‘Ginny & Georgia’ Creator Unpacks Season 3 Ending And Teases Season 4 Theme

SPOILER ALERT: This post contains MAJOR spoilers for all of Season 3 of Ginny & Georgia, especially the ending.

Ginny & Georgia creator Sarah Lampert always knew that Season 3 was going to be the biggest season of the Netflix series.

Following Season 2’s jaw-dropping ending, Georgia faces a murder trial and the rest of her life behind bars if she is convicted for the death of Tom Fuller — husband to Sabrina Grdevich’s Cynthia Fuller, and Georgia did commit this murder by smothering the ailing man with a pillow while he was on hospice care at the Fuller household.

At the top of each season, Lampert has asked the show’s consultant psychologist about the current status of the relationship between Antonia Gentry’s Ginny and Brianne Howey’s Georgia — the titular mother-daughter duo who have dominated the series since day one. She then asks the doctor what the relationship needs to go through to end up at a certain point by the end of each season.

“The main character of our show isn’t Ginny and it isn’t Georgia. It’s the relationship between Ginny and Georgia. And that’s the thing that we’re looking to always be evolving and changing, and that’s kind of what we focus our arcs on,” Lampert told Deadline ahead of the arrival of Season 3. “For Season 3, the question I asked is, ‘What would it take to break Georgia?’ And I mean that coming from a place of love for Georgia, because I think she needs to break to build. So Season 3 was about getting her to a place of being able to build her back differently in Season 4.”

In a show that Lampert credits for never staying “stagnant” and living in the gray area, themes are constantly turned on their heads as viewers decide for themselves what is good and bad and right and wrong in an ongoing discourse fueled by first Georgia’s, and now as of Season 3, Ginny’s sometimes questionable decisions. Crazy as some of the plot may be in relation to real life, Lampert stands by anchoring the stories in reality.

“My favorite thing about the show, truly, bar none is the fans, and specifically the fan discussions about the show, because it’s not surface level. All of the discussion is so deep and thoughtful and thought-provoking, and our fans are so wonderful, and it’s so fun to watch the discourse go back and forth, where it’s like, ‘Is she good? Is she bad? Is she a good mother? Is she a bad mother?’” Lampert said. “Ultimately everyone else’s opinion is none of my business as a storyteller, but at the same time, we as the storytellers and the writing team and the producers and the actors have a responsibility to tell these stories responsibly, and we’re dealing with such heavy topics that we kind of always go back to grounding it in truth.”

Below, Lampert unpacks many aspects of Season 3’s ending, both plot points and for specific characters, while hinting ahead to Season 4 here and there ever so slightly because the two installments — prompted by a rare double renewal by Netflix — are in conversation with each other. Read on to see what she says about the outcome of Georgia’s trial, Ginny’s influence in the verdict, Austin’s involvement, Marcus and Max’s big moments and the ever-shifting love interests of Georgia Miller plus much more.

On Georgia’s Trial, The Legal System and The Outcome

In addition to consulting the psychologist, Lampert consulted a lawyer for Season 3. Lampert worked off of one of his key statements: “It’s the law. Anything could happen.”

“It’s actually not impossible, what happens this season, which is shocking, I know, but it’s all grounded in truth, which is crazy,” she said. “More than one thing can be true at the same time.”

In the Season 3 finale, Georgia does not have much hope left of escaping her life without parole sentence should she be convicted, but Ginny gets her hands dirty and pulls some strings, convincing her younger half brother Austin (Diesel La Torraca) to take the stand and pin the murder on his violent father Gil Timmins (Aaron Ashmore), whom Georgia had already got sent to jail by framing him for embezzlement, which he was in fact doing on his own.

Viewers will remember that Gil had been around Georgia the night she smothered Tom, but he came over to her house after she did that to confront her about Cynthia blocking his housing application to find an apartment in Wellsbury to be near his son. When Ginny first pitched blaming Gil to Austin, she didn’t know a motive he could have had to kill Tom, but Austin overheard his dad telling Cynthia he knew she and Georgia worked against him, and he used that to, as Ginny put it, “choose between his mom and his dad” going to prison.

“The inspiration for George’s legal battle really did come from a lot of different things we pulled from in the writers room, one being how women are perceived in the media. How quickly we as a society, can turn on a woman for fun and almost jump on board to take her down,” Lampert said. “ But then, to your point, she did it. Like everything in the show, nothing is simple. Everything is a little bit messy and complex. Both things can be true.

