Was That The Sex Lives of College Girls’ End? Show Boss Talks Cliffhanger-less Finale, New Love Triangle and More
Warning: The following contains spoilers for The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 3 finale. Proceed at your own risk!
Sophomore year has certainly been eventful for The Sex Lives of College Girls.
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In Thursday’s Season 3 finale, Bela kissed her new comedy pal Haley and came out as bisexual to her friends (but hesitated to tell her visiting mom); Whitney inspired the entire soccer team to stand up to the athletic board; Kimberly got arrested alongside hottie activist Noah for breaking into Essex’s server room (to stop a bigoted speaker’s livestream) and was picked up from jail by her ex-boyfriend Eli, who had apologized earlier for the way he treated her; Cooper broke up with Kacey after she started making plans for him to meet her mom and go on a cruise with her family; and Taylor told Bela that thanks to her, she didn’t break her sobriety.
As the finale wrapped up, Kacey belted out a showstopper performance of “Never Enough” in the Essex musical as Bela sat next to her mother and embraced Haley’s hand. Her mom, in turn, wiped away Bela’s tears and held her other hand. In the final shot of the episode, Bela, Whitney, Kimberly and Kacey laughed and celebrated in the dorm room.
Below, showrunner Justin Noble — who also directed the hour — talks about what the finale means for the show’s future, Bela’s coming out, Kimberly’s new love interest and much more.
TVLINE | This finale really had a sense of closure and happiness and acceptance for the girls, especially during that final montage. It was much less cliffhanger-y than the previous two seasons. Did you go into the finale with the intention to craft an episode that could serve as a satisfying finish if the show isn’t renewed?
It wasn’t that. In fact, frankly, I was just kind of choosing joy and celebration of these girls, who have been through a lot this season, which felt like the right creative ending for them. I got excited about this kind of symphony of wins that all of these girls could have together, and then it felt antithetical to that to tack on a cliffhanger for logistic TV-writing purposes. That started to feel fake to me. The execs, who have been so wonderful to work with our entire series, were like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Don’t you want a cliffhanger?” and I was like, “I don’t think I do.” I’ve done cliffhangers my entire career, and I’m starting to feel like they’re a little fake a lot of the times. I don’t think that an audience, generally, really cares for them as they used to, either, in linear TV days. I don’t think whether or not we tune into the next season of a television show depends on whether or not we must know what happened to a character, and I’m talking, specifically, in a comedy. So many comedies will just change something up, and then all it really does is it means that the next two episodes of your show at the beginning of the following season, you’re kind of mopping up the muck of what you set up in the finale just so that you can get back to the show as it is and as the audience likes it. So it was much more about me having a sort of creative thought about the purpose of cliffhangers and stepping away from it and seeing how that felt, which other people were less sure about, but I don’t know… I love the idea of a little happy ending for these girls at the end of that big chapter of our show of Season 3.
TVLINE | Do you worry at all about people tuning in and thinking, “Oh, this is the end of the show. That felt like a series finale”?
I don’t worry about it because at the end of the day, if it’s a nice feeling for them as they click home or whatever on the remote that they’re watching and go about their day, that feels like a good thing. I also think that modern audiences, particularly younger modern audiences, are increasingly disinterested in anxiety-driven storylines, and a cliffhanger, by definition, is perpetual anxiety. It’s anxiety that will go for 12 to 18 months until you get resolution on it. So I just don’t think that the pros and cons, creatively, for me, at least in this show, lend themselves towards choosing a tacked-on wrench thrown at them.
That being said, Kimberly Finkle is currently in a jail cell moments before the end of the finale and worried that the school that she spent her life trying to be in and the career path she’s trying on [is] completely derailed. And Bela is now out and dating different types of people. There’s plenty of throws forward and new doors to go through. There’s movement. There’s new story on the horizon. It’s just I don’t need Dalton, the soccer coach from Season 1, like sticking his head through the bushes and being like, “Whitney, if you don’t give me 50 grand, I’m going to the press,” and nor do I think an audience, generally, would want it, frankly.
TVLINE | What are the prospects of a Season 4? Where would you put the show’s renewal odds?
Oh, I have no idea. The funny thing about TV writing and producing — and I’m sure that industry insiders like yourself know this, but readers don’t — is I know just as little as an audience member. So the only thing that I see is, like, the Top 10 list in Max, and for, like, 60-something days straight, Sex Lives was either the most-watched scripted show on Max or the second-most watched scripted show for, truly, months now. So I would feel good, but I can’t control anything beyond that.
