Buckle in, Tell Me Lies fans, because tonight’s season 3 finale episode will be the series’ very last. That’s right, we’re not getting a Tell Me Lies season 4, despite whispers of one. Sad!
Ahead of the February 17 finale, the show’s creator, Meaghan Oppenheimer, shared the news to Instagram: “After three amazing seasons of Tell Me Lies, tonight’s episode will be the series finale,” she wrote. “This was always the ending my writing team and I had in mind, and we are insanely proud of it.”
The Hulu showed branched off from Carola Lovering’s book after season one, and it had been widely assumed that the show would come to a close after its third season. However, as Oppenheimer wrote in her Instagram, fans’ “incredible response to this season inspired us to explore whether there was another organic way to continue the story.”
“Ultimately we felt it had reached its natural conclusion,” she continued. “My main goal has always been to protect the quality of the show and give you the best experience I can give you. And so, while it is bittersweet to leave something that has been such a happy experience, I am very grateful that we are able to tell a complete story with an intentional ending—a privilege very few shows get. Thank you for loving our show. We are excited to bring you more stories in the near future.”
Per Oppenheimer’s IMDb entry, she’s currently working on a new project called Second Wife, about a woman named Sasha who “flees her life in New York to start over in London, where she meets and falls in love with a recently divorced father named Jacob.” The series’ Jacob has already been cast: Tom Ellis, Oppenheimer’s real-life husband, who also starred as Oliver in Tell Me Lies, will lead the show. It was previously reported that Emma Roberts, an executive producer on Tell Me Lies, will star opposite Ellis.
Back in January, Oppenheimer seemed to still be on the fence about a potential TML season 4, telling Us Weekly, “In terms of future seasons, it’s impossible to really know at this point. I certainly had always thought this was more or less the ending I’d had in mind, but you never know what’s going to happen in the future. But there’s definitely a sense where I didn’t want to leave anything hanging this season. Basically, I wanted to satisfy everyone.”
Oppenheimer also said something similar to Decider. “I think it really just depends. I think most shows nowadays do well with three seasons. I think that’s a very clean, good number to me—especially when it’s something that’s a smaller story, not a big procedural thing. I would rather have something end when it’s good than just drag it out too long,” she explained. “I can’t confirm anything. You know, this was definitely the ending I had in mind from the beginning, to a certain degree. But obviously things change.”
Famously, there was another show in this genre that was supposed to end after three seasons, The Summer I Turned Pretty, but after the finale, a spin-off movie was announced. There has been no hint of such a development for Tell Me Lies just yet. We’re just saying, stranger things have happened.
