Warning: Spoilers 📣
BY NIC CROSARA, IMAGE BY SHOWTIME
Happy The L Word season to all who celebrate. On Saturday, the long anticipated third season of Generation Q was released on Paramount+ UK and it did not disappoint. Are you ready to dive into all things sapphic and queer drama? Be warned, spoilers lay ahead.
Back in September, Showtime released a teaser for the third season which had #Tibette (Tina and Bette) shippers around the world screaming with excitement. We got a glimpse of what occurs after Bette opens the door to find Tina standing there. “Are you in love with me?” Tina asks. We’ve been holding our breaths ever since and thankfully, the third season wastes no time in showing us what happens next.
When Bette confirms that, yes (of course) she is in love with her, Tina critiques Bette for destroying her relationship with Carrie. However, when Bette promises to fix it, Tina tells her there’s no use fixing it because “I’ve loved you my whole life”. Yep, we’re still screaming. However, when Bette tells her that she’s “loved you all of mine” Tina snaps back “I just wish you were fucking better at it” before storming out. There was so much sapphic drama already that Bette unleashes a good old primal scream.
Cue a one year time jump.
We then get our first sex scene of the season between Alice and a member of Generation Z, Teddy. Alice says yes to a lot of Teddy’s horny wants, but she draws the line at being f*cked on Teddy’s livestream. Before the end credits run, we see Alice call things off with Teddy and update her Taimi dating profile to search for older matches.
Ready your pearls DIVAs, because next we get to be reunited with #Shess (Shane and Tess) and the Shane we see seems to be living in domestic bliss *gasps*. When we last saw these two lovebirds, they were early on in their relationship and Tess had decided she would to move to Las Vegas to care for her mother and asked Shane to come with her. But it seems within the time jump the couple had decided to move Tess’ mother, Patty (Joanna Cassidy) to LA instead.
And then we got reunited with my personal favourite ship, #Gini (Gigi and Dani). They have to cut their intimate moment short as Gigi announces she has to rush due to LA traffic. Dani offers a solution: Gigi should move in. We all know the stereotypes around queer relationships and how quickly U-haul trucks make an appearance – so this couple have been moving impressively slow. However, Gigi says she’ll have to ask her ex Nat first because of the kids. And when we later see Dani and Gigi reunited, it doesn’t seem like the talk went well. Can my favourite ship sail off into the sunset? I hope so.
We then see Alice and Shane try to play cupid by talking up Bette to Tina as they help Angie move in to college (they grow up so fast!). We get a lovely bit of exposition from Shane and Alice which tells us that Bette has been doing a lot of “reflecting” and personal work”. And that’s when we see Bette pulling up in her Tesla, as #Tibette gaze at each other – only to be interrupted by a young driver who bumps into the rear of the Tesla. The trio assume Bette is going to unleash her wrath at the poor youth, but alas, she has evolved. Shane, Alice and Tina look on in shock as Bette exits her car and hugs the other driver, saying: “the only thing you have to do is hold compassion for yourself and enjoy move-in day.”
Now it’s time to talk about #Sinley (Sophie and Finley). Sophie is nervously preparing to welcome Sophie home from rehab and sober living – kindly paid for by Alice. While frantically rearranging everything Sophie stumbles across an engagement ring and finds out Micah’s going to pop the question to Maribel. But we don’t get to find out too much more about his plans as that’s when our favourite baby butch, Finley, returns.
Sophie and Finley go for a cute date to the park and lay back in the grass and Finley seems optimistic about her sober future, Sophie seems hopeful too. Finley pulls out her apology letter and begins to read it aloud. “I’m sorry that I haven’t loved you the way you deserve to be loved, because you really deserve to be loved, well. Thank you for saving my life because you did, but you shouldn’t have had to. But thank you.”
Back at university, Shane and Alice say an emotional goodbye to Angie, leaving her two mums to try to take a selfie with their favourite young adult – but Angie seems keen to get them both out of the room.
It should be noted now that Tina had previously told Shane that she couldn’t attend the benefit Shane and Tess had been organising. But when Bette tells her she’ll be in attendance, Tina switches up and says she’ll be there too.
