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Sarah Lampert, the creator of Netflix‘s hit series Ginny & Georgia, knew going into season three that she wanted to bring her main characters to their breaking point so they could rebuild their relationships.

While it’s always been “the two of us against the world” for Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and Georgia (Brianne Howey), this latest installment puts that to the test. In season three, Georgia is on house arrest during her trial for murdering Cynthia’s (Sabrina Grdevich) husband, Tom. However, when her actions start to tear down everyone around her, including her children, Ginny and Austin (Diesel La Torraca), Georgia has to look inward for once.

“Entering season three at the top of the season, we chatted with [psychologist] Dr. Taji again and we were like, ‘If we were going to bring them to a more healed relationship, what would have to happen?’ And she said, ‘You’d have to break Georgia,'” Lampert tells The Hollywood Reporter of their mother-daughter relationship. “Georgia needs to feel like she really might lose her kids, and only then could she change and want to change.”

And that’s exactly what the show’s creator did this season. Not only did Georgia have her kids taken away from her and husband, Paul (Scott Porter), left her, but she also had her entire personal life broadcast for the world to see — which is basically her nightmare as someone who is “always running from her trauma.” At the same time, Ginny was forced to step into more of an adult role and make some huge decisions to keep her mom from going to prison.

Below, Lampert unpacks the heaviness of season three, choosing to show different sides of Georgia and Ginny, the decision to ultimately not convict Georgia for murder and teases season four (as well as her hopes for a fifth season).

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Yes! The overall goal was to continue to evolve the story. What I love about the show is it really does feel like an artistic endeavor in that it provides a lot of space for different artists to kind of bring their own stamp into it. I think that’s what fans connect to is they connect to the heartbeat of all the people who work on the show, coming through the characters. So my goal is to continue to evolve it and surprise people. I’m a storyteller, I love telling stories. I feel like it’s such a living, breathing thing, making a show at all stages in the writing, on set, in post, but also in fan reaction. So when you get certain feedback from fans, it’s almost like a little bit of a challenge where it’s like let’s see what we can do next, right? So I love surprising people. Typically in a season three, you wouldn’t expose your main character’s every secret and explode the entire world, but that’s exactly what we did. 

The show is made up of big swings and small moments, and I think both are equally important. Obviously there’s a lot of big swings, but if you don’t believe the characters, it just feels cheap, and you’re not gonna be with them in the end. So I’ll leave it up to the viewers to tell me whether or not we achieved that. But for us, we work really closely with Mental Health America. We also have a psychologist, Dr. Taji, who’s been with us since season one, who we really planned the mental health journey of all of the characters across all the seasons with her. So really grounding the stories in as much truth and small moments as possible and making the characters feel really real, and then ultimately the credit goes to the performances. The actors on our show are so dynamic and able to tone jump and they have to be very brave to do the show because our tone goes from camp to heavy to dark to sad to funny, you know, one moment we’re we’re talking about mental health and the next moment we’re spraying reporters with a hose (Laughs). It’s such a weird beast. 

It’s funny you say breaking point, ‘cause that’s exactly what our theme was of the season. It was breaking to rebuild. And the reason for that is way back in season one when I talked to Dr. Taji, a quippy line in the show that Georgia says to Ginny is, “It’s the two of us against the world.” And Dr. Taji highlighted that it’s really unhealthy. So I was like, let’s lean in, let’s go really strong on that. And that really became the theme of their relationship, so now entering season three at the top of the season, we chatted with Dr. Taji again and we were like, “If we were going to bring them to a more healed relationship, what would have to happen?” And she said, “You’d have to break Georgia.” She would have to get to a point where she finally understood that her actions had repercussions, specifically on her children, because it’s not up to Ginny to heal that relationship, she’s the child. It’s up to Georgia and Ginny should form very strong boundaries, and Georgia needs to feel like she really might lose her kids, and only then could she change and want to change. 

There are so many false endings in that episode in particular, and I love surprising the audience. If you’re watching at home and you’re like, “What the hell?” That’s the goal. And her [Howey] performance is devastating in that episode when she sinks to her knees and then you just hear like Ginny’s voiceover, “I just want my mom.” It’s like, oh, stab me in the heart, and Ginny’s going in one car and Austin’s going in the other and Zion’s part of it. It’s like not you, Zion. It’s great! 

