What Happened To Drew In Tell Me Lies?

This article contains discussions of addiction and mental health.

The Hulu original series "Tell Me Lies," which is based on a novel of the same name by Carola Lovering, mainly focuses on the extremely toxic romance between Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White) and Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) across two timelines, with the two doomed lovebirds meeting at Baird College in upstate New York in 2008 and reuniting at a mutual friend's wedding in 2015. Still, the show, helmed by showrunner Meagan Oppenheimer, does a great job of splitting its focus in ways that always feel natural. Despite the fact that it centers around Stephen and Lucy, everyone in their periphery has problems of their own (and often end up swept up in the duo's drama, too).

That's where Drew Wrigley (Benjamin Wadsworth), the younger brother of Mike Wrigley (Spencer House), comes in. (To clear up any potential confusion, I'll stick to the show's rules in that Drew always goes by his first name and Wrigley by their shared last name.) Before coming to Baird, Stephen was involved with a girl named Macy (Lily McInerny), who dies in a car accident during the very first week of freshman year ... and as it turns out, Drew knows more about this terrible situation than anyone initially realizes. So what role did he play in the accident that took Macy's life, and what happens to him during the show's sophomore season?

When we meet Drew during the beginning of season 1 in "Tell Me Lies," he's just excited to start at Baird College with the other freshmen and even hits it off with Lucy's friend Bree (Catherine Missal) when everyone gets together at the beginning of the year. (Something else important to mention is that Drew is an invention for the show; Wrigley doesn't appear to have siblings in Carola Lovering's book.) That's when tragedy strikes. During the very first week of school, Macy is killed in a car accident, and in the show's second episode, Drew reveals something horrifying to Stephen and Wrigley: He was driving the car that drove Macy off the road. He was also drinking and driving, so he begs them not to turn him into the police.

Wrigley ends up getting drunk at a party later and blurting out the truth to his girlfriend at the time, Pippa (Sonia Mena), who is understandably devastated by this reveal ... and when it comes to Stephen's involvement, it's actually worse (because, being Stephen, he lies about it). Stephen and Macy were involved before her death and he was in the car with her when she died; when Lucy learns that Stephen and Macy were seeing each other in secret, he tells her about the accident and says that Macy was also driving drunk and was dead by the time he woke up after the crash. (That's half true. They were both drunk, but Stephen left her there to die rather than be implicated.) Lucy's disgust for Drew is palpable — she's genuinely terrible at hiding her emotions — and as he pursues Bree, she takes a drastic step and writes a letter to the school's administration implicating Drew in Macy's death. Drew, who is eventually expelled, shows up at a party after the investigation convinced that Pippa wrote the letter and attacks his brother, leading to an injury that ends Wrigley's football career at Baird.

Throughout season 2 of "Tell Me Lies," Drew is largely absent due to the fact he was expelled from the school where the 2008 timeline is set ... but in the season 2 finale "Don't Struggle Like That, Or I Will Only Love You More," he comes to visit Wrigley at Baird — after their mutual friend Diana (Alicia Crowder) convinces him — to try and repair their relationship after their drunken fight in the season 1 finale ("The Bedrooms of Our Friends"). The two brothers spend the night partying ... and taking pain medication prescribed to Wrigley after his accident (that Drew caused).

When Wrigley wakes up the next morning, Drew is dead from an overdose, horrifying Wrigley (who's already dealing with significant mental health struggles at this point). Wrigley, crying, says that the pills were time-release and he didn't realize that he couldn't give them to Drew while they were also drinking. "I'm the one who gave him the pills and I'm the one who ruined his life," Wrigley says through tears, which also guts Lucy — since she's the reason Drew was expelled in the first place. It's a truly devastating way to end season 2, and apparently, this plan was in the works since the show's inception.

Meagan Oppenheimer, the mind behind the television adaptation of "Tell Me Lies," sat down with Variety in October of 2024 after the second season ended to explain why Drew had to die in season 2 of the series ... and also revealed that she actually meant to kill Drew off in the season 1 finale but didn't end up having time.

"During season 1, I thought that it would be the ending of season 1, and then there was too much, and we didn't need it," Oppenheimer explained, saying Drew's death was inevitable. "So I always knew he was going to die. Ben is so great and so lovely that when we started the writers' room for season 2, I was like, 'Is there any way we can have him around?' It didn't make sense any other way. I really wanted Wrigley to be destroyed by the end of the season. I know that's so terrible to say! We've seen him in the future, and I wanted to understand why he'd gotten to that point, because he is clearly a mess in the future years."

Oppenheimer is certainly right about Wrigley, whose mental health struggles and addictions to drugs and alcohol threaten to derail his life at Baird and beyond. So how will Wrigley handle all of this in the show's upcoming third season?

The way that Drew dies, with Wrigley right next to him after the two spend a night partying and taking pills, is unbelievably sad, and it's also safe to say that the character likely won't show up in season 3. With that said, the ramifications of his accidental death will almost certainly be a huge part of the next installment of the show, especially where Wrigley is concerned. As I've mentioned several times, Wrigley struggles with dependencies on alcohol and drugs, and he also spends a large part of season 2 grappling with a serious depressive phase. He doesn't seem to be "okay" in any sense when we see him in 2015, either — during Bree's wedding festivities, he's way more intoxicated than anybody else.

Then there's Lucy, who wrote a letter accusing Drew of something he didn't do. Lucy doesn't know that yet, but Stephen does, and so does Diana, his ex-girlfriend. That information will likely come out one way or another, which will just devastate Lucy and Wrigley even further. A lot of drama will go down in season 3 of "Tell Me Lies," and there's no question that Drew's death will loom large.

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.