‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Boss Insists Season 3 Finale Wasn’t Meant to Wrap Up Series

‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ Boss Insists Season 3 Finale Wasn’t Meant to Wrap Up Series

[This story contains spoilers from the third season, including the finale “Essex Strong,” of Max‘s Sex Lives of College Girls.]

If Sex Lives of College Girls fans are worried that that season three finale, which ended with the series’ main characters looking happy as they relaxed together in their dorm suite, was meant to be a series finale or a signal that their beloved show could end part-way through sophomore year, co-showrunner Justin Noble insists that wasn’t the intention.

“No one told us to, like, wrap up the show or anything like that,” he said, explaining that his approach to ending the season was more about his personal preference than any sort of dictate.

“I think just me as a creator, I’m losing interest in cliffhangers,” Noble told The Hollywood Reporter about the mostly cliffhanger-free finale. “I think it’s longer than ever between seasons for logistical reasons within the industry, and frankly, I don’t think audiences like cliffhangers the way that they used to. I think intrinsically, shows are what they are. We don’t want tons of change on our shows, especially in comedy, which makes cliffhangers risky and temporary, and a lot of the times it’s like, ‘uh oh,’ and then two episodes into the new season, it’s like, ‘and we’re back to normal.’ And that’s just what it is, because the audience wouldn’t want the opposite. They wouldn’t want it to be and now they’ve all been relocated to Wisconsin. You have to bring back to the show and comfort that you want. That’s why you return to it. So I’m sort of losing interest in what feels perhaps TV fake to me, in a lot of cliffhangers in comedies.”

He continued that he chose a “happy ending” that felt “honest” and “satisfying” after a season of personal growth for the characters instead of a shocking change that could set up a more dramatic season four or quickly be undone.

“I just wanted to see what felt real to me,” he says. “These four girls in this season started off in a not-together place. We started off with four different girls, a different combination. There was a shake-up in the middle. It was rocky at first. They learned more about each other. They grew as people. They had major revelations together, and then they had some wins, and they got to, at the end of the day, sit on a couch with a bunch of Cheetos and just be together. And that’s much more satisfying to me, as opposed to thinking about like, the TV realities of, uh oh, what’s next? I’d rather just write something that gives me a smile as I hit pause.”

He added that while the final scene wasn’t a cliffhanger, there are certainly character storylines that are unresolved.

“Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) thinks that she’s going to be sued by the school. That is something that needs to be followed up on. And we have the opening of doors, the suggeston of new stories,” Noble says. “Bela’s (Amrit Kaur) off in a new direction. Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), who knows what’s next for Whitney? I mean, everything has been so defined by her over-scheduledness in soccer for seasons, and now she’s on to something new.”

Indeed, Kimberly is dealing with the fallout from sabotaging a “hateful” politician’s on-campus speech and reunites with ex Eli (Michael Provost) as he bails her out of jail. Bela discovers she’s bisexual and comes out to her suitemates after discovering an attraction to another girl as she returns to comedy. Whitney starts putting her mental health first and forces the school athletic board to address those issues for student-athletes. And Gracie Lawrence‘s Kacey faces a confidence-shaking heartbreak after losing her virginity to Cooper (Roby Attal) before he breaks up with her.

While Max has yet to officially renew The Sex Lives of College Girls, which Noble co-created with co-showrunner Mindy Kaling, he’s optimistic about the possibility of a fourth season.

“I’m hoping the show goes on,” he says. “It’s always at the top of the Max [top 10 series] list, which is nice to see. And I think that’s, at the end of the day, what’s making decisions these days, it’s numbers and dollars spent.”

Still, Noble previously said that he wanted to see the Sex Lives characters through college, which means any future installments might need to proceed at a faster pace after the first three seasons only covered three semesters.

“I really better speed it up. We’re now somewhere in the middle of sophomore year, so we might have some early graduates,” Noble said adding that going forward the cadence of a semester a season might not continue.

Noble talks to THR about the long history behind Bela’s bisexuality and Whitney’s mental health woes, what’s next for Kacey after this season’s romantic disappointment and aspiring Supreme Court justice Kimberly as she considers making change outside of the system and whether he’s heard from original castmember Reneé Rapp about how her character was written off the show.

One of the things that happens towards the end is Bela discovering her bisexuality through her attraction to Haley (Belle Adams). How long had you thought that that might be a development for that character? Because Bela seemed like someone who really was really into having sex with men.

It’s something that’s been in the back of my head a little bit back and forth for a long time. There have been, truly for years, eagle-eyed viewers who are like spotting little things about Bela and commenting on it. And it’s always made me nervous when I see it. I’m like, ‘No, it’s time to do it.’ And they really ramped up this season as we kind of knew more that we were doing it now. In my mind, Bela’s story is sort of like the other end of the pendulum from Leighton’s (Rapp). Like Leighton is the one who came to campus knowing exactly who she is and what her sexuality is, but she’s just not comfortable with it yet. And that’s the journey that she had to go through, finding the comfort to come out and be who she is, and Bela is the opposite side that I think is equally prevalent in the queer community, which is you learn it yourself. You’re one of the people who you come out to.

