Spoiler Space: Tell Me Lies’ season-two finale is the best kind of rage bait

Spoiler Space offers thoughts on, and a place to discuss, the plot points we can’t disclose in our official review. Fair warning: This article features spoilers of Tell Me Lies’ season-two finale.

Throughout season two of Tell Me Lies, a massive secret looms over freshman Lucy (Grace Van Patten). After a public rejection by her boyfriend, Stephen (Jackson White), she sleeps with his roommate, Evan (Branden Cook). It’s a one-two punch because Evan is dating one of Lucy’s closest pals, Bree (Catherine Missal). Yeah, this complicated group dynamic is straight out of a soapy teen drama, but Hulu’s college-set series is far more menacing. It relishes teasing and terrifying us with Lucy and Stephen’s venomous connection. This show is so messy that it shouldn’t work—except “Don’t Struggle Like That, Or I Will Only Love You More,” which dropped on October 16,  cements that it absolutely does.  

Tell Me Lies comes alive when it pushes the boundaries with its toxic central duo, with Van Patten and White’s electric back-and-forths always increasing the tension. After spending most of season one as a couple, Lucy and Stephen oscillate between allegiance and animosity in these eight new episodes. Their actions will leave you screaming in pure frustration, whether it’s because of an unhinged declaration of love or a cruel, misplaced act of vengeance. Creator Meaghan Oppenheimer designs the series as rage bait, painting a scary picture of Stephen’s manipulations that trap Lucy, as well as most of his friends, former lovers, and family members. Reader, this man invokes the fury of a thousand suns. He’s a chameleon who switches personalities on a dime depending on the person he has to convince, seduce, berate, or scheme against. It’s almost cathartic to yell a variety of cuss words at him through the screen. 

That is why it’s maddening but not surprising when Stephen finds out about the clandestine hookup in the finale. He doesn’t confront or fight Lucy, whose life he has wormed back into, or leave her because he feels betrayed. Instead, Stephen records Evan’s confession and keeps it as leverage. Will he ever use it? Tell Me Lies waits until the episode’s closing seconds to drop that bomb. In a flashforward to Bree and Evan’s wedding a few years later, mere moments before she’s supposed to walk down the aisle, Stephen sends the bride-to-be the audio of her fiancé admitting he slept with Lucy, who is also Bree’s bridesmaid. 

Twistedly, Stephen held onto the information long after everyone had  graduated and moved on. A hotshot lawyer in the future, success only strengthens his vanity, so he bides his time to fuck up a happy occasion and satisfy a grudge. It makes Stephen the most diabolical character on TV right now. Forget villains from big-budget or other YA shows. This dude has them beat because his actions feel painfully real. And it’s fun to hate him because he’s a casual charmer, using this mask to hide his nefarious, selfish intentions. Stephen isn’t isn’t a hot, rich dummy used to getting what he wants, like Gossip Girl’s Chuck Bass or Euphoria’s Nate Jacobs, who wear their bad-boy badges with pride. Stephen is an ambitious student who gets A grades and is desperate to claw out of poverty with a lucrative career. His tenacity makes him even more volatile.  

This becomes clear as yet another Machiavellian maneuver of his unfolds over the season as we cut between the past and present. As soon as he finds out Lucy slept with his best friend once, Stephen hits on her childhood BFF, Lydia (Natalie Linez), who is visiting their campus. As revealed during Bree and Evan’s wedding festivities in the future, he’s now engaged to Lydia. Naturally, he doesn’t love or care for this woman. Lydia is a prop to screw with Lucy’s head. And, at least in season two, Lucy starts to reveal a darker side to her personality to pay him back. 

Somehow, all of this soapy material turns it into a solid study of how toxic relationships function through narcissism, obsession, and resentment. The entire friend group’s issues (everyone here has addictive melodramas going on) are used for more than theatrics, with surprisingly trenchant dialogue, backstories, and performances. In fact, a huge finale reveal is that Diana (Alicia Crowder), Stephen’s other ex, played shrewd mind games to get him out of her life. It’s both genius and depressing. When he dumps her, she sighs with relief that it is possible to get rid of that black hole in your orbit. But at what cost?