Going into the season 2 finale of Tell Me Lies, I was fully prepared for Stephen to do something manipulative and for Lucy to fall into his trap once again. What I wasn’t ready for was Stephen unceremoniously dumping Diana, only for it to be revealed that the split was actually Diana’s plan all along! So, I reached out to star Alicia Crowder and Tell Me Lies showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer to break down Diana’s season 2 finale coup de grace just for you.
But first, let’s back up a little bit. ICYMI, in the season 2 finale of Tell Me Lies, college-era Stephen (Jackson White) decides that he wants to be with Lucy (Grace Van Patten) because she knows the worst thing he’s ever done (i.e. leave Macy to die alone in season 1) and loves him anyways. To do that, he first has to break up with Diana, his on-and-off-again college love whose father is a high-powered attorney with connections to major law schools and practices—everything Stephen has ever dreamed of. In true toxic boyfriend fashion, Stephen ends their relationship unceremoniously in his dorm room, leaving Diana alone and confused…or so he thinks. A last-minute twist reveals that Diana actually set the whole breakup in motion and even lied to Stephen about not doing well on her LSATs, all so he would think the split was his idea and leave her in peace.
Why did Diana go through a whole charade? What does this mean for her future (and a potential season 3)? And why, oh why, did she delete evidence that could have implicated Stephen in Macy’s death? Alicia and Meaghan answered these questions and more in a post-finale chat with Cosmo.
In season 1, there were a lot of moments when I wondered why someone as driven and level-headed as Diana with a guy like Stephen…
MO: That’s the question of the entire show. Why do people who know better, who are smart, stay with people that are incredibly bad for them? Some of the smartest, most accomplished women I know, their weak spot is a man or a romantic relationship.
And I don’t think anyone has ever treated Diana the way that Stephen treats her. She’s beautiful, wealthy, gifted—everyone’s nice to her. And when everyone’s nice to you, it gets a little boring. Diana can have most people, so why not go for the one that’s the hardest to get?
Season 2 also had plenty of those moments, like when she realizes Stephen was likely driving the night of Macy’s death. Now looking back, I can see seeds of Diana plotting her escape from Stephen, but when did she actually decide to put this plan into motion?
AC: I think Diana decided in this two-to-three week time jump between episodes four and five—from the day they take the LSAT to when they get the results. She knows after she sees the pictures of Macy that she has to get away from him. He’s dangerous. Now, in that moment, does she know she’s going to lie about her LSATs? No, I think that time jump is when she figures that out.
MC: He says to Diana at the end of episode four, after she found the pictures, “You’re the most important thing in my life.” And Diana says, “I know.” That is the moment she realizes, Oh, God. I’m not going to be able to just leave him.
She also deletes the photos of Macy on Stephen’s computer, when they could have tied Stephen to her death and exposed him. What was Diana’s calculus there?
MC: Diana is always going to survive. She’s going to leave Stephen when there’s no risk to herself. There’s a ruthlessness about Diana that she gets from her dad. She’ll protect herself at all costs, which is why she deletes the photos—because she doesn’t want to be associated with them.
AC: She didn’t delete those pictures to protect him. She did it to protect herself.
At the beginning of episode 5, we see Diana crying after receiving her LSAT scores, which we now know were very good. What was she feeling at that moment?
AC: That is her letting go of this man who she thought she was going to be with for the rest of her life, who she truly did love. She’s thinking, This is over, and she’s really sad. That’s her processing the breakup that he isn’t even aware of yet.
MO: She’s also really stressed and overwhelmed and she knows what she has to do, and she’s scared. She’s very, very scared.
Let’s talk about the breakup scene. There is a moment in the scene when Diana confronts Stephen and challenges his performative emotions and he kind of drops the act and goes full emotionless psychopath. What was the genesis behind that moment in the writers' room?
MO: Initially I had him being very cold and checked out emotionally because he’s already got Lucy. And then I thought, What if it’s the opposite? What if he is pretending to be completely apologetic and remorseful and all of these things? And then he switches it off when she forces him to.