TVLINE | One of the threads that was left sort of open-ended was Kimberly’s love life, with Eli’s reappearance, and then the introduction of this new character, Noah. First, is Eli back in the picture as a romantic possibility?
I think he is. I think Eli and Kimberly cross paths in an interesting way at the start of the season and then found some character differences that led to Kimberly thinking they were incompatible, and I think the finale kind of shows the gentlest movement towards character change for Eli that, perhaps, makes him a little more suited towards a potential rekindling with Kimberly. But of course, we’re also feeling a spark with Noah, new activist bae, as we’ll call him.
TVLINE | Kimberly has had so many different types of love interests over the three seasons. What excites you about the possibility of her and Noah, in particular?
I think that Noah, basically, is in her orbit for the face-value purpose right now of knocking her off the course that she’s obsessed with. She, I think for her entire life, has had the same goal, probably. Her college essay was probably about wanting to be a Supreme Court justice. She announces that very clearly at the start of the season. She panics about anything that can knock her off that course, as silly as saying “Me Gusta Cinco de Mayo” on social, and then she’s sort of challenged when she learns that what she feels inside and her values might not be on the same path as what she wants to be doing with her life. And Noah kind of opens her eyes to a different perspective, one that she would be resistant to. They probably come at things very differently. Kimberly will probably regret, a little bit more, the path that she chose in this moment, whereas Noah would not, and at the end of the day, when you’re putting two people together, the last thing you want is for them to see eye-to-eye on everything because then you can’t tell any stories. So I like that they have different approaches, but that they both equally care. They have a common ground of caring, but the way that they’ll go about it is different, and that makes for interesting relationships.
TVLINE | I couldn’t help noticing that a lot of the supposed nice guys this season, like Arvind and Cooper and Brian, turned out to be not so nice in the end. Was that an intentional storyline decision?
I mean, yeah. Our show is just, basically, taking down heterosexual love. [Laughs] No, I’m kidding. But I think that of those three, I would say that Cooper really hasn’t done as much wrong as it feels like it. Cooper feels redeemable to me, because, truly, what that story shows us is that society has pressured Kacey into thinking that she needs to not be a virgin if she wants to be in a relationship in college, and when she ends up having her first time with Cooper, she just takes it a little too far. It’s sort of on Kacey, and it was a very difficult challenge, creatively, to put the audience behind Kacey for that story, but at the same time, show that this was sort of an intrinsic societal issue, as opposed to, like, Cooper the villain. Now, Cooper was tactless, for sure. He definitely has crimes that he’s guilty of, but I don’t think that he’s on the same level as, like, Brian, for instance, who I think we learn is less of a good guy. Brian has more immorality in his bones.
And I would also say that Arvind might be redeemable, too. He definitely has opinions that are less than palatable for someone like Bela to be a love interest, but they are just his feelings. He apologized for the more egregious version of having a terrible reaction when he finds out how many people Bela has slept with, but at the end of the day, the thing they break up about is that he’s just less open about sexuality than she is, and I think that that is something that is acceptable. I mean, if someone were dating me in the real world, and they were like, “I just don’t want my sexual life being out in the public,” I think that would be a fully acceptable thing for them to say. But again, in the context of the story, we’re behind Bela, and I think it’s a testament to how much we love these characters.
TVLINE | Bela came to a big realization in this episode that she’s bisexual. When and how did you decide that this was an avenue you wanted to explore, specifically with Bela, who’s always been such a boy-crazy character?
Well, eagle-eyed viewers have spotted hints at Bela’s potential interest in women. There’s been little hints along the way, and there have been so many Instagram comments of people being like, “Did you see this thing over here?” or like, “Was that a little pin on her backpack or something?” and I have been watching with a little fear, honestly, whenever I see those comments, being like, “Oh, my God, are we hinting too much?” That being said, it’s not like we came into the pilot thinking, “A-ha! In time, we’ll expose her as this sexuality.”
But Bela is, in many ways, the opposite coming-out story to Leighton. She balances it out. Leighton knew exactly who she was when she came into school. She just wasn’t comfortable with it. But she, undeniably, knew what her sexuality was. Bela, on the other hand, is the other super important coming-out story to show, which is, sometimes, you aren’t sure, and there’s moments where you’re not quite candid with yourself about your own feelings, or just something gives you that epiphany where you’re like, “Wait, I think maybe, when I’m thinking about how beautiful all these women are around me, maybe it’s not me just appreciating their beauty or being jealous of them. Maybe I’m attracted to them.” We wanted to tell a story that was a little bit more about self-realization as opposed to the closeted self-awareness that Leighton had through Seasons 1 and 2.
