Tell Me Lies season three
The most toxic relationship on TV returns to our streaming devices for a third series. Meaghan Oppenheimer’s East Coast drama, Tell Me Lies, is back with more scheming, relationship entanglements and, oddly, a whimsy for the twee era.
The second season ended with the show veering into the overly soapy terrain that it had seemingly been trying to avoid (that seven-year-old audio recording being the main offender, albeit an entertaining one). Season three, however, opens with a back-to-basics approach that further exposes Stephen’s (Jackson White) coercive control over Lucy (Grace Van Patten). Set in 2009, Lucy returns to college and also resumes her relationship with Stephen. Meanwhile, her bestie, Bree (Catherine Missal), is skittish in the presence of her professor and erstwhile lover, Oliver (Tom Ellis), against whom the girls enacted a revenge plot the previous year.
We’ve been in the midst of a Y2K resurgence these past couple of years, so it’s surreal to see the late 2000s/early 2010s through a nostalgic lens. To a soundtrack featuring indie stalwarts like Arcade Fire, The Strokes and The Shins, the characters navigate the tricky waters of young adulthood. There’s MDMA experimentation, for instance, at a college party, resulting in Bree and Wrigley (Spencer House) growing closer. Stephen, however, secretly pockets the drugs. This is yet another way of him exerting control over Lucy, as he interrogates her during this moment of heightened vulnerability.
Despite its flashy veneer and impossibly Insta-ready cast (every Millennial knows that college kids did not have contoured faces and Kardashian brows in the late noughts), Tell Me Lies has, admittedly, done an admirable job of detailing the complexities of a toxic relationship. Lucy being seemingly oblivious to the fact that her closest friends, Bree and Pippa (Sonia Mena), disapprove of the relationship is painfully realistic. The same goes for Lucy continuously returning to Stephen, with statistics showing that survivors return to their abusive partners around seven times before finally leaving. There’s also a fleeting moment in which Stephen engages in a racist microaggression, highlighting that his misogyny is tied to other forms of bigotry. For a show aimed at young adults, it’s important to draw attention to these various forms of coercive control.
Full of drama, intrigue and essential commentary on domestic abuse, Tell Me Lies aims for the high road when so many shows aim low. And for that, we applaud it.
Antonia Georgiou
Tell Me Lies season three is released on Disney+ on 13th January 2026.
Watch the trailer for Tell Me Lies season three here:
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