I thought it was more interesting to see him try to let her down easy and have Diana know him well enough to see through it and to be the only person to finally tell him to cut the bullshit. It’s almost a consolation prize that he gives her, letting her see behind the mask. And it also shows that it’s really over for good because he wouldn’t let anyone see that unless he had no stakes left in that person wanting him.
Alicia, what was it like playing that scene?
AC: That was probably the most challenging scene for me in the entire show, but I had such great direction from Dan Atlas. A direction that was given to me that was really poignant was that Diana has a fascination—a morbid curiosity—with seeing this inhumanity.
MO: I remember when we came and talked to you about the note that Diana is intrigued by this reveal, and the scene completely changed shape after you started doing that. I loved how you did that moment.
Stephen doesn’t let go easily. Should the show get a season 3, is it fair to assume that we’ll see him get revenge on Diana for her manipulation? Or is she safe?
MO: I don’t think anybody is ever safe on the show.
AC: That is something that I’ve thought about because the season ends at Christmas break and we have a whole other semester. I feel like he would have to find out eventually…
MO: He definitely will find out about it eventually. If we were to get a season three that starts with the second semester, I think the person he’s really out for is Lucy. If he figured out what Diana did, he might respect her more. But there are so many ways we could play around with season 3.
Like the characters, I was in college in the late aughts/early 2010s, and I remember how much meaner young women were when they talked about themselves, each other, and their relationships. Lucy and Diana’s relationship this season is so fraught, is there any hope that they could ever be on the same page as two women who were played by the same guy?
AC: There is a bit of that in the 2015 version of these characters. Diana and Lucy are able to see each other at the wedding and it’s weird, especially with the dynamic with Pippa, but it’s not antagonistic.
MO: I was also in college at that time and I certainly remember we were much harder on each other. Especially when it came to men being in the middle of things, but I think there is an opportunity for them to connect in the future. There has already been a softening in 2015. And there are some moments in the 2008 timeline where they see each other’s humanity, specifically when they’re taking care of Pippa. There’s a look between Lucy and Diana that just broke my heart.
But there’s a level of shame and embarrassment that they’ll need to get past first before they see each other. They’ve been so terrible to each other, but they know now in hindsight that it was for someone wildly unworthy, so I think they will have to get past the mutual embarrassment.
We also didn't know to call men like Stephen problematic or toxic. In the absence of that language, how does Diana think of her relationship with Stephen?
AC: I think that Diana has seen Stephen’s manipulations, but she still chooses him. She’s really down bad for this guy. Before she discovers the pictures, there’s nothing that can’t be undone or unlearned, nothing about him that can’t be fixed. Once she discovers those pictures and realizes that he was involved in a girl’s death, there’s no going back from that.
And you see in season 1 that the toxicity of their relationship is something that Diana really enjoys. The cat and mouse play, the power dynamic, the always trying to one-up each other. She enjoys that and it’s fun for her, honestly.
The last time we see Diana, she's getting into the car with her father, who we know is toxic in his own right. After everything Diana has learned about Stephen’s manipulations, does she see her father any differently?
MO: I love the dichotomy there. She hasn’t fallen apart because of Stephen and she’s actually completely on top of things, but at the same time, she’s still not sided with her mom and cut off her incredibly toxic dad. So while she has grown and evolved, she’s still a kid. She still has a lot of room to grow.
And she knows that she needs her dad. She’s a survivor. She is a good person, but she’s not the kind of person who is always going to do the right thing. She’s still going to put herself first.
AC: I think Diana does look at him slightly differently, but she still goes on to be a lawyer and follow in her father’s footsteps. And the idea of self-sacrifice is very foreign to her.
If there is a season 3, what do you hope to see for Diana?
AC: It’d be fun to see the development of her relationship with Pippa and how they got to be a couple in 2015.
MO: There are several people who are owed their revenge by the end of season 2, and I think Diana is one of those people. If anyone’s going to take Stephen down in the future, I can’t imagine it happening without Diana’s help.
I feel like I give too much away when I answer these questions about season 3, so I need to stop talking… It can all evolve and change. We won’t know for sure until we get into the writers’ room.
You can stream all episodes of Tell Me Lies now on Hulu.
