Tell Me Lies, a series about a toxic relationship, became popular on the Disney+ service

“Your mood you look fat in that dress,” a mysterious and self-confident Stephen says to Lucy, who has just started college, at a student party.

The conversation starts the duo’s eight-year twisted relationship, which is filmed Tell Me Lies – drama series.

At the center of the plot are also the couple’s student friends, who have in common the fact that no one behaves very nice. Everyone lies, cheats, hides, or at the very least is unpleasant to each other.

The story moves in two times: in a New York college in the early 2000s and in the present in 2015, when a group of friends meet each other at a wedding party.

American the psychological drama series has slowly grown in popularity.

The premiere episodes of the third season, which started in January, collected worldwide on Disney+ and Hulu five million views. That’s 150 percent more than the show’s first season in 2022.

The spectacular return of the third season is mostly explained by social media. Especially on Tiktok, videos began to spread, where the twists and turns of the series were horrifying.

The second main character of the series, Stephen DeMarco, who is characterized as a narcissist – even a sociopath – and played by Jackson White.

The character has aroused as much hatred as charm among fans of the series.

Manipulative Stephen is incapable of empathy, uses mental violence and only wants to take advantage of people. He gets a younger and insecure Lucy (Grace Van Patten) wrapped around his little finger. As the series progresses, Lucy also falls into selfish and emotionally cold actions.

In the final scene of the final episode of the first season, Stephen leaves Lucy at a student party in a humiliating way. It has been described on Tiktok as “like a horror movie”.

In the background of the scene, the hit of the American group The Killers, released in 2003, is playing Mr. Brightsidewhich has become the series’ unofficial theme song.

Series the popularity is also justified by nostalgia, which is why it has enjoyed popularity especially among millennials.

The characters in the series use clamshell phones or the Blackberry brand Curve– model, which was the most popular “smartphone” of the late 2000s. The only social media in use is Facebook, and even there only spontaneous publications are made in order to tag friends in photos.

Nominated by Cosmopolitan series as a “master class” of the now trending Y2k fashion, i.e. the fashion of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The characters in the series wear low-waisted jeans, lace-trimmed tops, Ugg boots, mini skirts, ribbed bomber jackets or layered tricot shirts.

Millennials have been able to relate to the characters in the series because of their age: who hasn’t made bad choices as a 20-year-old student?

In addition, the drama’s depictions of interpersonal relationships have reminded many viewers of their first relationships, the harmfulness of which they only realized later in life.

Tell Me Lies series has been both criticized and praised for its way of dealing with toxic relationships.

Detractors have said the series romanticizes emotionally abusive relationships. According to the defenders of the series, it serves as a warning example.

The series does not aim to present even the unpleasant character of Stephen as unequivocally evil. Growing up in the shadow of a mother suffering from bipolar disorder, Stephen learned the art of manipulation at home as a child.

“He grew up in an environment where love was the currency,” the creator of the series Meaghan Oppenheimer defended the controversial figure Teen Voguen in the interview.

Oppenheimer has confirmed that the third season will be the last of the drama series.