'The Sex Lives of College Girls' showrunner breaks down the season 2 finale's most surprising moments and gushes about the cast's 'undeniable chemistry'

• Warning: There are major spoilers ahead for the season two finale of "The Sex Lives of College Girls."
• Showrunner Justin Noble spoke to Insider about some of the most surprising moments in the episode.

Season two of HBO Max's "The Sex Lives of College Girls" has ended, and with it comes some major moments that could jeopardize the friendships at the heart of the coming-of-age series.

The 10-episode season of the show, co-created by Justin Noble and Mindy Kaling, concluded on Thursday with significant moments for Essex College suitemates Kimberly Finkle (Pauline Chalamet), Bela Malhotra (Amrit Kaur), Leighton Murray (Reneé Rapp), and Whitney Chase (Alyah Chanelle Scott).

After returning to campus following the Thanksgiving break, the main characters are faced with new romances, academic challenges, and decisions that are sure to significantly impact their futures.

Showrunner, writer, director, and executive producer Noble sat down virtually with Insider prior to the release of the finale — and the show's renewal for a third season — to answer burning questions about the episode's biggest moments, share his reaction to the most surprising scenes, and gush about the cast members' "undeniable" chemistry.

To start with, I wanna jump right in with the Kimberly and Canaan (Christopher Meyer) romance, which really caught me by surprise. So I wanted to know, at what point did you decide on that? Were they always intended to become romantic by the end of this season?

Yeah. In fact, there was a period of time when we thought they might become romantic at the end of the first season.

I think from the jump, we thought that there was something really interesting between these two characters on the page. And then I remember vividly, one of the first scenes we shot for the pilot at Sips, with Chris and Pauline first learning these characters together and there was just this undeniable chemistry between the two of them where we were just like, "Oh, this is great."

So we actually ended up putting the move back in our pocket and waiting another full year, which took a lot of self-restraint. But we came into this season knowing that we wanted to put them together at the end of the season for sure.

What were Pauline and Chris' reactions to finding out about it this season? Did they know that it was sort of on the table a little bit for season one?

No, they never knew that. We were very good. The writers, at least as far as I know, kept that pretty mum. But they were really into it. It was really cute. I remember Pauline came to my office and talked about it at one point and just like, learned more about it. I think that they just really love doing scenes together.

And then Chris was so funny, I remember him being like, "Man, you're obsessed with chaos. You're just bringing so much chaos out here." And I was like, "That's the job, yeah. I mean, we're gonna have to cause a little chaos here because it is interesting."

The thesis of the show, from my point of view, is that we don't really do a lot of deep drama between our girls. We don't want them fighting. Like, I don't need a lot of women-on-women warfare being put out into the world. But we've never gone here before. This is the deepest move that one of our girls has done against another before. So it'll be interesting to see the way that they navigate it moving forward.

I thought it was really interesting because Kimberly to me is the most sensible person and then when Whitney gave her the opening to fess up and she didn't say it, I was like, "Oh my God."

I know, I know. But could you imagine Kimberly? I think she just couldn't do it. I think she couldn't tell her. I think that that moment felt terrifying for me, and I was directing it so I couldn't even let that show, but I was just like, "Oh my God. I feel like for both of these people." Because Kimberly, she's just following her heart and she knows Canaan in a very different context outside of the relationship with Whitney. But Whitney is her girl. It's a little juicy.

How would that lie of omission affect Kimberly and Whitney's friendship in a potential third season, do you think?

We get a taste for that at the end with the idea that Whitney wants to move into Kappa. I think it's such a funny knee-jerk reaction for Whitney, of all the places that are available to her, to move into Kappa, a place that she has been so hesitant of all along.

But it just shows how steadfast she was in like, "I can't hand in this piece of paper saying I'm gonna live with Kimberly Finkle right now." And I love the comedy that is suggested with Whitney being in Kappa.

We're gonna have to see the way that they work it out. I think our audience hopefully knows this story from their own lives, right? We all have those friends who have done things slightly like this. And I would say from my experience, you have the friends who get past it and you have the friends that don't. Our girls will make it through OK. But it could be a bumpy ride getting there.

I saw this tweet with a caption that was like, "How does Kimberly keep pulling these men?" And it was photos of Jackson and Nico. So I wanted to ask you, what do you think it is about Kimberly that really attracts these "hot guys" to her?

Kimberly is just so authentic. I mean, I think Pauline is gorgeous. Every time I see one of those tweets I'm like, "Because she's played by Pauline Chalamet and she's gorgeous." That's a big part of it. But also, Kimberly is just so refreshing. She says and does what's on her mind, she's so earnest, and she has such a good heart and she wears it outside of her sleeve, it's visible right away.

I also think on the other side, she just goes for it. Like good for her. I love when Lila calls it out being like, "You're into ripped big hotties." And even though she denies it, it is unequivocally true. Like, we've seen it. I think she grew up in this town where she was probably a real grade-A nerd. She probably wasn't going out a lot. She probably didn't date a lot.

And then she's away at college and all of a sudden any shiny, muscular torso that walks by, she just somehow comes into contact with. She knocks on Nico's door drunk as can be and says, "I want you to tutor me." And it works. She runs into Jackson, he kind of comes into her world. But she just has a gift, and God, aren't we all jealous of it?

I was also just really impressed by how quickly she ended things with Jackson when she recognized these feelings that she had for Canaan. I feel like we always see characters sort of have feelings for two people at the same time and then it inevitably goes wrong. And she really cut it off immediately. So I was just wondering about the logic behind doing that.