TVLINE | What was it like directing the coming-out scene between Bela and her mom? It was so moving to watch. It was so subtle, but beautiful.
Oh, my God. I definitely gave myself the hardest assignment I’ve ever given a director on our show when I was like, “And the end will be a four-minute musical montage with a lot of stories wrapped up without words!” So, in many ways, it started to feel like a music video, and the challenge was to tell the story, authentically and emotionally, in tandem with the vibe of the music at the time and scored to the music. So time was very strict. I actually went into that scene with Bela and her mom, being like, “I have exactly 14 seconds, and it needs to be 14 seconds for it to cut before and after this.” So, editorially, it was a huge task to give myself. But also then to kind of sculpt the performance with the two performers there, who just desperately love each other, too. Amrit [Kaur] and Kavi [Ramachandran Ladnier] are so kind to each other, and they just love this story. But it was definitely challenging to choreograph time and still land the emotion, and I was just so proud of the performances that they delivered on that day.
TVLINE | How many takes did it take Gracie Lawrence to nail that song?
It’s the same as always: It was right off the bat. It was truly shocking. Gracie is so humble, but it goes to that place of self-deprecation, but likeable self-deprecation, where she’s always like, “Oh, I can’t sing that song. That song really doesn’t really work for my voice,” and then you’re like, “OK, can you try it?” and then it’s, like, pitch perfect, and everyone’s like, “Did we record that? OK, one more time then.” She doesn’t hit wrong notes. She doesn’t go flat or sharp. It’s so perfect and shocking. I’m such a music nerd, too. I did college acapella, like a lot. I’m in recovery about college acapella still 10 years later, 12 years later, 20 years later. But she just killed it right out of the gate.
TVLINE | Things got really messy after the Kimberly situation with Canaan, but Whitney and Canaan ended up getting back together. So what made him the right guy for her, ultimately?
I think he’s been the right guy for her all along. A lot of us loved their dynamic in Season 1 as they started to kind of find each other, and then through the beginning of Season 2. It’s really interesting. It brings me back to what I was talking about earlier, where we love these girls so much as an audience that we’re undeniably behind them. So when it became Team Isaiah [vs.] Team Canaan, which we intentionally chose, of course — it’s what the show is — I was really shocked, hearing people talk about it because Whitney, in my opinion, did Canaan so much dirtier than Canaan ever did Whitney. Whitney accused him of cheating on her and then went through his phone behind his back! Whereas what Canaan did was, once they were fully broken up with, he kissed her friend. But the way it is remembered by Team Isaiah is that Canaan, basically, kissed the friend while Whitney and him were together, which was very much not the case.
But at the end of the day, to answer your question, there’s such a sweetness between the two of them. Canaan shows so much love and doting towards her, and he always has, and that’s something that we really wanted to feature in the good partner test in Episode 8, to show that he was very different from this guy who’s been handed everything his entire life in Isaiah, and that, perhaps, Whitney, who’s in a place where she’s struggling right now, can accept a little more help, and Canaan is a guy who seems to be a partner who would help people out.
TVLINE | This was a big season of transition, saying goodbye to Leighton, introducing Taylor and Kacey. Now that you’ve kind of settled in, what’s on your Season 4 wish list?
I mean, Lila runs for office. I always want to see more of Lila and where her life goes and have her interact with our girls more. But I do think that like you’re saying, this was a season of big growth. This was a season of challenges thrown at our girls that they probably hadn’t seen coming when they entered sophomore year with open eyes. So I think they’re emerging much more mature than they have in previous seasons. They’ve lived a lot more life, as opposed to, like, the sheltered life of worrying about a grade or something. So I’m excited to see how they lean on each other more as they start to really tackle things that are going to be big-ticket items in helping them become the people that they are meant to be.
TVLINE | Is there any hope of seeing or checking in on Leighton?
It’s always possible. I mean, she didn’t fall off a cliff in Vermont. So she’s alive. Nico’s alive. Who I really would love to see is their dad, Henry Murray, still coming to Essex campus as regularly as possible to deal with the fact that he’s so deeply depressed that his children are no longer there. [Laughs] I so had to restrain myself from ending the Parents’ Weekend episode with [the reveal that Henry was there]. Ugh, my biggest regret of the season.
What did you think of the Sex Lives of College Girls finale? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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