Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘Tell Me Lies‘ follows the turbulent relationship between Lucy Albright and Stephen DeMarco. Over the course of three seasons, they are repeatedly pulled towards each other, even as the level of toxicity rises remarkably with each day they spend in each other’s presence. Their time in college gives the audience an idea of how messed up things have been between them, but it is the 2015 timeline, around eight years after the events of college, that we discover the true hold that Stephen has on Lucy. It turns out that even after all these years, he is messing with her head, this time, by being engaged to Lydia, her former best friend. But with Stephen, is that really it? The finale confirms what Lucy and the audience knew all along. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Stephen and Lydia’s Relationship Had Been a Sham From the Beginning
From the way things have unfolded over three seasons of ‘Tell Me Lies,’ it has become clear that Stephen DeMarco rarely, if ever, does anything that is not to spite or mess with other people. Since meeting Lucy, he seems to have focused all his powers of manipulation and torture on her, and he makes her suffer so much that she has a proper mental breakdown in the third season. Though things get worse for her, they also turn out to have happened for the better since Lucy is now expelled from Baird, which means she will be away from Stephen for good. He, however, seems not to have forgotten about her at all.
Years later, when the gang reunites for Bree and Evan’s engagement party, it turns out that Stephen, too, is engaged. His fiancée is Lucy’s former best friend, Lydia, who seems to have connected with Stephen after college. In the second season, it turns out that Lydia and Lucy fell off because of the former’s brother’s actions and the latter’s lie. Stephen takes advantage of that, and before Lydia leaves, he makes sure to paint himself as the good guy and Lucy as the unhinged liar who ruins everyone’s lives. It is yet unclear how they got together, but in the finale, Stephen confirms that being with Lydia was his way to get back at Lucy. He knew she would be at Bree and Evan’s wedding, and by showing up with Lydia, he wanted to get under her skin and prove that he still had a chokehold on her.
The drawback of this strategy was that Lydia wasn’t like Lucy. Yes, she fell for Stephen’s charm and manipulations, but unlike Lucy, she didn’t have the habit of making one bad decision after another. Thus, her mental and emotional stability meant that Stephen didn’t have anything to toy with. He couldn’t control her and terrorise her the way he could Lucy, and that’s why their relationship had been doomed from the beginning. At the end of Season 2, Lucy and Stephen sleep together in the 2015 timeline, which proves that he hasn’t changed one bit, and as the day passes, even Lydia can see that he is fixated on Lucy. Still, because they are engaged, she tries to get him out of the wedding, so they can be far from Lucy and back to the way they were.
Stephen Confesses the Real Reason He was With Lydia
By the end of the day, Stephen is already in a bad state of mind. His ploy to ruin Bree and Evan’s wedding has failed, even after he sent the voicemail with Evan confessing that he cheated on Bree with Lucy. Having slept with Lucy and seeing that Max, her date, is nowhere to be seen, he believes that he has messed things up enough to start poking at her again. But when he tries to talk to her, she pushes him away, which takes away his fun. He feels like he isn’t winning, so when Lydia asks him to leave the party, he says he is staying, because he hasn’t yet ruined things for others.
When she calls him out on flirting with Lucy, he loses his patience and confesses that he got together with her just to spite Lucy, but it seems that’s not working anymore, so what even is the point of being with her now? If Lydia hadn’t already had enough to leave Stephen, she does now. For whatever reason, she chose to ignore all the things Lucy had told her about him, but it becomes clear to her that he is just as bad as Lucy had painted him to be.
There is a good chance that Stephen has already cheated on Lydia by this point, because of the sheer lack of drama due to her stable nature. It is possible that she forgave him, which is what led to their engagement, but now, her patience with him has run out. He is not even pretending to be in love with her anymore, so there is no point in fooling herself. In the end, she throws the ring at his face and walks away from him, saving herself from any more heartbreak and trouble that would have surely come her way with Stephen by her side.
Read More: Tell Me Lies: Is Stephen DeMarco a Narcissist or a Sociopath?
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