One thing that I'm always talking about in our writer's room here is, we're a show that has to ship characters together all the time. That's the backbone of this show. But if you're gonna be shipping characters, you also have to be doing anti-shipping. And what I mean by that is you're putting characters together, but you're leaving enough breadcrumbs and cracks to say, "This isn't perfect."

You want the audience to grasp that at times and see that maybe Kimberly and Jackson aren't perfect together. Maybe Whitney and Andrew aren't perfect together. Because while it's nice to have an audience member love two characters together, we also know that they're usually not each other's endgame. And so we want them to be learning lessons from each other.

Jackson and Kimberly had a couple of those cracks all along, like Jackson talking to her in the hallway being like, 'You want to come watch wrestling?' The idea of Kimberly Finkle watching, I would love to film that scene. It didn't fit time-wise into our episode, but I would've loved to watch Kimberly watch wrestling with Jackson.

We're not all perfect matches, and so I think she knew. I think on some level she was convincing herself that there was something deeper with Jackson and it probably was pretty physical, the way that Lila, sometimes our best friends see things that we can't quite see ourselves.

And then I think Canaan just surprises her. I think she knew there was something there with Canaan. She's aware of that chemistry and then it just escalated in-depth very quickly and captivated her and she went for it and made herself available.

I wanna pivot to Leighton. I love her so much. I think that she has such incredible growth this season, especially that one moment with Tatum where she's like, "I can't be with you, you remind me of parts of myself that I'm trying to change." I love that scene. How did you plan out this whole journey for Leighton? Because I love that she's dealing with all her own stuff and she's still the best friend to her suitemates.

I could talk about my perceptions on the queer experience for hours. Leighton comes out, that's where we're starting our season. She is out on campus and what does that mean for Leighton? The thing in our comedy that I most wanted to dive into was the fun of that.

Do a lot of people who just come out go into a pretty promiscuous phase? Yes, they do because they had not been able to for a long time, they're living out in the sun and they're gonna have some fun. Do a lot of them catch an STI? Yes, they do. And so she goes through that. Do a lot of them start comedically dating someone who looks a lot like them? Mm-hmm. That happens a lot. It happened to a lot of my own friends.

So, the intent of the season was to introduce the Tatum love interest as someone who felt like comedy. It felt like, "Oh boy, there's gonna be two of them now? Two Leighton Murrays in the same room? What is that gonna mean for Bela when she's like, 'Can I pull off this outfit?' Like two of them making fun of her?" But then to not have it be that episodic comedy love interest, to have it escalate into more depth.

I think a moment that feels really poignant to me in their story is when Leighton's dad Henry is like, "I like this girl for you." And it's like, "Whoa. Not only is she out to her dad, but her dad likes this girl, and she likes this girl. Maybe this is a real thing even though it's rooted in this comedy of them being similar."

But the chemistry between Reneé and Midori as Leighton and Alicia in season one was just so prolific to me. And there was exactly one roadblock between the two of them, which is that Leighton was closeted and she wasn't ready to be out. I think the goal of season two was to remove that boundary without making it super obvious that that boundary was gone. Have Alicia not fall out of the front of our minds because we're into Tatum.

But there was nothing standing in the way of Leighton and Alicia anymore, it was gone. So what happens when we reintroduce? And I do think that Tatum is such a fun character and Gracie plays her so well, but I think Leighton is learning a lot about herself and I think that she struggles with her own judgmental attitude at times, especially when she's learning lessons from the women's center and then bringing them into a place like Kappa. It's kind of showing what's actually having a profound effect on her personality at age 19.

Amrit's performance in that last scene was just so moving to me. It's the first time we really see Bela address her shortcomings and the consequences of what she does. So can you talk about this choice to have Bela decide that she wants to transfer schools as opposed to trying to keep making amends on campus?

Absolutely. First and foremost, I need to give such a shout-out to Amrit for that performance. It was my first time directing on this show and I remember filming that scene and immediately being too emotional to go in and give her notes because she had done so well. So, I had to compose myself and then go in a professional way.

And then she just had this attitude of like, "I can do better, I can do better, I can do better." And I think we filmed like 21 takes of that little monologue because she was just so dedicated to getting it perfectly right. And she nailed it. She nailed it. We had every level on it and it was beautiful. Sorry, what was the rest of your question? I just was like, I just need to talk about Amrit.

I just wanted to know how you arrived at that decision for the character.

Oh yeah. I think that Bela is an incredibly ambitious character. We've known that from moment one. We know exactly what she wants. It's hyper-specific, very much in keeping with her personality. Will she do kind of kooky things to get there? Absolutely.

But then through season two we kind of see the flip side, which is her determination sometimes comes at odds with being aware of other people's emotions and she kind of hurts some other people along the way. And then the show gives her this opportunity, the show points out to her, "Hey, you're hurting people by doing this." And she has a moment of reflection on it. And then the show gives her another opportunity to see what she does with it.

In the finale, she just can't help but punch down at this person. That's a moment of realization for her that she is maybe not on the right path or ready for this. And as she looks at her own first year in school, as she's doing her own accounting of what's happened and she's talking — and we don't know who she's talking to — I think we can tell in that performance that the laundry list has built up and it's more than she realized. It kind of catches her.

And I think she's kind of a perfectionist. I think a lot of people who go into the arts are, and she can't stomach the idea of having to own these failures and work her way back up. The easier thing to do is to cut and run and start fresh somewhere else with a perfect unstained record. So that appeals to her and that's what she chooses.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

All episodes of season two of "The Sex Lives of College Girls" are streaming on HBO Max.