‘Sex Lives of College Girls’ EP on Season 3 Finale, Bela’s Bisexuality

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers for the Season 3 finale of “The Sex Lives of College Girls.”

For once, the sex lives of the college girls in “The Sex Lives of College Girls” are going all right.

Bela (Amrit Kaur) has the most surprising evolution of the quartet. After three seasons of maximally obsessing over sex with men, she spontaneously kisses her new friend Haley (Belle Adams), then gleefully comes out as bisexual to all of her friends the next day. There’s a slight hiccup when her mom (Kavi Ramachandran Ladnier) shows up to a comedy show at which she planned to publicly announce her queerness. But later, she holds hands with Haley in front of her mom, who reacts with nothing but love and acceptance.

Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) also spends the finale protesting. The school athletic board tries to convince her into rejoining the soccer team, which she had quit after being told she couldn’t take a mental health day. When her teammates realize what she’s been going through — including being pressured to work out with an injured knee — they and other Essex College athletes join her in refusing to play until the board regulates training hours, medical care and more. They succeed, and Whitney gets excited about the playoffs again.

After Essex police officers break up a peaceful protest about an offensive speaker appearing on campus, Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) leads a group of students in destroying the school’s internet servers to cut off the speaker’s livestream. She begins to panic about ruining her chances at her lifelong dream of becoming a Supreme Court justice, but another protestor (Trevor Tordjman) encourages her to think about ways she can affect change from outside of the system — then Eli (Michael Provost), an ex-hookup she ran into earlier in the day, shows up to bail her out and take her home.

Things are a little more complicated for Kacey (Gracie Lawrence), whose sex life has only just begun. She lost her virginity with her boyfriend, Cooper (Roby Attal), in the previous episode after hearing from her ex, Calvin (Tyler Barnhardt), that the main reason he’d cheated on her was that he didn’t want to wait to have sex anymore. Her night with Cooper went exactly as she’d hoped, but in the days afterward, Cooper gets overwhelmed by her attachment to him. He breaks up with her, and she realizes that she pushed herself into having sex before she was truly ready.

But when she confides in her roommates about what the ordeal has done to her self-worth, she finds out that she’s not alone in her experience. Bela, Whitney and Kimberly all enjoy active sex lives now, but they assure her that each had their own rocky starts, and that the mistake means nothing about who Kacey is as a person. She takes their words to heart, giving her the confidence she needs to beautifully belt a love song to Cooper as the lead in the school musical that same day, with her friends cheering her on from the audience.

“This season is definitely one where we choose a lot more growth for our girls,” says showrunner Justin Noble, who created “The Sex Lives of College Girls” with Mindy Kaling. “They come into Season 3 ready to tackle new challenges in life. There’s a lot more about identity, who they want to be, and who they want to become.”

Variety spoke with Noble about Bela’s big moment, Kacey’s relatable regrets and why the season ends on a happy note instead of the usual cliffhanger. 

Let’s break down the episode one girl at a time, starting with Bela. There have been breadcrumbs about her sexuality before — she was the most interested in queer culture after Reneé Rapp’s character Leighton came out — but all of it got chalked up to her brash personality before she kissed a girl in this finale. How long has the writers’ room known that she’s bisexual?

This is meant to be the other end of the seesaw from Leighton’s coming out story. Leighton knew exactly who she was, she just wasn’t comfortable with it yet, and that’s one version of an important coming out story to represent. But at the same time, a lot of my friends and coworkers — and younger people I talk to as I research the show — are the other version of the coming out story. They think they know exactly who they are, until they have a moment of realization and then start experimenting with that. I wanted to show that too, because I think it’s almost equally common, and Bela felt like the person to do that with.

We’ve actually been breadcrumbing longer than this season. It gave me fear! Back in Season 2, eagle-eyed viewers would be like, “Bela’s queer-coded in this moment!” I’m like, “Oh, my God, they’re onto us!” It’s wardrobe choice, but also her dynamic with Leighton, like when Bela was trying to get Leighton to rank the girls — desperately wanted Leighton to find her attractive and compliment her. I also think that Bela’s almost performative sexuality when it comes to like men — wanting every individual to have, like, 85 abs — is very fitting with some people who are realizing they’re actually interested in something else.

