‘Tell Me Lies’ Is Over Forever! Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer Says Season 3 Is The Last, Why It Had To End And What’s Next
On Monday night, Feb. 16, 2026 (ET), showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer announced that the Season 3 finale airing Tuesday will also serve as the show’s series finale. Oppenheimer said the ending was the one she and her writers had always envisioned and that the creative team explored continuing the story but ultimately concluded the story had reached its natural conclusion.
Three seasons were always the plan — and for good reason
Oppenheimer framed the decision as a defensive move to protect the show’s creative integrity. She explained that while the series has a passionate following, stretching the story beyond the arc she and her writers mapped out would have required a reinvention that risked producing something unfaithful to what made the show work.
“Three seasons is the perfect amount, ” she said, noting that most of the main cast are graduating college as the timeline closes, which scatters the central group and erodes the natural connections that sustained earlier seasons. For Oppenheimer, the key question was whether a fourth season could exist without feeling like a different show; when the answer was no, the choice to stop was clear.
How the finale ties up Lucy and Stephen — and why the friends’ stories end here
The series follows the fraught relationship between Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco, whose on-again, off-again entanglement devolves into manipulation and secrets that ripple across their friend group: Bree, Pippa, Diana, Wrigley and Evan. Over three seasons the narrative built to an ending that resolves those fractures while holding to the show’s tonal commitments.
Oppenheimer said the framing device that carried seasons one through three is now complete. With Lucy no longer in school and many characters poised to move to different places and careers, the connective tissue that held the story together would be hard to replicate. That structural reality — more than streaming potential or audience appetite — was central to the decision to stop at three seasons.
On the dynamics within the relationship, Oppenheimer emphasized the characters’ psychological logic. In one recent scene, for example, Stephen’s motives are revealed less as remorse than as a darker response to losing power over Lucy; when she stops playing into his leverage, it changes how he reacts. It’s that moral unraveling and the characters’ subsequent reckonings that the finale aims to seal.
Cast reaction and what comes next for the creative team
Grace Van Patten, who plays Lucy, described the announcement as bittersweet, calling it “beautiful and rare” that the series could complete a beginning, middle and end over three seasons. The cast’s embrace of the chosen ending helped give Oppenheimer peace about concluding the series on her own terms.
Oppenheimer expressed gratitude to the audience for their response to the third season and said the main goal was to protect the quality of the show and deliver the best experience possible. She also left the door ajar for future storytelling in other forms, noting that while the story as structured is finished, she and her collaborators are excited to bring new projects to audiences in the near future.
The final episode of Season 3 is set to drop Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026 (ET). The day after the finale, the creator and members of the cast plan to participate in a post-finale conversation that will offer a look at where the characters might be years from now and unpack the choices that brought the series to its close.
