tell me lies ending: does Lucy choose Stephen after leaked tape?
The final episode of the series closes out three seasons of tangled friendships, betrayals and shifting loyalties. The eighth episode of Season 3 pivots on a wedding, a viral tape and the emotional fallout that follows. Creator Meaghan Oppenheimer confirmed this was the planned end for the show, and the finale delivers a crescendo of consequences rather than neat resolutions.
How the finale sets the scene
The episode moves between timelines, stitching together the choices that bring this group to a single, chaotic night. Early scenes place the characters at a 2015 engagement party, where old sparks flicker and new tensions begin to surface. Bree and Evan are central to the evening’s drama, but the episode also returns to key moments in 2009 that reveal the groundwork for the finale’s ruptures.
Two secret trysts and a hidden photograph feed into the wedding-day unraveling. Bree discovers evidence on Evan’s laptop that points to a betrayal involving Lucy, an old flame, yet she never directly confronts Evan about what she’s found. Meanwhile, a covert affair between Bree and Wrigley plays out in the background, complicating loyalties and underscoring how past choices continue to shape the present.
Does Lucy choose Stephen after the tape is leaked?
The episode’s most explosive moment arrives when a classroom viewing makes clear that a tape in which Lucy confesses she fabricated a rape allegation is now public. That revelation sends her fleeing and ignites a chain reaction across the group. While the leak becomes a pivotal emotional beat, the finale does not present a tidy romantic resolution where Lucy picks Stephen or any other character as her future.
Stephen’s path is also in motion: he has been accepted to Yale Law School, and the fallout of career moves and geographic distance affects other relationships. Diana plans to attend Stanford, a decision driven partly by a desire to get away from Stephen. Those separations, combined with the public humiliation Lucy faces, make any immediate romantic reconciliation with Stephen unlikely in the episode’s closing moments.
In short, the finale emphasizes consequence over coupling. The public exposure of Lucy’s false claim alters how characters relate to her and to one another, and the episode leaves several relationship questions open rather than resolving them with a conventional choice. Viewers looking for a definitive “Lucy chooses Stephen” moment will find that the episode resists that neat answer.
What the finale means for the series and its characters
Beyond individual pairings, the finale ties up thematic threads about accountability and the long-term effects of deception. Pippa’s coming out and accusations about Stephen’s misconduct raise questions about who is held responsible and who remains unchallenged. The wedding sequence—messy, loud and laced with pop music—serves as a microcosm of the show’s larger project: exposing how small betrayals accumulate into life-altering fallout.
Showrunner commentary shared shortly before the episode aired confirmed this was the story the writers intended to tell, and the episode acts as a final note on the characters’ arcs rather than a series of resolutions. The emotional landscape at the end is fractured and ambiguous: some relationships fray, others burn out, and a few loose ends suggest the characters will carry consequences forward even after the screen goes dark.
For viewers, the finale delivers a potent mixture of closure and uncertainty. It underscores that truth and lies reverberate differently in public and private spaces, and it leaves the audience to weigh how much forgiveness, if any, can be granted when reputations and trust are both so deeply compromised.