It really is a coming-of-age story, both for Ginny and Georgia, and now maybe even a little bit for Austin. But for Ginny’s journey this season, what’s so fascinating about that character and what specifically Antonia does with that character is she’s so deep and [Antonia] is the master of the microexpression where it’s just anytime the cameras on her, you know the rich inner world that’s happening. She’s so deeply present, she’s feeling things so deeply, but to start Ginny in such a place of being so vulnerable, so out of control, so feeling like the walls are caving in on her, not even knowing what to do. Like she goes to school that day, but it’s just cause she has no idea what the hell to do. And what’s interesting about the bookends of that character in this season is the opening scene is her walking down the hallway being like, the walls fell down, I don’t know what I’m doing. And you she dressed up, she has makeup on, she did her hair that day, she’s got an outfit on, and you see she doesn’t know what to do in the vacuum of her mother not being there. She’s trying to be her mother, but it feels false, right? By the end of the season, it’s real. She’s taken on the role of Georgia and it’s actualized. 

It really starts a few episodes earlier, actually, where she really does realize that she’s gonna lose her kids. She’s really up against a firing squad this season in the sense that she has to sit at home alone, lost her kids, and the whole world judges her, diagnoses her, tells her she’s a bad mother. I mean, for a woman who never really likes to sit in discomfort and is always running from her trauma, running from her past, putting on a mask, being a chameleon, playing a part, to have that all revealed in such a painful way on such a public stage is what breaks her. But then what actually breaks her soul is the moment in episode 10 when Cynthia says, “You must be so proud, she’s just like you.” And then she confronts Ginny and says, “I know I’m a monster, but I’m a monster so you don’t have to be,” because that is how she justifies all of her behavior in her head. She’s protecting her kids. So for Ginny to say we’ve always held the weight too, you never did what you thought you were doing, it was always also on us, that breaks George’s soul. 

I really credit Netflix for not even batting an eye when we pitched George, our main character, being in her house the whole season (Laughs). Honestly, I knew that she’d be able to get into just as much trouble locked in her house as she would anywhere else. And in fact, for a character who’s always on the move, I thought it was quite beautiful to see her caged and to see what happens when she’s not allowed to be on the move and truly feels like everything is being pulled away from her and slipping through her fingers. So on a character standpoint, it was the most interesting choice we could make. But in terms of making a hit pop culture TV show, is locking away your main character in her house like the smartest move? I don’t know (Laughs). I never questioned it, to be honest, but now in hindsight I’m like, yeah, that was a wild choice. What a gamble. 

I think one of the beautiful things about the show is it’s just heart to human, right? We’re trying to reflect the human experience and how messy and hard that can be. So for Ginny, it’s all about putting her up against the same kind of situations that Georgia was in this season, whether it be the fear of her family being taken away from her and having her step into that role, having been confronted with being a teen mom and making the choice that she makes there and having Georgia support it. I think we’re really just trying to tell these authentic stories because there’s no right way to be a woman, right? It’s messy out there. 

Oh, I thought about it. I wrote a full scene with that being what happened instead, just to play with it, and then there was like a maybe she bust out of jail thing. Here’s the beauty about the show, we’re crazy (Laughs). We’ll surprise you! 

It was always the plan from season two, to be quite honest. We knew that we wanted a murder trial in season three. We knew we wanted her to get arrested at her wedding to the song “Going to the Chapel, baby” after her first dance, like that was all locked in. But we knew that in order to do a murder trial in season three, we needed her to kill someone in Wellsbury, ‘cause we don’t want to travel, like the murder trial has to be local, so that’s how the whole Tom of it all came about. But how the Austin piece came to be is we realized that if we didn’t want Georgia to go to prison, we needed a fall guy. And so in the episode “Kill Gill,” the surprise of that episode was, are we gonna kill Gil? And the answer is no, we can’t because we need him to be our fall guy for season three. 

Yes, so there’s already ideas in mind. The beauty about getting a season four, honestly, is that all of the writers are returning, so they really know the show, they really know the characters and they’re totally down to play. And I wish the fans could see the writer’s room. I think they’d lose their ever loving shit. It’s just such a fun, dynamic, live place to be, and so the reason I say that is because yes, there are certain tentpole ideas that we know going into season four that we want to tackle. But really how we enter each season is we have like one or two tentpole ideas, right? Like for season two, she’s gonna get arrested on her wedding. That’s what we’re going towards. But beyond that, really what we’re just trying to honor is where the characters are emotionally and what the relationships are. So once we really hone that in and that feels real, then we get to pitch wild, fun, crazy plot things. So season four is still being worked on, there’s nothing concrete yet. 

We did pitch a season four show. That just seemed like a good number (laughs), but honestly, while we were in the writer’s room currently for season four — I like to do each season by theme, and the theme is the state of Ginny and Georgia’s relationship, which is the real main character of the show — and we were really battling two different themes for season four, and we realized there’s more story to tell here. So it’s not up to us, we don’t know, but I will say there is more story that could be told. 

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Season three of Ginny & Georgia is currently streaming on Netflix, and check out The Hollywood Reporter‘s interview with star Antonia Gentry.