Diksha Sundriyal
Hulu’s ‘Tell Me Lies’ follows Lucy and Stephen’s turbulent relationship, which is built on the lies he tells her time and again. Against her best judgment, Lucy keeps falling for Stephen’s fabrications, even when she is warned by her friends, who seem to have figured out that he is a manipulator who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. There are a lot of things that Stephen lies about, including his feelings and exclusivity in a relationship, but that compares nothing to the lie he tells Lucy about the death of her roommate, Macy Campbell. SPOILERS AHEAD
Stephen Lies About His Connection to Macy
Introduced in the first episode, Macy Campbell has a very limited screen time in ‘Tell Me Lies,’ as she dies within the first episode of the series. Like Lucy, the audience barely knows her, and for a while, it seems like a random thing to have happened to a complete stranger, which has nothing to do with Lucy except the minor guilt she feels about letting Macy go to the party alone. Later, Wrigley’s brother Drew comes forward about his guilt on the matter. It turns out that he crossed paths with Macy that night, leading both of their vehicles to swerve. He saw the crash, but he was too scared to check up on Macy and flew the scene.
Drew’s guilt leads him into a spiral that he barely comes out of, but it isn’t until much later that we discover that he isn’t the only one to blame for the accident. During Macy’s memorial, Lucy discovers that Stephen was having an affair with her. When she confronts him about it, he reveals that it was something minor that happened between them before they came to college. He also reveals that he was with Macy on the night of her accident, but when the crash happened, he got scared and left her on the scene, like Drew. But even that is a lie.
One of the things about Stephen is that he knows how to manipulate people’s feelings. He knows just what to say to whom to make them tick, to make them bend the way he wants. This especially holds true for Lucy, who seems to be so ensnared by his traps that she doesn’t blame him for running away from the scene of Macy’s accident, but she is completely appalled with Drew going about his life for the same thing. She doesn’t realize that Stephen has done it again: wrapping his lie in a veil of truth to pass it along as acceptable.
Did Stephen Kill Macy?
On the night of Macy’s death, Stephen wasn’t just with her in the car. He was driving it. What makes it worse is that he decided to drive it even when he was a bit tipsy, even when Macy believed that they should call one of their sober friends to drive them home or wait for someone else to help them. She refused to drive herself because she knew she was drunk and even felt skeptical about Stephen taking the wheel. Had he not pushed her into it, she would never have driven back with a drunk person driving the car, and her life could have been saved.
What makes it all worse is that Stephen did all this just to hide his affair with Macy. Despite her repeated requests, he was adamant about not going to the house where the party was because he was worried that someone might see them together and tell Diana about it. It was his desire to keep up the façade of his lies that made him completely ignore the fact that drunk driving could cost them their lives. Even after Macy’s death, Stephen doesn’t learn his lesson and continues to manipulate Lucy the same way he did with Macy. He shows no remorse for his actions and, in fact, makes things worse for Drew, who doesn’t know that he isn’t entirely to blame for the situation. Stephen’s lack of empathy prevents him from understanding the disaster he has wrought on Macy, Drew, and their families. He is driven solely by self-preservation, and that’s what makes him such a dislikable character.
Read More: Tell Me Lies: Where Was the TV Show Filmed?
