Stephen delivers his best performance to date on the newest episode of Tell Me Lies as he pretends he isn’t still fixated on his ex Lucy during a tense fight with his current girlfriend.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive first look at the Wednesday, September 11, episode of the hit Hulu series, Stephen (Jackson White) asks his girlfriend, Diana (Alicia Crowder), why Lucy’s (Grace Van Patten) ID is in her bag.
“She dropped it when I bumped into her on campus,” Diana claims. “Like, a week ago. But it wasn’t a big deal.”
Stephen wants to know what Diana and Lucy talked about, to which she responds, “Nothing. It lasted, like, a minute. Why are you being weird?”
According to Stephen, a minute is “long enough” for Diana and Lucy to “say something” to each other — and he clearly thinks it was about him.
“I’m not being weird. I find that confusing considering all the s—t you gave me about her last year,” he fires back. “If that was actually nothing, you probably would have told me about it.”
Viewers know that Diana and Lucy spent time together trying to help Pippa (Sonia Mena) after she was seemingly assaulted by Lydia’s (Natalee Linez) brother, Chris (Jacob Rodriguez). Diana’s efforts to keep the incident a secret from Stephen means she has to lie to him about Lucy.
“She came at me on campus. She wanted to talk or whatever. I guess she’s still not over everything. But I just told her to f—k off,” Diana says in the clip. “It was honestly really sad. I felt bad for her. So when I saw that she dropped her ID, I picked it up. I completely forgot I had it.”
Stephen appears to buy the lie — probably because he has his own interactions with Lucy that he isn’t being truthful about to Diana.
“I’m sorry that I snapped like that,” he tells Diana. “It’s not fine. I don’t want her harassing you. She’s f—king with me. She is in this class I am TA-ing. I had no idea and now I think she switched into my section on purpose. I just don’t want her messing anything up with us.”
In response, Diana is shocked by Lucy’s behavior, adding, “Are you serious? That is genuinely creepy.”
Season 2 of Tell Me Lies picks up months after Stephen blindsided Lucy by ending their toxic relationship. As most of Us can guess though, that split is just the beginning of what ends up being eight years of ups and downs between the tumultuous fictional couple. Scenes from the present-day timeline confirm Stephen and Lucy cross paths again and seemingly have learned nothing about how their chaos affects those around them.
Showrunner Meaghan Oppenheimer recently explained how the show tries to show Lucy and Stephen’s perspective even if it isn’t favorable.
“[It is all about] trying to be as honest with them as possible and letting the characters speak organically as you are creating the scenes,” she exclusively told Us in August. “I generally have a lot of empathy for flawed people. I never want to write a character who I’m completely judging just because I think it is boring.”
Stephen is usually the one that is harder to root for on the show.
“I do think that Stephen is harder to empathize with — obviously — because it’s not just that he’s young. He is very dangerous. But then when you realize how he was raised and if you’re not given the right kind of love when you’re a child, it just creates disastrous results,” Oppenheimer continued. “So whenever you kind of remember that, you’re able to empathize a bit. But it’s hard. I do hope people empathize with them sometimes.”
New episodes of Tell Me Lies premiere on Wednesdays on Hulu.