‘Tell Me Lies’ Season 3 Episode 1 Recap: “You Fucked It, Friend”

Friends, Romans, students of Baird College — the third and final season of Tell Me Lies has arrived, and with it fresh scandal, heartbreak, and general unadulterated chaos.

We last caught up with the show’s tortured ensemble when Tell Me Lies Season 2 ended in 2024 — or for them, the end of 2008. Season 3 picks up with the boys’ final semester at Baird, as well as the tortuously unfolding parallel timeline of Bree (Cat Missal) and Evan’s (Branden Cook) 2015 nuptials. 

Not much develops in that era in “You Fucked It, Friend” (Season 3 Episode 1), but over time I have learned not to underestimate 2015 on this show. After all, Season 2 ended with Lucy (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen (Jackson White) cheating on their partners to sleep together before the wedding, and Stephen sending Bree the damning voice note of Evan admitting he cheated on her with Lucy all those years ago. The sound bite sends Bree into a panic, but it seems to be for her own reasons…

We’ll let 2015 enjoy a brief respite while 2009 kicks off to a tense start. Lucy and Stephen are back together, Bree is still recovering from the mental and emotional fallout of her affair with Oliver (Tom Ellis), and Pippa (Sonia Mena) and Wrigley (Spencer House) are back together after she spent the holidays with his family while they mourn the loss of brother Drew (Benjamin Wadsworth). 

I’m going to say this now and probably seven hundred more times this season: ALL THESE PEOPLE NEED TO BE FAR AWAY FROM EACH OTHER. Okay, maybe not the women. But take them to an island somewhere and protect them. Even when they see each other making “psychotic” decisions, they show up with love and support and try to help each other through it.

Psychotic or not, Lucy justifies her renewed relationship with Stephen by saying that he can’t surprise her anymore. They’ve romanticized their connection as one in which they know the worst parts of each other and still accept one another — which could be a hallmark of true love, if they weren’t actively bringing those bad parts out in the first place. We glimpse this in 2015, where Lucy automatically tells Pippa that nothing is happening with her and Stephen; her instinct is to lie to her friends when he’s involved, and she finds it easy.

That said: it’s nice to see Lucy happy in 2009, even briefly, before Stephen will eventually ruin it. Tell Me Lies has always excelled at empathizing with characters through questionable choices; as much as we might yell at the screen for them to run away or do something different, the show makes it hard to hate or judge these decisions in a way that few stories do successfully.

Sure enough, Stephen barely makes it through night one back on campus before trying to coax Lucy into telling him about her night with Evan, turning cold and moody when she doesn’t admit to it, and then leaving her alone with her MDMA-laced thoughts while he goes to sleep. The molly part of this episode is fun but not particularly purposeful; it solidifies Bree and Lucy’s closeness, which threatens Stephen in one timeline and which he attacks in another — proving that he clearly fears their bond. 

Stephen comes clean about his motives but this is a manipulation tactic, pushing Lucy to overexplain and apologize and feel guilty — not only for keeping it quiet but for sleeping with Evan in the first place, which she already regrets because of Bree! It’s specifically engineered and weaponized to play into the idea that Stephen accepts her, warts and all, and this makes him a good person.

Lucy and Stephen are the least of Bree’s problems for the moment, because she’s still seeing Oliver on campus and now hyperaware of his every interaction with other female students. But what’s critical here is a male student: Oliver is Evan’s faculty advisor, and it’s only a matter of time before that tangled connection comes to light. Something about Bree’s attitude in 2015 tells me that the whole thing exploded spectacularly — but that she and Evan emerged from it stronger than before, despite Stephen’s best efforts to drive them apart.

Tell Me Lies Truths from Season 3 Episode 1 (“You Fucked It, Friend”)

Most jarring memory of the 2000s: Lucy’s mid-length tied shrug just sent me.

Moment that made me yell out loud: Oliver saying “Happy New Year” when he ran into Bree in the hallway elicited a “JE-SUS” from my couch

Proma Khosla is a New York-based writer with over 15 years of editorial experience. Her work has appeared in Teen Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Mashable, and most recently at IndieWire, where she was a Senior TV reporter for almost four years. She is the co-director of Lion Party Films and creator of Drunk Bollywood Live, where she highlights South Asian art and performers. She is one half of the podcast PromRad with fellow Decider contributor Radhika Menon.