RELATED: ‘Ginny & Georgia’ Stars Brianne Howey And Antonia Gentry Discuss Season 3’s Big “Heartwarming” And “Heartbreaking” Moments

Georgia did have some agency of her own in the jury selection. A specific scene in which she assesses potential members of the jury at Lawn Fest, an event she plans so that she can make people come to her front yard since she can’t leave a certain radius of the house with her ankle monitor, came straight from a question asked of the legal consultant, which was what would make a good jury member.

“Whatever he said, I wrote down, truthfully, and [some things] were so fun and specific. When he we asked him what would make a good jury member, what would you want to avoid, or what would you want to pick in a jury? He was like, ‘Never pick a mail carrier. Can’t trust ‘em,” Lampert said. “I was like, ‘What?’ What a strange and random piece of advice. Like that really came from his mouth!”

On Austin’s Trauma

A last moment in the Season 3 finale involves Austin angrily shutting the door on Ginny after he pinned his mom’s murder on his dad. When asked if he could be a potential voiceover next season, Lampert said she has other ideas.

“I know what the fans chatter about. I know that Austin’s been thrown around. I know people are clamoring to hear more from Abby,” she said. “What I love about the other voiceover episodes, or anytime we do an episode of the show that’s a little bit different, is it’s born very organically. There’s nothing set yet for season four about who would get a different voiceover if another character did. I have a little idea of what I would want to do, and it’s something different.”

Lampert teased her excitement for Austin to get “older” and “messier.”

“The kids are not alright,” she said. “Poor Austin, he comes out of Season 3, out of everyone, probably the worst off.”

On Max’s Narrated Episode (“It’s Time For My Solo”)

Maxine Baker (Sara Waisglass) has an episode — the ninth of the season — told from her perspective. She has just seen Georgia take her brother’s motorcycle in an attempt to run away, and she has to go perform in the school musical, Mousse, during which she breaks up with her current girlfriend Silver (Katelyn Wells), the costume designer, after her ex-girlfriend Sophie Sanchez (Humberly González) kisses her backstage.

“Maxine is a character very near and dear to my heart. Of all the characters on the show, she’s the one I relate to the most, and her inner monologue is a little like my inner monologue,” Lampert said. “We focused really heavily on how to really effectively portray what it would be like to be inside a young girl with ADD and what that would look like.”

At the beginning of Season 2, Max was giving Ginny the silent treatment for hooking up with her twin brother Marcus (Felix Mallard) after she had immediately opened her heart to Ginny in Season 1 and worked hard to welcome her into Wellsbury. In the penultimate episode of Season 3, the tables have turned for Max, who feels the rest of her friend group (who call themselves MANG) — Abby (Katie Douglas), Norah (Chelsea Clark) and Ginny — drifting away from her.

RELATED: ‘Ginny & Georgia’ Stars Sara Waisglass and Felix Mallard Dissect Major Moments For The Baker Twins In Season 3

“For Maxine’s arc, I think what’s beautiful about that character is, for Season 1, she was a lot of people’s favorite character, and then for season two, a lot of people got really upset with her because of how she reacted to Ginny and Marcus and Abby,” Lampert said. “And I think that’s really beautiful when you can take a character and go on such a complex journey. It just makes her so deeply human. And that was a little intentional, too. ‘You love Maxine, huh? Let’s, let’s see what we can do [to change that].’ We play with all the characters because we want them to feel really alive and not ever stuck into one box, because that’s just true of people. And we always try to come back to a place of truth, like, what’s their best characteristic, what’s their worst characteristic?”

On top of managing her own personal life while putting on a performance that requires emotions, Max also struggles with the fact that her brother is descending into a bad space mental health-wise as his depression worsens and fuels addiction.

“I’ve grown up with a lot of sets of twins around me, and it’s always been something I’ve found so fascinating. There’s nothing like it. So for the twins’ dynamic this season, Maxine really sees Marcus a little bit as an extension of herself,” Lampert said. “So to see him struggling so much and to she herself be struggling, and for a character who has such a loud voice to not know how to voice any of this, I think is just a beautiful conflict that Sara portrays just so dynamically.”

On Marcus’ Worsening Depression and Addiction

As previously mentioned, Marcus Baker descends into a dark spiral of depression and addiction this season, the onset of which was outlined in Season 2 when actor Felix Mallard got to narrate his own standout episode about mental health and how depression resurges. Ginny and Marcus broke up in the end of Season 2, but there is still a will-they-won’t-they dynamic between them for much of Season 3. He shares that he doesn’t remember vandalizing the AP English classroom after getting drunk at the Tulips and Tuxes dance where he kissed Ginny, which he also did not recall and did not have the heart to tell her.

