She has decided that she has had enough with this friend group, and so she tries not to get involved. She starts a relationship with Pippa, which is scandalous, but I loved. She gets pregnant by Stephen but doesn’t want his baby, so she aborts it and then gets into Yale with Stephen, and she tells him she will go somewhere else because she’d rather change her plans than be near him. People told her not to change her plans for him, but you can see the lasting effects of the emotional damage he left, and she is just trying to avoid him. He sends racey pictures she took for him to her dad, which sucked, but even with that, she still didn’t let that man take control of her life and ruin all she worked on. One of my favorite scenes is her talking to Lucy and telling her she sucks at making decisions and shouldn’t make anymore. Lucy and Diana both have dated Stpehen so she is the one person who understands Lucy and the mind games Stephen plays. I did kind of wish they would become closer friends after school because I think they could’ve become good friends without all the drama. I’m glad in the end she ends up a Yale alumna, with Pippa, and still not inserting herself in their drama.

Lucy, played by Grace Van Patten, is the main person I’d say the show focuses on, with her dealings with her ex, Stephen Demarco. She teters in and out of an abusive relationship with Stephen DeMarco, and we see how he manipulates her so much. All her lies start catching up to her this season, and everything comes to a head in the end when she is expelled. She also makes horrible decisions like filming a confession saying she lied about being assauleted which of course later gets released. Making that tape was one of the dumbest things because the alternative was telling Bree that she slept with Evan, like the choice should have been clear. Her making the tape shows how selfish she was thinking in the situation because she thought only about protecting her friendship with Bree, not that the other person that Chris assaulted would be seen as a fraud too and would face more bullying. She tells Stephen way too much, and we’ve seen in the past how he just uses information and holds it over her. She tries to pull one on stephen but of course, he knows and shoots that down, which was very bold of her. She hooks up with the drug dealer Alex and has this degrading kink, but we realize it’s all because of how Stephen treated her. I must say every person she has hooked up with outside of Stephen has been better for her, but she somehow ruins it. Diana tells her she’s bad at making decisions, which we have seen in general, not just stephen and I hated how she told Chris that he assaulted Pippa, like why would you tell him out of all people? It was sad to see her break down mentally and slowly start to question if she should do things because of how Stephen would react. In the future, she finds out the truth about the tape and later leaves with Stephen, and then he leaves her, which just shows the hold he has on her, but maybe that’s what she needed. As much as she annoyed me, I did tear up when she got expelled because I don’t think she should have, and it’s crazy that after all we’ve seen Stephen do, she is the one who gets in trouble. Lucy was such a frustrating character to watch because so many actions were questionable, and she would then make more questionable actions.

The worst person on this show is Stephen Demarco, played by Jackson White. I haven’t hated a character this much in a while, and then here he comes along, and the crazy part is, he doesn’t physically abuse anyone, but just engages in emotional warfare against everyone. He is manipulative, charismatic, sociopathic, and narcissistic. He is very observant, collecting information, and instead of laying all his cards out on the table, he makes sure he has undeniable proof, and if he can use it against you, he will. I’m shocked that not one person thought to fight him, shoot him, or run him over. When Bree was throwing cake at him in the finale, I was thinking throw a chair because this man is despicable. I feel like he’s unhappy with his upbringing and made it everyone’s problem. He tortures Lucy with this tape he made her film, and potentially telling bree about her and Evan. He still stays in the room where Wrigley’s brother died and wonders why Wrigley doesn’t want to go there, and tries to guilt-trip Evan over the fact that he slept with Lucy. He dates a new girl briefly, and thank god Lucy tells her to run because he is crazy. I loved how he pushed so many people away so that when he got into Yale, he had no one to celebrate with. In the finale, Wrigley tells Yale of all the bad stuff he’s done, and they revoke his acceptance, which made me so happy. The one good thing he did was expose all the secrets at the end because they needed to get out, and that friend group needed to address all those issues. He was truly despicable and one of the worst tv villians i’ve seen, which just goes to show that Jackson White did a phenomenal job in this role.

Wrigley, played by Spencer House, is the real MVP this season. In past seasons, he was the party boy, but that caught up to him at the end of the last season, with his brother dying because of a mix of alcohol and drugs he gave him. Besides a new look, his brother’s OD does make him less of the frat boy jock, and now he’s just finding happiness wherever he can. This season, he is back after having a rough summer because his parents blame him, and I think he just wants some normalcy back in his life, but obviously, that experience changed him. Wriggley shows that everyone grieves differently, as seen with him getting tired of everyone treating him like a porcelain doll that will break at any moment. He and Bree have a heart-to-heart, and both are on Molly and drunk and are brutally honest, but that’s what he needed, talk about his situation honestly and not have everyone looking at him as like this broken person. I related to that because I hate when people keep asking are you ok after something happens, because it’s such an annoying question to keep hearing, and I don’t need to be constantly checked on. He takes a step back this season from being so invested in stuff with Stephen and Evan, which really lets him see that Stephen is awful, especially to women. We first get a glimpse when they learn about dianas pregnacy, and Stephen thinks he gets a say, and Wrigley tells him it’s not up to you, which was nice to see because it wasn’t, and why would she want to have the spawn of satan. We could see that his love for Bree and his disdain for Stephen also grew. One of the most heartbreaking scenes this season was Stephen trying to get Wrigley and Evan to come back to his room and really pushing them. Wrigley snaps and says why would I want to go hang out in the room where my brother died. Stephen is shocked because he didn’t think it was weird, and Evan tells him it is weird. He gets asked by Pippa why they put up with Stephen, and he confronts Stephen about how he treats Lucy, and Stephen doesn’t see anything wrong with it, so Wrigley finally is the person to make Stephen realize he’s not invincible by telling Yale everything that Stephen has been doing. In the finale, he mentions how he keeps his shit contained, and in the future timeline, he does drink too much, contrary to everyone else who spreads their shit and makes it everyone else’s problem. He and Bree end up hooking up, which is scandalous, but they were soulmates, and as much as they wanted to deny it, there was only so much denying they could do. I love it at the end when everyone finds out about him and bree he doesn’t even deny it, he just like yea and is smiling while Evan is yelling at him. His character really grew on me and was a highlight of the season.

The show switches between 2009 and 2015, and I wanted more 2015 this season since it was the last. I wanted to learn more about Diana and Pippa getting together, what they were doing post-college, who kept in touch with whom, and how Stephen ended up with Lucy’s friend. It’s some minor questions, but it would have been nice to get a bit more info about that. I do like, however, that the season ended in 2015 with the end of the wedding, which is the perfect place to end the series.

The music in the show is filled with some great songs and covers. The best addition was Toxic by Britney Spears, which plays as Stephen airs out everyone’s drama. The title perfectly sums up the group of friends because if there was one constant thing, it was toxicity.

My favorite part of this season was Diana and Wrigley. I loved Diana’s dedication to staying out of as much drama as possible so she could focus on post-grad life and advised Lucy when they spoke instead of attacking each other. Wrigley became the MVP with realizng how bad Stephen was when it came to women, being a nice guy who just has a lot of problems, and eventually giving Stephen a taste of his own medicine. I just felt like these characters were two who were just trying to be happy and tried to stay away from the drama as much as they could.

Tell me lies season 3 was a great way to wrap up this series. I’m glad that the ending was messy and not some happy ending for everyone. Sadly, this is the last seaosn but I honestly prefer wrapping it up now rather than keeping dragging it out.