And I think that the most true version of that that we talked about in the writers room with a lot of the queer writers is, like a lot of times that starts with, perhaps overcompensating. You’re, like, covering a little bit, and you’re super into it, because perhaps on some level, you know that there’s other attractions that you’ve had. Momentarily, you’re like, “Oh, I wonder what that’s about, but I don’t know. I just love abs so much, because every magazine cover has always told me to love abs so much.” So I like seeing her slowly discover it.

Yeah, [episodes] nine and 10 happened a little quick, but I think that it was just time to, like, tell the story after Arvind (Nabeel Muscatwalla) was kind of a chapter closed. I think a lot of it also plays into, like, South Asian stereotypes that I think Amrit, as a performer, was really interested in exploring. And I think there’s a lot of relationships with parents that play into, like, appeasing them, and Arvind was the quintessential example of who the parents would love. So, comedically, dramatically, it worked. But once that chapter was closed, I think Bela was truly free to explore something new that was perhaps better suited to her as an actual personal fit.

Whitney has this mental health storyline this season and deals with not receiving support for that as a student-athlete. The issue of mental health in sports keeps coming up more and more. Why did you want to tackle that this season?

Well, honestly, that dates all the way back to before the pilot was written, frankly, the research trip that Mindy and I did. When we were talking to college students before we even put pen to paper for the show we talked to a lot of student-athletes, because we kind of wanted one of our girls to be like a badass female student-athlete, and their lives are fucking tough. It was difficult, sometimes, even sitting across from them in a coffee shop and hearing how much they were at wits’ end trying to make their lives work because of how many hours they had to do at cardio workouts and then a team lift after dinner, and they’re behind in classes, and they’re told they’re gonna only take three classes this semester, because it’s when their season’s going. But then they don’t know when they’re going to make up that extra class, and they’re not dating because they don’t have time for it. It just felt like so much pressure put on these individuals all because they pursued something that they were interested in. And it felt like sad to me as a 30-something sitting across from them, seeing a version of like, not myself, because I was not the athlete by any means, but I did join like six comedy groups, so I was over committed in a similar way. I felt bad for them in that situation. And then I think when Naomi Osaka took her big public stand, that really inspired me, too. And I was like, I think this is a cool way that Whitney can kind of stand up and make absolute change, because she’s perhaps a little stronger than those around her and willing to stand up, maybe informed by her mom and what she’s been around growing up, but that she’s the one who’s going to not take any more bullshit. I mean, she was literally, like, sort of groomed by a soccer coach. She went through it intentionally in that world so that she could be the hero who pulls them out of it in some way.

Are viewers meant to take from the sort of brief celebration at the end that, like they gave into their demands and Whitney’s back on the team?

Yes, in a finale that is up to the second as long as it can be, Whitney says to that board the only way the soccer team is taking the field tonight is if you make these agreements. And so when we get that glimpse, we know that they not only took the field, but that they won the championship.

With Kimberly, she was so careful all season about limiting her digital footprint for her future Supreme Court confirmation hearing. But by the end, it seems like she’s taking to heart that idea of, like, making change maybe from outside of the system. How much do you think that Kimberly is thinking about that and/or sort of pivoting in that way, and what would that look like for her?

I think it’s a real crossroads for her. I mean, I think that she is so face value in terms of what her goals and aspirations have always been. Kimberly tells you exactly what she’s thinking, and we know what she’s wanted, and at times, a goal like that can be directly in contrast and conflict with what you think is right. And I think that’s especially true of someone who wants to go into that profession. It doesn’t take a genius right now to, like, look at the Supreme Court and think perhaps we’ve deviated from what it actually represented to be. So she has to question what her goals are moving forward. And I think, of course, we’re going to follow stories where our characters are following their heart rather than what they think is the square peg that they need to fit into to make good on a goal that they’ve had for a long time. So I don’t know if she’s going to make more change outside the system than within, but I think she’s been lofted that question that perhaps she hasn’t been asking herself because she’s had tunnel vision towards a goal that she’s had for a long time. So this just sort of knocks her off a path and makes her actually think.

You introduced some new characters this season, in Taylor (Mia Rodgers) and Kacey. With Kacey specifically, I thought she was kind of interesting, because she seems to come at sex from a different place than the other three suitemates. You know, obviously she was in that long-term relationship with Calvin (Tyler Barnhardt), and she was saving herself. And then she wanted to wait with Cooper, and you go through that journey of her losing her virginity to him and what happens in the relationship. And then she has a nice, emotional moment with her suitemates. When you were bringing in this character, how much did you want to intentionally have someone who was coming at sex and relationships from maybe a different place as the other three?