“I thought that Felix’s performance in Episode 4, in that one scene where he tells Ginny he doesn’t love her anymore, and then Max comes in, and we kind of get a little slice of his inner turmoil and what he’s going through, that was so beautifully done,” Lampert said. “That scene really broke my heart, and I knew it was something special just from being there, but then I really knew it was something special [when] our fantastic colorist on the show, Mark Kueper, he sent me a private email. He’s a man of few words. We love him. He’s done all the seasons, and he sent me an email, and was like, ‘That scene is really special.’ I told Felix.”

While Max is hyperaware of her brother’s state, especially after Georgia caught on and told Marcus’ twin sister to look through the drawer in his art studio in the garage for all the empty bottles he hid, Ginny doesn’t immediately realize how bad it is. His suspension from high school masks a lot of the habits he has developed.

“It’s rough to watch his character go through that, but it really is grounded in truth. It’s something that so many kids struggle with, and we wanted to show that accurately. We really wanted to show the fact that, yes, he’s depressed, and we’ve seen that this is a character who struggles with depression and with his mental health, but what we’ve shown a little bit in the background these past few seasons, without pointing a spotlight on it is [that] this is also a character who really self medicates with substances,” Lampert added. “And what happens when the mental health gets so bad that it causes the substances [to] get so bad and then it just becomes a spiral? This is something I think a lot of the audience is going to be able to relate to, and it’s a very, very real thing that a lot of people go through.”

On Ginny’s Pregnancy and Abortion, With Marcus’ Support

Despite his spiral, Marcus pulls through for Ginny in a big way when she gets pregnant after having sex with poetry guy Wolfe (Ty Doran) and decides to get an abortion. She sneaks into Georgia’s house to tell her mom and ask for help, but Georgia can’t go to the clinic with Ginny because she is on house arrest. Georgia’s next best bet is asking Marcus to go accompany Ginny after the procedure.

“The thing about Marcus is, I think that what that character is to Ginny is a safe space, and I think he started off such a little assh-le to her in the pilot, and from there, as they got to know each other throughout the course of Season 1 and then Season 2, these are really two characters that are so magnetically drawn to one another, and it’s not a trauma bond, it really is just a feeling of safety and a feeling of like true support and just a feeling of being seen,” Lampert said. “I don’t think there’s anything more powerful than really being seen.”

Ginny’s relief at seeing Marcus’ friendly face at the clinic — a sequence not unlike that of Maeve Wiley’s in the first season of Netflix’s Sex Education — is palpable, and not only does Marcus see her home, but he takes her for ice cream.

RELATED: ‘Ginny & Georgia’ Season 3 Soundtrack: From Remi Wolf To Sofi Tukker

“Now where we are in season three with Marcus, it’s the kind of thing where these are two characters who really do need to to get themselves right, individually right. They’re both really struggling, and we see them struggle. It doesn’t mean they’re bad people,” Lampert said. “It doesn’t mean they’ve done anything horrible to each other. They just need to focus on themselves, but Marcus, oh, he’s so heartbreaking. Marcus will always be that safe space. One of my favorite scenes of the season is when he’s in the waiting room and she comes out, and the only thing he says is ‘Do you want to go get some ice cream?’ He’s just always going to be there to support her.”

On Where Things Stand Between Georgia and Mayor Paul Randolph

Georgia’s fiancé Mayor Paul Randolph (Scott Porter) starts the season off steadfast at her side, determined to prove her innocence through the trial and get back to their lives and marriage, but as the trial buzz gets to his head and Georgia makes a truly unforgivable decision for him in pretending to be pregnant with his child using her daughter’s positive pregnancy test, he lets go of the relationship and decides to divorce her.

”What I love about Georgia is that she has chemistry with everyone. I love love interests, where each one is great and that being said, this season complicates them a touch,” Lampert said. “I think for a character like Georgia, who’s just never felt safety, having someone show up for her when no one else would is the most romantic thing that someone could do, and she wasn’t looking for a romantic partner in that moment. You see her on the couch, she’s as broken as broken could be. It is her lowest of the lows.”

