Posted by Sex Education has finally come to its ending: Season 4 landed on Netflix in September 2023, leaving some tears in our eyes. A lot of things happen in the final season, and we get to discover more about the destiny of all characters, including Eric, Adam, Jean, and all the other protagonists. But most of the attention was focused on the series’ most exciting love triangle: the one among Otis, Maeve, and Ruby. Who does Otis end up with, and how can their relationship be explained from a psychological point of view? Let’s analyze the ending season of one of the most followed TV series ever released on Netflix.
You can watch the official trailer for Sex Education Season 4 here on Youtube.
Sex Education Season 4 ending, a love triangle: Otis, Maeve & Ruby
There are no doubts about it: the primary love connection exposed in the four seasons of Sex Education was the one between Otis and Maeve. They meet in the first season, and despite the different characters, we immediately feel a connection between them. Otis is introduced as a boy with some insecurities and an intimacy problem that recurrently comes back in the plot, but he has a big heart, a lot of empathy, extensive knowledge about sex, and a unique ability to help others. Maeve is brilliant and introverted; she has never felt loved in her life and tends not to open up.
There are certainly feelings between Otis and Maeve, from the beginning to the ending of Sex Education. The problem is not about how much they love each other but about communication. Given their characters and young age, they are often unable to overcome the little obstacles of life and trust their emotions. That’s why it takes so long for them to get together. Up to the point that the big question around the plot of Sex Education has always been: will Otis and Maeve get together?
Yes, they do, in Season 3. And they are still together in Season 4, although Maeve moves to the United States and Otis stays in the UK. But as soon as the ending comes, we understand: Sex Education doesn’t end with Otis and Maeve together. And the most challenging part to accept, for all of us, is that they finally seemed to have overcome all problems: knowing each other, expressing love without obstacles, and caring about each other. Life has taken different directions, and Maeve is destined to stay in America for a long time, too much to try to make love work. This can teach us an important lesson about love: the connections born when we are young, when our characters and lives are not yet formed, aren’t always destined to last. We grow, become different people, and set our own goals; it’s perfectly normal for teenage love to end, in one way or another.
Something completely different happens between Otis and Ruby: there is definitely love between them, but it has a different nature. For Otis, any other girl besides Maeve triggers emotions of lower intensity (we could see it as something very similar to what happens in another recent love triangle of the TV series world, the one involving Belly, Jeremiah, and Conrad in The Summer I Turned Pretty), but that doesn’t mean he’s not in love with Ruby when they are together (although he’s unable to say it). On her side, Ruby is developing her character: starting from her snob attitude, she slowly learns what authentic emotions are. And when Otis and Ruby break up in Sex Education Season 3, her heart is truly broken.
Season 4 of Sex Education makes things interesting: Otis is together with Maeve for almost every episode, but Ruby acts as Otis’ best friend and helps him with the competition to decide who the school’s best sex counselor is. Working together on a common goal and understanding each other’s struggles, we find out that there are still emotions between Otis and Ruby. They sleep together, hugging each other, and Ruby is visibly sad when she discovers that Otis is unreachable because Maeve is back.
Why doesn’t it work between Otis and Ruby in Sex Education? Well, even in this case, there is no specific reason. They have feelings for each other, they care about each other, and there are no visible incompatibilities. Projecting the evolution of the characters in the future, we can definitely believe that Otis and Ruby could get together again if Maeve is out of the picture. The only reason why Otis cannot commit himself to Ruby is… Maeve. Because his feelings for Maeve are stronger than anything else. But if Otis accepts that he needs to let his love for Maeve go, there wouldn’t be any other obstacle between him and Ruby.
Unfortunately, we will not see how things will evolve further. Season 4 of Sex Education is the final season, and the plot won’t continue. From now on, we can only imagine how Otis, Maeve, and Ruby will grow, how their feelings will evolve, and what lesson we can learn from them: but we won’t see them in a new season of Sex Education.
