Film

Stephen & Lucy’s Future After Tell Me Lies Series Finale Explained By Creator

17 February 2026

The article contains spoilers for the Tell Me Lies series finale.Tell Me Lies creator Meaghan Oppenheimer reveals what she believes is next for Lucy and Stephen.

With the confirmed news that Tell Me Lies season 3 is the last, scrutiny has arisen regarding the fate of television’s most toxic couple. In the series finale of the Hulu romantic drama, and specifically in the final scene, Lucy (Grace Van Patten) agrees to restart her relationship with Stephen (Jackson White) even though she hates him. They leave together, but he ultimately drives away and leaves her stranded at a gas station.

In an interview on the official Tell Me Lies podcast, Oppenheimer opened up about her view on whether Stephen and Lucy get back together after the series finale. Oppenheimer, the showrunner and executive producer of the hit Hulu Original, who also wrote the finale, believes that Lucy will grow from this moment and that Stephen is done with her once and for all. Read her quote below:

I actually think that this, hitting this rock bottom is the wake-up call she needs. And I think she’s gonna make new friends and get better. I think she’s gonna… I actually think she’s gonna grow from this moment. Because I think, I don’t think Steven is gonna try to come back. Yeah, and he wanted to win. He wanted his punishment. Now he’s gotten it. He’s never gonna seek her out again. Yeah, I really… I don’t think he would.

In a separate interview with Deadline, Oppenheimer went a little deeper on what she sees happening for the rest of the Tell Me Lies crew and offers insight into whether Lucy can ever actually repair her relationship with anyone in the friend group, including Bree (played by Catherine Missal):

I think that Pippa and Diana are happy and together, they’re in their late or mid-to-late twenties, so who knows if they end up together forever. But I think that they leave that wedding together and they’re in a happy relationship. I think that Bree and Wrigley are soulmates and they end up together. That smile at the end of the wedding where you see that — and I literally wrote it into the script, into the action lines — their eyes meet across the room. And despite all this carnage, you get the sense that these two are going to find a way to work it out, because now that everything’s exploded, they have nothing left to lose, and they don’t need to lie and hide anything.

I think Lucy probably never talks to any of these people again. I mean, she makes that decision, she chooses him in the wedding, but I think that’s what she needs because this group, they never forgave Lucy for a lot of things. I think in a lot of ways, they didn’t appreciate Lucy for being the tender, well-intentioned soul that she is. You see people in the show come down so hard on Lucy and understandably, but I think she leaves this friend group, and in that moment where she laughs and she realizes it all and she gets it, I think she’s going to go on from there and be fine. I think she’s going to be a little bit f–ked up from it for a minute. It’s a little bit shaken, but I think she gets a clean slate, which is what I felt really deeply that she needed from all of these people, including Bree. Maybe Brie, and Lucy become friends again 10 years from now when they’re in their thirties, but I think they need an actual break. And Stephen, I think he moves on and never looks back and got what he wanted and moves on to his next victim. And Evan, I think will be okay, but Evan needed this to blow up in his face. He did not deserve Bree.

The series finale, “Are You Happy Now, That I’m on My Knees?”, with Tyne Rafaelli directing, has drawn strong reactions online. That’s especially in the case of Lucy, as many viewers hoped that she would be the one to walk away from Stephen rather than him doing the damage. But there’s an argument to be made that the show had never promised this, as Lucy is still focused on Stephen, even in 2015.

In a way, at least, every main Tell Me Lies character gets their happy ending, even if it doesn’t happen neatly. It’s telegraphed that Bree and Wrigley (Spencer House) end up together, even though her engagement has blown up. Pippa (Sonia Mena) and Diana (Alicia Crowder) get to take a clean break. Evan (Branden Cook) falls into a cake, but now, with no more secrets, maybe he could start fresh. Stephen can tell himself he won in the end.

Even in the case of Lucy, as Oppenheimer says, she could use this experience to start to make a big change. Whether she does or doesn’t is up to the viewer at this point, with the finale concluding on a note of beautiful ambiguity.

All episodes of Tell Me Lies are available to stream on Hulu