Paul leaving finally gave Joe Singh (Raymond Ablack), who shares a special connection with Georgia from their past encounter shown in Season 1 right after she found out she was pregnant with Ginny at 15 years old, an opportunity to check on Georgia, and he is so conscious of her emotional state, where she makes the move to kiss him.

“In that moment, who shows up, but Joe, and he’s not there to make a move. He’s not there in a romantic way, he’s there because he overheard Paul and Zion talking, and he’s like, ‘Oh, man, she really needs a friend,’” Lampert said. “So there’s a little bit of an opening there for them to appreciate new things about each other. Because for him, it’s always been this infatuation. And for her, she cared about him as a friend, but she always was more focused on Zion or Paul. And now, when push comes to shove and no one is in her corner, someone showing up in your corner, you don’t forget something like that.”

Lampert did also stress that Georgia remains single at the end of Season 3.

“I’m gonna just say this, she’s single at the end of this season. I’m not saying one way or the other what’s coming down the pipe, throwing that out there. Single as a Pringle,” she said. “But what I love about each of the guys who play Georgia’s love interests, Georgia is such a dynamic character that they all can bring a different, very real element that makes you really feel depending on the moment or the scene or where she’s at. ‘Oh, that’s the right person.’ And it shifts depending on where she’s at and what she needs in that moment.”

She also shared how Joe brings out a younger side of Georgia.

“What makes Joe different than Paul, or different than Zion, is he’s really the only character that I see where I really remember George’s age, where I’m like, ‘She’s young, she’s a kid,’” she said. “She’s 30, and Joe brings that out of her. He lets her be freer in a way that the other two don’t, and that’s not really in script. That’s just the dynamic between Ray[mond] and Bri[anne]. When they’re in scenes together, they’re just having fun. And this season, it was like, ‘Oh, someone make Georgia laugh, I beg you, anyone, anyone make Georgia laugh!’ And that was Joe.”

On the Identity of Baby Wellsbury’s Father

Of course, Georgia shows signs of pregnancy in the finale’s last moments when she drinks regular milk from the bottle — which Ginny points out after Georgia had told her that was a symptom when Georgia was pregnant with Ginny. Georgia had slept with Paul when he tried to make things work with her one more time before her false pregnancy claim to him, but then she slept with Joe as well.

“Here’s what I’ll say about that, I know whose baby she’s carrying, but I went into the writer’s room this season and I said, ‘Here’s who the daddy is.’ Changed my mind,’” Lampert said. “So it’s live wire in there. I’m telling you right now, I am open to being convinced otherwise.”

On What To Expect In Season 4

Lampert acknowledged that certain storylines are more of a “slow burn,” like Norah’s period problems for example, hinting that it could end in an endometriosis diagnosis.

“It’s not like an issue of the week show where Nora has endo[metriosis], Abby has bulimia, because in real life, half of the struggle is the lack of resolution, right? And how long you do suffer alone in silence? And unfortunately, that’s a big part of storytelling, but I would say specifically female storytelling,” she said. “I think you see that all the time where ‘How long does it take to get an endo diagnosis in real life?’ It’s not by Season 2, I’ll tell you that. It’s not in high school. So there’s just this real desire to tell the stories in a way that don’t trivialize the story.”

When asked if the whole process of the trial and the outcome of who gets put away could come back to haunt everyone in Season 4, Lampert answered that she doesn’t know “in the most beautiful way.”

“What’s beautiful about our writers room, is it’s so alive. All of our writers are returning writers. You go into this writer’s room and everyone just loves these characters. And I’ll go in and I’ll be really convinced of something, and I’ll be like, this is the way it has to be. We’re definitely doing it this way,” she added. And then by the end of the day, I’ll be like, I hate that thing I said before. You’ve totally seen a change, so it’s a very live wire writer’s room. It’s ever-growing, ever morphing. So I I’m not trying to dodge the question, but I can’t say with honesty what is gonna come back in Season 4.

Lampert did tease that Season 4’s theme is cycles.

“I think you see that we set that up at the end of Season 3,” she added.

The plan had always been to wrap up the story in four seasons, but she is open to a fifth as things are still being worked out in the writers room.

“I always thought it would end at season four, just because I knew what the ending was, let’s say, but what we’re finding in the writers room for this season is that there’s actually more there,” she said. “And it would almost feel rushed to get to that ending for it to happen in four. I’m not Netflix. I can’t control whether or not there’s a season five, but I would say what we discovered very early on in the Season 4’s writer’s room is, oh, there’s more story here.”