‘Tell Me Lies’ ending – does Lucy choose Stephen after leaked tape?
- Entertainment
ThePostMaster- 0
- 18 minutes read
Feb. 17, 2026, 5:55 p.m. ET
Spoiler alert! The following contains details from Season 3, Episode 8 of “Tell Me Lies,” streaming now on Hulu.
A wedding, a cake fight and “Toxic” by Britney Spears playing in the background. It’s kind of exactly how you’d expect a scene out of “Tell Me Lies” to play out.
The incredible season is the last for this sexy crew, according to creator and showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer. “After three amazing seasons of ‘Tell Me Lies,’ tonight’s episode will be the series finale. This was always the ending my writing team and I had in mind, and we are insanely proud of it,” she wrote on Instagram hours before the season finale hit Hulu.
Before we get to the epic final scene, which plays out at the wedding between Bree (Cat Missal) and Evan (Branden Cook), let’s take a look at everything that leads up to it.
How does ‘Tell Me Lies’ end? Spencer House, Meaghan Oppenheimer weigh in
The episode opens at Bree’s engagement party in 2015. She’s hiding out when Wrigley (Spencer House) finds her and makes a joke that she should call off the wedding and date him instead.
The two finally address the elephant in the room: “It’s been six years, and you’ve never acknowledged that it happened,” Wrigley says to Bree, referring to the brief romance they had when they were back in school.
Wrigley presses Bree on why she didn’t give him a second chance, and reminds her that he does not hurt people like the rest of the group. Then, the two hook up, and this sneaking around behind Evan’s back seemingly continues for weeks or months before the actual wedding.
House told USA TODAY ahead of the season finale that “from the beginning,” he knew about the romance storyline between Bree and Wrigley and was happy viewers got to see this relationship to the end. “I would say I’m just more thankful and relieved that we were able to get a Season 3 in order to tell that story,” House says.
Oppenheimer agrees. “To me, it felt just really pure and really magical watching them together on screen,” she says. The storyline “was always on the table and there are little hints early on in the series that are quite hidden, but I think if people were to go back and rewatch from Episode 1, they could see.”
In a plot twist, which the show is known for, it isn’t Bree and Wrigley’s sneaking around that upends the wedding.
Does Bree find out about Lucy and Evan?
Back in the 2009 timeline, Bree looks through Evan’s laptop and stumbles across a questionable photo of him and Lucy (Grace Van Patten) at a party the night they slept together. It’s in that moment that Bree realizes Lucy is the one Evan slept with. But she doesn’t confront him — instead, she runs off to Lucy’s dorm to talk to her, but doesn’t find her.
Stephen (Jackson White) has been admitted to Yale Law School. Because he’s going to Yale, Diana (Alicia Crowder) chooses to go to Stanford to get away from him, which is very upsetting to her and Pippa (Sonia Mena), given their blossoming (yet still secret) relationship and how far apart they would be.
Pippa finally admits to Wrigley that she’s gay and that she’s been cheating on him. A surprise to no one, Wrigley is very supportive, and during her confession, Pippa talks about Stephen’s bad behavior and how he sent old nudes of Diana to her dad. Pippa challenges Wrigley on why the guys never hold Stephen accountable.
“You don’t do anything, no one does anything,” she says.
Who releases Lucy’s confession tape?
While Lucy is in class, she sees a student sitting a few rows ahead of her watching the tape where she confesses she lied about being raped, and immediately realizes it’s now out there for all to see. Fleeing the room, she runs into Stephen and confronts him because she assumes this is his doing.
“Lucy, you did this,” he says, gaslighting her. “I gave the tape back, you were safe.”
After their exchange, Lucy goes to Alex’s apartment (who we haven’t seen since Episode 6) for comfort and tries to explain herself. “I came here because I have nowhere else to go,” she says. But Alex (Costa D’Angelo) draws the line: “This is the one thing you don’t lie about.”
Once she leaves, defeated, we see Bree inside Alex’s apartment, and it’s hinted that she’s the one who may have released the tape.
Later, back at Pippa’s room, Bree and Pippa talk about the tape, and Pippa reveals that Lucy lied for her, since she was too scared to come forward about her assault. Bree suddenly understands why Lucy’s motive and tries to support her, but her life starts to fall apart, and she gets expelled from Baird.
Stephen has new problems of his own: Yale rescinds his admission to law school because they received information about his behavior that violates their code of conduct, including online harassment and distribution of pornographic material.
It’s hinted that Wrigley is the one who notified Yale, and when he goes to see Bree, she’s making up with Evan. He’s devastated but says nothing and leaves with Evan. Alone, Bree begins to cry, upset over Wrigley and what she’s done to Lucy. She searches her desk drawer and pulls out the SD card with Lucy’s confession and destroys it.
Do Bree and Evan get married in ‘Tell Me Lies’?
After 26 episodes of “Tell Me Lies,” we finally find out whether Bree actually marries Evan and what exactly goes down that night.
Despite Stephen trying to stop the wedding by revealing that Lucy and Evan slept together, it doesn’t work since Bree learned that years ago. Though she confronted Evan eventually and they made up, she’s kept that secret from everyone else.
At the wedding reception, Pippa and Diana – who changed her plans and went to Yale after Stephen was rejected – are happily together. Stephen is there with his fiancée, Lucy’s old childhood best friend, Lydia, and by the end of the episode, they break up when he taunts her by revealing he and Lucy slept together that morning.
Reeling over the fact that he couldn’t ruin the wedding, Stephen then pieces together that Bree was the one who released the confession tape. He then takes the mic for an impromptu and unhinged speech in which he tells the room about how Wrigley and Bree were having an affair, that he’s always hated Evan, and that he believes Bree released Lucy’s tape.
“Toxic” plays as Bree calls Stephen a “(expletive) sociopath!” She then runs after him, throwing wedding cake, yelling, “Get the (expletive) out of here! You stupid, stupid man!”
As she continues to rage, Evan confronts Wrigley. But he’s unfazed and Evan takes a run at Stephen and ends up face down on top of his own wedding cake. To avoid the drama, Diana and Pippa leave the party altogether.
Bree admits to Lucy that she released the tape, but Stephen interrupts their heart-to-heart to tempt Lucy to leave with him. “You’re never coming back from this,” he says.
Bree pleads with her not to go with him. “He doesn’t care about you; he cares about winning,” Bree says. “This is your last chance to make a decision that isn’t completely embarrassing.” But Lucy follows him out anyway.
Bree and Wrigley exchange a smile across the room that suggests, despite the drama at the wedding, they will end up together.
Do Lucy and Stephen end up together in ‘Tell Me Lies’?
Before Lucy gets into the car with Stephen, she presses him on why he wants her to go with him. “Do you want me to give you a big speech, about how boring my life has been without you?” he says.
“You just want to win,” she says, but ends up getting into the car anyway.
They drive off together, seemingly into the sunrise. Lucy smiles and seems happy. Stephen says they need to stop for gas, and Lucy goes into the station, which is far out on the highway and in the middle of nowhere, to get coffee. When she walks out, Stephen is gone.
All that’s left is her purse, on the ground by the gas pump. Now stranded and alone, all Lucy can do is laugh at herself and the sum of her decisions.
In an interview with USA TODAY, Grace Van Patten called it “the perfect ending.”