What do you see for the future of her love life? The other queer women in the show, Leighton and Taylor, are “U-Haul lesbians” who immediately move in with their girlfriends, but Bela doesn’t seem headed down that route.

Bela is so much messier than those other girls. I could definitely see her getting into some trouble with open relationships and trying to play the field. I would love to see the way that Bela approaches that, because I also think some of the people we’ve seen in her life are not fully burned. Arvind was certainly tactless in their breakup, but at the end of the day, all he really is guilty of is voicing his opinion. There’s definitely an apology tour that could happen, and I would love to see Arvind navigate his side of an open relationship between Bela and a revolving door of hot ladies and hot theys on campus.

Did you ever explore queer storylines for Whitney or Kimberly, or are they definitely straight?

God, I hate to ascribe straightness onto someone. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. So I definitely don’t think of them as straight [exclusively], but we haven’t actually pursued that for either of them. We are so excited about all of the queer stories that we can put forward that sometimes, I truly have to be like, “Am I making the show too queer?” Kimberly’s got a new professor, and she’s queer, and she’s got a boss at the coffee shop, and he’s queer. There’s Betty down the hall. Travis has transitioned, and Trish is here. There’s so much queerness that I have to have to sometimes pull back, like, “There are people who are in heterosexual, monogamous lifestyles, and they maybe need to be seen.” That’s the new version of representation.

While Bela’s sex life is heading to a new level, Kasey has only just lost her virginity — which she ends up regretting. Seeing a girl pressure herself into sex and deal with the emotional consequences is new for this show, so talk me through that. Did you ever consider leaving her a virgin?

Absolutely. So many young women in our writers’ room were talking about the true epidemic of confidence issues for young women who are victimized by the way they’ve been taught to speak to themselves. Kacey enters our world comedically confident, and as the season evolves, we start to show the cracks in that. In Episode 7, we see her FaceTuning her photo, and we’re like, “Oh, this girl’s got more going on than we realized.” Her virginity is established pretty early on, but we wanted to tell a cautionary tale about the need to feel ready when you’re not. There is the version of the story where she realizes it and stops, and we did think about that. But at the end of the day, I was more attracted to the version where she can make the mistake on-screen and lean on her friends as they support her through that, because it’s very common, and we wanted to be there for the audience members who are feeling that. In terms of a story that can maybe do a little bit of good, I think it was necessary for Kacey to to go there. In Episode 8, when she talks to Calvin and he’s like, “Yeah, I didn’t want to stay a virgin for four years” — if he had ended the conversation there, her life would have been different. But instead, he adds, “I think any guy would,” and that gets her in her head about her relationship. As RuPaul would call it, it’s our “inner saboteur” giving us bad advice that we won’t realize is bad until it’s too late.

[It comes from] so much research. I just turned 40, so I can’t pretend that kids are having the same college experience I had. It’s so impactful to hear their experiences and put them on screen.

What does your research process entail?

I’m just Billy Eichner-ing on the street! No — I go to colleges and contact people and ask them to put together groups that I can talk with. Sometimes it’s just people who identify as women. The most fun are when someone will say something a little off about the guys on campus, and you’ll see a couple guys in the corner who are uncomfortable about it. I went to a school recently, and this girl was like, “You need to be addressing the epidemic of college boys who have erectile dysfunction.” I was like, “Whoa, I was unaware of this so-called epidemic!” And the boys in the room were — truly, like out of a comedy —acting like, “What? What are you talking about? That’s never happened in my life!” and overcompensating. But it’s so rewarding talking to the students who respond to the show.

