tell me lies finale — does Lucy choose Stephen after leaked tape?
Warning: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of tell me lies. The final episode closes three seasons with a messy, combustible climax — a wedding that detonates long-buried secrets and leaves relationships in ruins. The short answer to whether Lucy chooses Stephen after the leaked tape is: no — their story collapses into violence, exposure and consequences rather than reconciliation.
Wedding chaos caps a season of betrayals
The finale stages its reckoning during a wedding that quickly devolves into a chaotic set piece — cake fights, a blistering speech and a soundtrack choice that underscores the episode’s toxic energy. That ceremony is the culmination of storylines long simmering: a secret campus romance, betrayals that fester for years and social media-era humiliations that ripple outward.
One through-line is Bree and Wrigley. Their old-school chemistry that began in earlier seasons finally reignites and, by the time of the wedding, the two have been sneaking around. Bree’s discovery of a compromising photo of Evan and Lucy years earlier explains some of her choices, but she never confronts Evan directly before the ceremony. Instead, the wedding itself becomes the place where hidden histories come crashing into the open.
Lucy and Stephen: collapse, not a reconciliation
Lucy’s arc in the finale is destructive and tragic. Earlier episodes set up the bombshell: a taped confession in which Lucy admits to lying about being assaulted. That tape leaks into the student body, and Lucy realizes the recording is now public when she sees someone watching it in class. The fallout is immediate — she flees, her life and college prospects unravel, and she spirals into a state of disassociation.
Rather than choosing Stephen after the tape surfaces, Lucy lashes out. She attempts to hold Stephen accountable in increasingly public and desperate ways, including a confrontation at a Yale event intended to derail his ascent. The effort is framed as defense of a friend, but it goes disastrously wrong. Lucy hits Stephen in a scene that marks how far both characters have fallen from any possibility of a healthy relationship.
Stephen, meanwhile, does not emerge as a redeemed figure. He continues to manipulate and provoke, and his actions culminate at the wedding where he abandons his fiancée and tears into the assembled guests in a performance that finishes many of the show’s interpersonal storylines. In short: no reconciliation follows the leaked tape — instead, the finale shows how the pair destroy one another’s lives in different ways.
Other endings: loyalties tested and new beginnings
Beyond Lucy and Stephen, the finale ties up other arcs with both tender and ugly moments. Diana chooses to get away from Stephen’s orbit by heading to a different university, a move that also strains her secret relationship with Pippa. Pippa finally comes out to Wrigley and admits she’s been cheating; his response is unexpectedly supportive, emphasizing his growth and the emotional complexity among the group.
Bree and Wrigley’s reunion reads as one of the more hopeful threads, delivered with a sense that some characters may yet build lives separate from the show’s central toxicity. But even their closeness can’t fully inoculate them from the fallout surrounding the wedding.
By design, the finale feels like a full stop. The showrunner signaled that this episode was intended as the series’ end, and the narrative honors that vision by resolving — often violently — the tangled web the characters wove over three seasons. The final images are less about tidy redemption than about consequences and disintegration: reputations ruined, relationships severed and futures altered.
For viewers who expected a last-minute romantic reunion between Lucy and Stephen, the finale refuses that neatness. Instead it offers a darker, more realistic reckoning: the fallout from lies, abuse and manipulation rarely produces a clean romantic fix. The closing chapter leaves characters scattered, some with small slivers of hope, others facing long-term damage from choices made long ago.