I mean, it was a huge part of it. When we started talking about new characters for the show, Kacey started as an index card that just said, “confidence.” And I really wanted to tell a story about female confidence at this age, because it feels like it really needs to be told. I’m not the first person to tell it, by any means, but I think it needs to be told over and over again until we can kind of have more examples of stories that people can follow. But I think that there’s a little bit of a toxic positivity culture that, especially through social media, gets to these girls, where confidence is put upon like a shirt, but it’s not always real, and that can super weigh someone down. I can only personally relate to it in terms of my own experience as not the skinniest individual my entire life, and also a queer person who was closeted. But a lot of times we put on these fronts, because we don’t want to come across as these wounded people walking through life as ghosts who have all these issues.

And I think it’s interesting to me that there’s this girl who’s been told she’s pretty her entire life, but on some level, feels unappreciated and worthless, because no one seems to really value anything that she brings to the table. It’s just this Southern mom who, like, wants to brag about her beautiful hair in a grocery store, but that’s not how she sees herself. And I love that scene at the end of [episode seven] where she’s, like, face tuning herself, and we see her changing every aspect of her face, and we’re like, “Oh no, this girl, this confidence that she’s projected since the moment we met her in episode three, this is not real.” And there’s only a matter of time until that house of cards comes tumbling down.

And so since the show is about sex lives, it felt interesting to me to talk about how sex and confidence are so intrinsically tied. And as we talked with all the female writers in the room, we learned that that was intrinsically tied to first times, especially in college worlds, and how a lot of people don’t look back on their decision to have sex for the first time with the first person the most positively. And it can go dramatically or it can go comedically. And we tried to thread the needle with both in that scene. Sex is such a currency to ourselves. And your first time and your virginity are so pressed upon young women, and that pressure is tough, and it’s a tough thing to navigate at such a young age, and we hate the idea that someone would regret their own decisions, that they then have to feel like they live with forever. So we wanted our suitemates to rally around her and alleviate her of that regret.

Yeah, I mean, I thought it was really realistic. And that moment with the girls is really moving, and it shows that they’ve become friends.

Totally, and we didn’t want to blame her. We didn’t want to, like, blame her actions for causing the breakup. But at the same time we wanted to show that she really wasn’t ready in terms of her reactions afterwards and how fast she moved along. Inviting him to a cruise where he’ll room with her great uncle Milton, should he survive until then, perhaps was a bridge too far for someone who she’s been dating for several weeks and just had sex with nights earlier.

If the show does go on, would you keep this sort of cadence of, like a season a semester, or do you think you might speed it up a bit?

I think we would speed it up for sure. But I just love living in this world with it, and I love the realness of moving slow, because day-to-day life is what’s interesting about this show. It’s not about the relationships, for anyone who doesn’t quite get it yet. Like the title is misleading, The Sex Lives of College Girls, like the show is about the love and the friendships and what you make in college, and that’s what’s lasting. It’s not really about the will they won’t they. That’s the fun that we follow along the way. But the show is the friends you sit with at brunch talking about the dates, not the dates themselves. That always lives on. So, I wouldn’t want to make massive time jumps or move too quickly because I think that might be antithetical to what makes the show special. And it’s so fun to like meet new characters along the way. Nice chapters, like new semesters, new years coming in are great ways to introduce new types of people, because there’s a truly unlimited number of different types of college girls who could have fascinating lives and sex lives. When we started pitching on the two new characters for this season, it was like our writers were in a candy store. We had so many ideas, the room was truly covered. All walls were covered with note cards for different types of girls we could follow. And so, yeah, moving not at a snail’s pace, but at a leisurely, real feeling pace, I think, allows us to capture college life a little better than if we’re sprinting.

Obviously, Reneé Rapp left the show this season. I’m curious if you’ve heard from her since her final episode aired or what sort of feedback you’ve gotten about how her character left the show.

I haven’t. I haven’t spoken with her about it, but I think that she was pleased with the way that she was written off. I mean, I remember the last night on set when we were filming their tearful goodbye. That scene was like, so moving, and it felt real. Of course, I think she was like, truly saying goodbye to her friends and co-workers and collaborators. I think everyone was pleased with how that was. I think to me, at least, it just felt real. A character like Leighton, all she does is win. She was going to go on to something bigger and better. She figured out who she was faster than the others, and she went on to what serves her next. And in that way, it led to the allowance of new characters. Shaking up our cast and seeing who’s around each other is just a natural thing that happens in college, whether it’s who’s rooming with who, which, we tackle at the end of season two, and what groups you’re in, but you’re just constantly meeting new people. People come into your life, people come out of your life, and there’s 2,000 more people around who you haven’t even met yet.

All 10 episodes of the third season of The Sex Lives of College Girls are streaming on Max.