The actress discusses the surprising season 1 ending of the Hulu drama.
Spoiler alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched the season finale of Hulu's Tell Me Lies.
Tell Me Lies left a lot for fans to stew on in the season 1 finale.
The Hulu drama, which is based on the 2018 novel by Carola Lovering, chronicles the tumultuous love story of Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) and Stephen DeMarco (Jackson White), who meet at college and spans the course of eight years. As Lucy and Stephen get entangled in their toxic relationship, they're blinded by the web of lies and manipulation as their friends get roped into the vicious circle.
In the finale, which dropped Wednesday, the dramatics come to a boiling point when, in 2008 (while they're still in college), Stephen effectively breaks up with Lucy at the Hawaii-themed party once he chooses to leave with his ex, Diana (Alicia Crowder). Hurt by the betrayal, Lucy then drunkenly confides in Bree's boyfriend Evan (Branden Cook), and she later wakes up the next morning to realize that they had slept together.
Cut to several years later when it's 2015, and Lucy reunites with Stephen at Evan and Bree's (Catherine Missal) engagement party. The former couple seems to have ended up on relatively good terms as they greet each other nicely. But Stephen reveals he's now engaged. To who? None other than Lydia (Natalee Linez), Lucy's ex-best friend.
The episode also unravels the truth behind Macy's death -- that it was Stephen who was the one drunkenly behind the wheel and responsible for leaving her to die. ("I hope he gets what he deserves, I really do," Van Patten said. "Karma's coming for Stephen.")
With so many looming questions following the twisty finale, ET's Deidre Behar sat down with Van Patten to get the scoop on the biggest moments -- and how the revelations could impact a potential second season.
"I’m like, why? Like, can he get any worse at this point?" Van Patten reacted to the Stephen-Lydia engagement twist. "I don’t know what happened, I don’t know what went down. But it is messed up."
Van Patten revealed that showrunner/creator Meagan Oppenheimer shared with her that Lucy was aware that Stephen was dating Lydia, but obviously unaware of their engagement.
"Lucy knew that Lydia and Stephen were dating," the actress said, recalling a conversation she had with Oppenheimer that filled in some blanks. "She’s assuming maybe Lydia will be there but the shock of the engagement, [she had] no idea."
She later singled out a key moment from a previous episode that could have been a clue in regards to the Lydia of it all.
"There’s kind of a moment of it in the last episode where Lucy calls Lydia and Lydia’s kind of distracted. It's not the same dynamic as they had before, so I'm assuming that kind of sizzles out," Van Patten theorized. "Maybe she comes to visit Lucy and they meet? I have no idea, or they meet completely separately because Lucy and Stephen live very close to each other."
While the question of how Lydia came into the picture will be a driving force behind a possible season 2, Van Patten doesn't fully believe that Lucy and Stephen are done done.
"How could they be? I hope they are. I hope they are," acknowledging the toxicity between the two when they were a couple, "but also for the show’s sake, we need this to continue. But it seems like the perfect moment for him to come back into her life because it really seems like she has it together. She's with Max. She went with the stable, good boy. The good choice, the sweet boy and she’s living in L.A., and she has a stable job and of course, that’s right when he walks in, so it seems like the perfect storm type of moment for him to creep back in there but I hope Lucy stays strong for a little bit at least."
Of course, there's the drunken hookup between Lucy and Evan that could derail Evan and Bree's upcoming "I do." It's unclear in the finale whether that "mistake" was ever disclosed to Bree, but Van Patten noted it's a question to definitely ask in season 2.
"I had thought about, 'Oh did I ever tell them within the eight years?' Who knows about that," she said. "We kind of decided that Bree had a sneaking suspicion but it was never discussed. It was never talked about. No proof. But she kind of has that idea and that’s why Lucy’s so weird at the engagement party. She’s like, 'I’m happy for you,' and I don’t know if she’s going to come clean."
"Maybe to hurt Stephen. Maybe she'll use it as ammo," Van Patten added.
While Van Patten is hopeful for a second season, she hasn't heard anything definitive. "I am waiting. I really hope we get to do it again for so many reasons. It was the best time ever but there are so many questions that need to be answered and so much time that needs to be filled," she said.
"I just want to know the rest of college life because at the engagement party, Lucy said that she hasn't seen him in four years. So I'm like, 'Did they get back together in college? Or was it done?'" Van Patten wondered. "He was with Diana and she was with Max the whole time, I'm just trying to imagine them at college not together. Were they avoiding each other? Were they still trying to mess with each other? I just want to see that play out."
Tell Me Lies is streaming now on Hulu.
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