“The Sex Lives of College Girls” boss talks season 3 finale and Bela's big realization

Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Sex Lives of College Girls season 3 finale, "Essex Strong."

Sophomore year of college is the perfect time to discover something about yourself, to fight for better treatment, to learn your worth, and even to... completely dismantle your future?

The women of The Sex Lives of College Girls were very busy during the season 3 finale, which saw Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) stand up for better mental health care in college sports, Kacey (Gracie Lawrence) fight through heartbreak to have her big moment on stage, Bela (Amrit Kaur) embrace that she's bisexual, and Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) stand up for her beliefs, even if it landed her in jail and ruined her future as a Supreme Court justice.

EW spoke with Sex Lives co-creator Justin Noble about the finale and what to expect should the series get renewed for a much-deserved season 4.

Related: The Sex Lives of College Girls cast talks hiding Pauline Chalamet's pregnancy during season 3

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: We start with the most important question: How did you choose "Never Enough" as Kacey's big finale song?

JUSTIN NOBLE: We had chosen earlier in the season that the musical was a musical of musicals and it was just hit songs from other musicals, which allowed me the creative freedom to choose something knowing I was going toward this ending. And then I was listening to a musicals playlist, pacing up and down the streets in Palm Springs at one point, and trying to find what would feel like the best ending to Kacey's confidence story this season. And then I found it and never looked back.

We have to talk about Bela's bisexual awakening. You all snuck in that great joke about her love of ties, which made me think: Has this been in the works for this character for a while?

It's been here for a bit. I can't remember when we started hinting at it. It wasn't like an open thing in the room, but we would adjust her style a little bit or we would have a little pin on her shirt. I'll be real: Eagle-eyed viewers for seasons have been commenting, just throw-away comments where it's like, "It feels like Bela's about to come out or something." I'm always scrolling past it being like, "Is this comment getting traction? Are they onto us? Are we playing it too strong?" But at the end of the day, what was important to me was just to tell a coming out story that was the other end of the seesaw from Leighton [Reneé Rapp].

Leighton knew exactly who she was, she just wasn't comfortable with it yet. And that's true of a good percentage of queer people's coming out journey. But there are also plenty of friends of mine and plenty of people I know in the real world who have the opposite, where it's like they would one moment be confident that they're a heterosexual person and then something triggers them to a moment of awareness where they start to think, wow, when I'm always fascinated about how jealous I am of people who look like that or that I'm always thinking how beautiful all my friends are, maybe it's more than that. Maybe I am attracted to them. And so we loved telling that version of the story with Bela, just clearing the road for people out there to be like, "Wait, that might be me too."

I also loved her actual coming out scene, where it's so not a big deal and they all just go and get breakfast.

Bela's the comedy character, and also we've had so many coming out scenes, so strictly to differentiate it, we chose the comedy route for this one. Bela is and always will be so thirsty. So her wanting it and preaching it and the way she pronounces "bisexual" in that scene is so funny. And you can just see the girls like, "Great! Moving on."

Related: How Sex Lives of College Girls handled Reneé Rapp's exit

You also had to figure out how to hide Pauline's pregnancy this season, which couldn't have been easy.

I found out the first day of filming, and at first, in a very respectable way, she didn't want anyone to know. And so little by little we would have conversations where I'd be like, "We should maybe tell the costume people because they can help you." "We should maybe tell the camera team because they can frame you in certain ways." And she was just so down and wonderful to work with the whole time. There was one moment in episode 2 when Leighton leaves and then they have to run up the stairs. We hadn't scripted that they were going to sprint up the stairs. And then I was like, "Oh my God, does she feel comfortable doing this?" I'm still one of the only people who knows. And so I on a little pad wrote down, "Are you okay with this?" And then I literally, like a seventh grader, wrote: "Yes, no, maybe." She was like, "What are you talking about?" And then I had to flip a page and scribble just the word "baby" and then cross it out frantically hoping no one would see it. [Laughs] But it's always fun. It's fun to just be like, now they're holding the box in front of their belly.

I feel like you guys have set up a couple of exciting things for Kimberly, one of which being a potential identity crisis now that she's maybe messed up the very thing she's been working toward her whole life.

We absolutely are. I mean, I don't want to get deeply political, but I got a lot of thoughts on the Supreme Court justices and where they stand in 2025, and I think it's an admirable goal to come into school with. But I'm interested in the story of someone who starts to learn that maybe if what they want is a better world moving forward, there might be thoughts that challenge the path that she's been on since [she was] probably 11 years old whenever she learned what it was. There's certainly an identity crisis in the works.

An identity crisis and maybe a love triangle?

Eli [Michael Provost] coming back felt interesting to us. I think he learned a lot since he has been with her. And I think that Noah [Trevor Flanagan-Tordjman], activist bae, as we're calling him, is someone who is on the same journey as Kimberly in terms of how they feel about things, but they go about them very differently. And so that can make for a lot of great stories moving forward that they are aligned, but not.

Related: The Sex Lives of College Girls breakout Ilia Isorelýs Paulino talks Lila's new job and those hilarious one-liners

Speaking of boys, are we done with Cooper (Roby Attal) or is there a chance that he could redeem himself? Because I saw where he was coming from. Kacey was coming in hot.

I think Cooper is redeemable. At the end of the day, Cooper's guilty of being tactless. I would say he could have handled that situation a lot better, but he's a 20-year-old boy. Much like anyone on our show, they are not quite used to navigating adult situations like this, and they try their best. It was a very interesting task to sculpt a story where we show Kacey's confidence thrive in the end, but we show that the real villain of that story is the societal pressures that are put upon her and those voices we have in our head that are telling us that we're not good enough and that if we don't do this, we won't get that. Our own inner saboteurs, as RuPaul would say, are really the villain of the story.

When she goes to Calvin [Tyler Barnhardt] and he is like, "I just think I didn't want to not have sex for four years," there's this one lingering extra phrase of, "I think any guy would," and that's enough to send her off into this journey where she does do something that she's not quite ready for and by not quite being ready for it, her reactions to it are a little extreme and she pushes Cooper away. So I think Cooper is redeemable, but he has an apology tour ahead of him.

The last thing I will just ask you is we have to touch on Whitney. The conversation around mental health, particularly in sports, has been picking up in recent years, but what made you want to dig into it on a college level?

This has been in the back of my head since before we wrote the pilot, honestly. When we researched the show, we met with a bunch of student athletes, particularly female student athletes, and I was overcome with the stress level that they exhibited when they talked about their lack of ability to do things in their lives. The fact that they feel completely overwhelmed with the sport that when they're in season, they take [fewer] classes, but they don't know when they're going to catch up on those classes, that they are just basically trying to tread water.

I love the idea of Whitney having a Naomi Osaka moment where she stands up for it and says, it doesn't have to be this way and has concrete examples. Soccer is a passion of hers, but she has been put through the ringer by doing it. And in one little glimpse in the song, we see that she clearly got that win because they took the field and won.

The Sex Lives of College Girls is available to stream on Max.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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