Now onto the main event, that is the Las Vegas themed MS Society Fundraiser. Shane and Alice play matchmaker again, telling Tina that Bette and Pippa are just friends now, that Bette apologised to Pippa and it went well. Tina shares that the same cannot be said for Carrie. Then Bette strolls over and tells Tina “It’s nice to see you out in the world”. Yep. Still screaming. And that is far from being the last bit of flirting we see exchanged between these two, more on that later.
We also get to see Maribel telling Sophie to be careful with Finley, and confesses that she thinks #Sinley is toxic. But not everyone is anti-Fin in the building. When Finley springs an apology to Shess, the power couple welcome her back with open arms invite her to return to work at the bar. Which is, questionable to me, but we’ll see how that goes.
Things seem to be going quite well for Shess on that topic. A little too well, some might say. Shane finds herself drawn to the back room where she comes across Ivy (Khelani!) who shuts the door in her face, not realising she owns the place.
So far, Finley’s apology speeches have been going well, but when she startles Dani by asking if now is a good time to talk (no), Dani shuts it down. But Fin keeps pushing and continues to apologise much to Dani’s understandable frustration. Thankfully, Tess intervenes and sends Finley on her way.
Now, it’s time to talk about Kehlani AKA Ivy. She apologises for being rude to Shane earlier, after realising she’s running the place. She confesses that she realises she recognises Shane from somewhere, and no this is not the reveal that these two are actually past flames, Ivy leads Shane into the back room and shows her a har of Shane for Wax pomade. Ivy wants Shane to style her and Shane somewhat reluctantly agrees. What follows is Shane touching Ivy’s hair and making some pretty intense eye contact before she pulls herself away. She’s managed to stay faithful this time, but I’m almost 100% certain this is not the last exchange we’ll see between Shane and Ivy.
It’s auction time! Bette is giving away a Kiki Smith piece. When the bidding starts Tina becomes restless as she knows how much the art is worth. The room is stunned when Tina raises the stakes to $10,000 and wins the bid, sharing a knowing look with Bette. After the auction more #Tibette flirting commences resulting in the two leaving the building TOGETHER.
#Tibette aren’t the only ones to have left the building, #Sinley are having lots of fun playing a game of strip basketball and Finley is losing, badly. After a steamy exchange, Finley has to resist, telling Sophie that she wants to take things further but should go to a meeting instead.
And now it’s time for the first break-up of the season. No, it’s not Sinley. It’s Angie and Jordi. Do they have ship name yet? Alas, this ship has sailed. Jordi calls it quits sharing that she doesn’t wish to continue their relationship in college and leaves Angie truly heartbroken.
A big theme of this episode is change. All the characters have evolved in many ways. Some are moving forwards into new relationships or endeavours. While others like #Tibette and #Sinley have still evolved but are also revisiting old relationships in hopes of a second-chance romance. As the episodes continue it will be interesting to see how they navigate stepping into their news selves and how hard it will be to say goodbye to old habits.
And then, plot twist. Micah proposes to Maribel, but she says no. She doesn’t want to get married, but she does want to have a baby. That’s all we get to see, and I am eager to see what the couple decide this Saturday.
When Finley returns from her meeting, she snuggles up into bed with Sophie and goes to sleep. That’s when the camera pans over to Sophie’s vibrating phone and we see a message from “Dre” saying “u up 🌈”. So many questions!
We’re almost at the end of the episode now DIVAs but there’s still plenty to unpack and it’s all revolving around Tibette (yep, still screaming). Things are getting vulnerable between the two, and Bette is telling Tina all about how she found her Mum, forgave her and told her all about her life.
Eventually Tina and Bette can no longer resist each other, and we finally get a Tibette Gen Q kiss. But that’s exactly when Angie walks in and says “you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.”
Cue end credits.
Okay so that sure was one way to set things up for this season. My immediate questions are:
- How is Angie going to react to her mums finding love again as she’s just experienced heartbreak?
- Is Shane going to be able to continue showing up in her committed relationship?
- Who the hell is Dre!?
- What did Nat say to Gigi and how is Dani going to respond?
- Will there be a new man, woman or person in Alice’s life now that she’s changed her demographic on her dating app?
- When will we see the potential Carrie sex scene?
- Will Bette’s mum make an appearance?
- Who will get married!?
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