The Big Picture
- Otis and Maeve’s relationship has been characterized by bad timing and near misses throughout all three seasons of Sex Education.
- Season 4 introduces new challenges for Otis and Maeve, as they navigate a long-distance relationship with major changes in their lives.
- A happy ending for Otis and Maeve wouldn’t be in line with the show’s realistic portrayal of complex relationships and the uncertainties of young adulthood.
Sex Education, Netflix’s favorite horny-teen show, has been a hit since its very first season. Created by Laurie Nunn, the series focuses on a group of high schoolers who are figuring out what they want, who they love, and who they are, in general. Following Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) and Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey) as they open up an underground sex therapy clinic for their peers, Sex Education‘s nuanced take on high school, along with the depth and curiosity with which they portray what it means to discover your sexuality, is what has made the show such a success. It goes without saying that the series had its fair share of romances — in a show about sex, love, and teenagers, constant couplings (and uncouplings, and recouplings) are somewhat of a given. One of the greatest relationships, of course, is the constant tension between Otis and Maeve: partners in crime who are clearly head over heels for each other and, inevitably, never on the same page. As the show returns for its fourth and final season, the biggest question on everyone’s mind has to be how their relationship will end. If you ask us? Otis and Maeve’s relationship is best when classified as “it’s complicated.” To have them end up together would, in one way or another, upend the entire thesis of the show. This is a series about discovering the complicated nature of growing up — to have our leads find their happily ever after feels a bit too on the nose.
Otis and Maeve Could Never Get Their Timing Right on ‘Sex Education’
Throughout the first three seasons of Sex Education, Otis and Maeve kept missing each other, romantically speaking. It was a central part of their relationship dynamic, the will-they-won’t-they trope that is so common in the world of television. In the first season, the two nearly kiss, only for Otis to blurt out that he’s a virgin and completely ruin the moment. When Maeve wants to confess her feelings later on in the season, she sees him kissing his then-girlfriend Ola (Patricia Allison), and decides against it. Season 2 doesn’t go much better for the duo: Maeve finally does reveal her feelings, and Otis reacts angrily — he’s still with Ola, and he doesn’t want anything to ruin that. Ola finds out and tells Otis he can’t see Maeve anymore, which leaves the two pretty brutally estranged. That is, until the end of the second season, where Otis leaves Maeve a voicemail apologizing for his behavior and admitting to his feelings — one that, obviously, she never hears. Isaac (George Robinson), Maeve’s love interest at the time, deletes the voicemail before she gets the chance. Does this sound like a lot? It is! Otis and Maeve’s back and forth continues throughout the third season as well, with a deep revelation, a clandestine kiss, and, at the end of the season, a mutual decision to give their relationship a shot. But it isn’t that simple: Maeve has been accepted into her dream program in America, but she doesn’t have the money to go. In the penultimate episode, her estranged mother gifts her the money, and we leave our two leads exactly where they’ve always been. They want to be together, but their lives just aren’t lining up.
Season 4 Sets up Challenges for Otis and Maeve
In the Season 4 trailer that dropped this week, we see Otis and Maeve trying to make some form of a relationship work. They text (and try to sext), call, and Otis even seems to fly out for a visit. But if the two couldn’t make their relationship work when they went to the same school, how will they manage when an ocean divides them? Maeve is in a new country, trying to prove herself in a new, challenging school program (taught by the ever-inspirational Dan Levy, who we’re very excited to see in this role). Otis is also in a new school after Moordale Secondary School was shut down at the end of Season 3, one that has been teased to be even more liberal than Moordale’s students could have dreamed. With so many changes on the horizon, it seems unlikely that Otis and Maeve will have the tools to make a long-distance relationship work — even considering their roles as high-school relationship therapists.
A Happy Ending Doesn’t Make Sense for ‘Sex Education’
More than anything, Otis and Maeve ending up together doesn’t seem to fit with the tone of Sex Education as a whole. The show isn’t about happy endings — in fact, throughout its entire run, the series has focused on the complexity of real-life relationships. Sex Education shows all parts of love (and sex, and gender), the easy and the difficult. Jean (Gillian Anderson) worked through her issues with independence to surrender to her relationship with Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt) — we find out in the trailer that he has left her once they found out her infant daughter wasn’t his. When Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) cheats on his boyfriend Adam (Connor Swindells), the act is framed less as an objectively evil one, and more as a reflection of Eric’s growth up until that point. There was something missing in his relationship, and in cheating, he was expressing the need to break free. Sex Education works because it gives space for these intricacies. It shows relationships beyond the black-and-white we can sometimes decide they should be, especially at that age. High school is filled with binaries: you are popular or lame, people are good or evil, relationships are either doomed or destined for forever. When we get older, we learn there is a lot of gray in between the two sides. Sex Education thinks so too.
It would make much more sense, then, for Otis and Maeve to grow in different directions, for them to end the series finding their own way in the world. A happily ever after, riding into the sunset kind of love just doesn’t make sense for the show, nor does it for Otis and Maeve themselves, who are deeply realistic about their futures and what they might want within them. In a series geared towards showing the complexities of life, where we’ve seen each character grow beyond what they could have dreamed for themselves, it would feel wrong to leave the main protagonists simply settled and calm — especially considering their ages. We would much rather see them embarking on their own journeys, diving into the real world with the same curiosity, compassion, and openness that they had in their years at Moordale Secondary. We’ll just have to see what happens before we leave them.
The fourth and final season of Sex Education comes to Netflix on September 21. Check out the official trailer below.