When Kimberly gets arrested for protesting a racist and transphobic speaker on campus, she gets bailed out by Eli, a fellow protestor and the person she knows who’s perhaps likeliest to have gone to jail before. But earlier in the season, she broke up with him for going too hard with drugs and partying. What are you saying by reconnecting them in this moment where she’s rethinking her goal to become a Supreme Court justice?

Eli and Kimberly cross paths and she decides there’s not a future there — a little judgy — because his behaviors are not befitting with her career path. But then she has this revelation about what she’s wanted in life since she was 8 years old, and what her ideals are, and learning that those might not coincide. It allows for her to step to the other side of that aisle for a second. And, without getting overtly political in the year 2025, I am here for a story about a young woman who learns that maybe the Supreme Court is not going to be the place that brings about the most significant change for the positive.

Whitney’s successfully pressures university officials to implement mental and physical safety regulations for student athletes and rejoins the soccer team after quitting to prioritize her health. Conditions within college and professional athletic institutions have been a major pop culture conversation over the last few years. Were you inspired by any news stories in particular?

Actually, this story was here before we even wrote the pilot. When Mindy and I did our first research trip together, we talked to a bunch of student athletes because we knew we wanted one of our girls to be an athlete. We went into that open, just to learn what their lives were like. And I remember at one school — I won’t say which — I was wrecked inside hearing them talk about their life, their schedule, how sad they felt. They weren’t able to maintain relationships or friendships, or their suitemates were always hard on them because they weren’t around as much, but they didn’t know what to do. [Sports are] such an interesting world for an 18-year-old to feel stuck in when it’s something that’s brought them joy their entire life. The way these systems take advantage or demand too much of these students, it takes the thing that brings them happiness and it gives them the opposite. So I am one million percent here for a story about a young, strong woman who can stand up and say no. I was deeply inspired by Naomi Osaka. When that was happening, we had just started doing the show. I was like, “Oh, my God, it’s here right now! But I guess we have to deal with the soccer coach [James Morosini] who’s cheating on his wife with Whitney.” She’s been put through the wringer by this sport, and that’s been very intentional for three years so that she’d become the person who could take a stand meaningfully.

Seasons 1 and 2 both ended with tension and cliffhangers, but this finale wraps up with all of the girls happily supporting each other. That’s a common choice in TV right now, as business operations in Hollywood shrink and cancellation always feels around the corner. Was that decision influenced at all by uncertainty about whether you’ll get to make a fourth season? Are you worried about that right now?

It feels like the industry is smaller than ever. The choice to go positive at the end of the season was purely a creative one, but we haven’t gotten a phone call about a Season 4 yet. We’re hopeful for one — if we don’t get one, you can rally everyone and take them to the streets and demand it.

But the reason was strictly to choose joy, which is a phrase that’s been on my lock screen for the last two years, for personal life and work life. I just had this epiphany about the utility of cliffhangers, particularly in comedies. I’ve been doing this for 10 to 11 years, and I came up through the network space where we would always, always belabor: “What’s the big cliffhanger going to be?” And without fail, the next season, you just spend two or three episodes undoing the cliffhanger that you did, while people behind the scenes and the audiences are like, “Come on, let’s get back to where it was! We don’t want Whitney at Kappa. We want the girls back together.” Or, “We don’t want a new captain in ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine.’ We want Captain Holt back.” You don’t want to undo the DNA of the show and make fake stakes just for the purpose of a cliffhanger.

Which no longer serves a purpose in the logistics of the business, either. I don’t think anyone is tuning in or not tuning into a show they enjoy based on whether or not someone was in peril at the end of the last season. This in particular is such a season of growth for all of our girls. Their big triumphs at the end of the season are there because they went through it earlier on. And I was just so excited to put out a season finale that chooses joy and has all these girls standing up strong against the things that are against them, and getting this four-minute-long symphony of wins. I don’t need to follow that up with the soccer coach from Season 1 peeking his head through a bush being like, “Whitney, give me 50 grand or I’m going to the press!” We don’t need it. Let’s end on a happy moment of our girls being there together, click the remote off and smile and go to sleep. 

This interview has been edited and condensed.