In the three seasons of Hulu’s ‘Tell Me Lies,’ Stephen DeMarco does many bad things to a lot of people. He enjoys messing things up for people, especially Lucy, whom he continuously terrorises, often by digging up her mistakes and holding them over her. He also tries to have the same hold over Diana, who finds a clever way of ridding herself of him, but despite her best efforts, he keeps finding ways to ruin things for her too. In all of this, Lucy and Diana’s friends continue to question how long Stephen can go without facing the consequences of his actions. When will his mistakes come back to bite him? In the finale, it finally happens, but it also leaves the question of who is behind Stephen finally getting his due? SPOILERS AHEAD.
Stephen’s Dreams of Yale are Crushed
Having come from nothing, Stephen works his way up and is ready to do whatever it takes to change his life for the better. He detests his rich friends, like Evan and Wrigley, but he knows that he needs them, so he keeps them around to manipulate them into getting his way. His relationship with Diana is also meant to serve the same purpose. She wishes to go to Yale, and her father, being a successful lawyer, means that she already has a place to go to once she has her law degree. Stephen latches onto her dream, making it his. So, now, he, too, wants to go to Yale, and by having a relationship with Diana, he wishes to form a rapport with her father, so that he, too, can use the connection to secure a place for himself when college is over.
While Stephen focuses on Yale, his relationship with Diana goes through all sorts of phases, especially with the arrival of Lucy. Slowly, Diana, too, wakes up to his manipulations and finds a way to get rid of him. But then, they are both accepted into Yale, which puts her in a dilemma. While it was her dream to go to Yale, she didn’t want to spend any more time near Stephen than she needed to. Her experience at Baird had been traumatising enough, but the idea of spending the next few years with him at Yale is too much for her. She knows that as long as he is around, there will be drama and conflict, and she doesn’t wish that in the next phase of her life. So, she decides to drop Yale, even though it breaks her heart, and decides to go to Stanford instead.
Fortunately, she doesn’t have to act on this decision because Stephen gets a call from Yale, telling him that he has been dropped by the college. They have rescinded their acceptance following a concerning complaint about Stephen, including the part about the photos he circulated of Diana. While he is shocked and confused, there is no way he can manipulate Yale’s admission officer to take him back. To confirm that he has to find another college for himself, the 2015 timeline confirms that Diana ended up going to Yale after all. She wouldn’t have done it if Stephen had gone there, which means that he finally had something bad happen to him. But that still leaves the question of who did it.
An Unsuspecting Friend May Be Behind Stephen’s Rejection from Yale
Over the course of three seasons, Stephen pisses off a lot of people, all of whom wish to bring him down. Diana and Lucy are at the top of the list of people who wish for his downfall, but they are both too traumatised by him to do anything about it. In the years she has spent with him, Diana has learned the lesson that it’s better to stay out of Stephen’s way because he always finds a way to get back at people. If he thinks he has won and you have lost, he will not bother you, and that’s what she tries to stick to, even though her plan doesn’t really work. When Pippa finds out about the photos Stephen sent to Diana’s father and how Diana has to drop her dream of going to Yale because of him, she is infuriated by the fact that he never gets to answer for his actions.
Later, when Lucy tells her and Bree about the tape, Pippa laments that Stephen is continuing to get away with all the bad stuff while everyone else around him suffers. Despite wanting to make him pay, Pippa doesn’t really know how to go about it, especially when both Diana and Lucy want things to end without getting any worse for them. Eventually, this piece of information makes its way to Wrigley, who has tried to keep his distance from Stephen, too. After two semesters, he has finally found clarity that allows him to see Stephen as a bad person and a bad friend. He even tries to speak out for the girls on different occasions, but, of course, Stephen doesn’t care for his words.
Wrigley even notices the shift in Lucy’s mental state and asks her what’s going on at Bree’s photography exhibit. She doesn’t tell him anything, but his suspicions are confirmed when Pippa tells him about the tape. And then, the tape is released, and Wrigley assumes Stephen is the one who released it. Worse, he doesn’t seem remorseful at all. Rather, he says that Lucy deserves all this hate and downfall, which makes Wrigley think about Pippa’s words about how Stephen is the only one who can do bad things and get away with it. So, it makes sense that he is the one who files the complaint to Yale.
He has spent enough time around Stephen and the group to know all of his wrongdoings. So, he lists down all of his friend’s greatest hits, including the part about Diana’s photos, and sends it to Yale. Wrigley does it knowing that even if Stephen finds out, he can’t do anything about it because he doesn’t have anything to hold over him. Unlike Diana and Lucy, he has the freedom and power to mess with Stephen and not suffer because of it, so he wields that power and makes Stephen pay, even if it’s at the least price, given all that he has done.
Read More: Do Wrigley and Pippa Break Up in Tell Me Lies?
