How Tell Me Lies' Season 3 Premiere Resolves Season 2's Wedding Cliffhanger

This post contains spoilers for "Tell Me Lies" season 3 episode 1, "You F***ed It, Friend."

"Tell Me Lies," the Hulu drama from showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer based on the novel of the same name by Carola Lovering, focuses on Grace van Patten's impulsive but good-hearted Lucy Albright and the man who torments her through college and beyond, generationally toxic boyfriend Stephen DeMarco (played by Jackson White, van Patten's real-life partner). So what about that cliffhanger at the end of season 3 that concerns Lucy, Stephen, Lucy's best friend Bree (Cat Missal), and Bree's husband-to-be Evan (Branden Cook)?

What Oppenheimer does beautifully throughout the show (including its third season, which dropped its first three episodes on January 13) is expand Lovering's scope beyond just Lucy and Stephen, letting characters like their in-universe friends Bree, Evan, Diana (Alicia Crowder), Wrigley (Spencer House), and Pippa (Sonia Mena) take center stage alongside the two series leads. Bree's story is incredibly fascinating, which might be why she got the cliffhanger.

At the end of season 2, Stephen, a maniacal demon hellbent on ruining everybody's life no matter the cost, sends a recording to Bree just before she's set to wed Evan (the show takes place across two timelines, with one set during the gang's tenure at the fictional Baird College in the late 2000s and the other set during Bree and Evan's 2015 wedding). As Bree stands in her wedding gown with her bridesmaids Lucy and Pippa by her side, she listens as Evan confesses that, one drunken night in college, he cheated on Bree ... with Lucy. That's the last thing we see in season 2, and amazingly, Bree walks down the aisle at the end of the season 3 premiere "You F***ed It, Friend."

Again, because Meaghan Oppenheimer expands the world already created by Carola Lovering, there's ample opportunity to explore Bree's life and history, and I'll admit there are times where I almost wish the show was entirely about Bree. (I say "almost" because Grace van Patten and Jackson White are so excellent as Lucy and Stephen that I understand exactly why they're the ostensible main focus.) Throughout the first two seasons, we see Bree as she shyly enters into a relationship with Evan (alongside fleeting dalliances with other college boys, including Wrigley's brother Drew, played by Benjamin Wadsworth), but then in season 2, Bree takes an enormous risk. After she breaks up with Evan for cheating on her, not aware that he slept with Lucy, she starts pursuing a tryst with married Baird professor Oliver ("Lucifer" star and Oppenheimer's real-life husband Tom Ellis), despite the fact that it's an absolutely terrible idea.

I bring this up because every single character on "Tell Me Lies" is, true to the title, a total stinkin' liar, and Bree isn't exempt from that even if she's ultimately the most "innocent" person on the series at first glance. Bree hasn't had an easy life; we learn that, before meeting Pippa and Lucy at Baird, she bounced between foster homes and really struggled with the experience, and seeking a relationship with a married man who's also a professor at her school goes to show that she may not have the firmest handle on appropriate relationships. Furthermore, the "relationship" between Oliver and Bree means Bree is keeping secrets too, setting up plenty of absolutely delicious drama for the rest of season 3.

It's remarkable and, frankly, bold as hell that Meaghan Oppenheimer cleared up this cliffhanger in the premiere of "Tell Me Lies" season 3, because it paves the way for so much to happen throughout the third season's eight-episode run. Not only does Bree walk down that aisle and marry Evan, but she also says something bizarre and surprising to Lucy before she does, saying she's made a "mistake" — without elaborating — but she makes direct eye contact with Stephen as she makes her way towards Evan to marry him, defiant in her decision and clear-eyed as she clearly telegraphs, to Stephen, that his meddling didn't work for once.

Still, what in the world does Bree's admission to Lucy in the beginning of the premiere even mean, and what about her relationship with Oliver? Wrigley also spills the beans to Evan, in the college timeline, that the "old guy" Bree was briefly seeing — which is how Evan refers to him — was also married, and the fact remains that Oliver and his wife Marianne (Gabriella Pession), also a professor at Baird, both know about Bree and Oliver's affair. Secrets on this show rarely stay secret, and Bree should know that after watching her friends' secrets be aired like dirty laundry. It's easy to assume that the Evan and Lucy situation or the Bree and Oliver fling will come to light and wreck everything. For now, though, the cliffhanger is solved.

Oppenheimer's steamy series airs new episodes every Tuesday on Hulu, and in between episodes, check out these shows that you should watch if you love "Tell Me Lies."