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[This story contains major spoilers from season three of Netflix‘s My Life with the Walter Boys.]
“I feel like we’re kind of giving a lot of the audience what they’ve been craving for such a long time,” showrunner Melanie Halsall tells The Hollywood Reporter about season three of Netflix’s My Life with the Walter Boys.
Season three picks up after last season’s cliffhanger, with the Walter family reeling after patriarch George (Marc Blucas) is rushed to the hospital following a heart attack. Meanwhile, Jackie (Nikki Rodriguez), Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry) must deal with the fallout from Jackie and Cole’s big love confession.
Perhaps most surprising, episode one sees Alex and Jackie go their separate ways and ends with Jackie and Cole finally ready to take the next step as a couple. For much of the season, Jackie and Cole navigate the honeymoon phase of being in love. But things take a turn for the worse when outside noise begins to weigh on their relationship.
The showrunner and cast reflect on Jackie and Cole’s next chapter as a couple, their ups and eventual downs and resolving the love triangle with Alex.
Jackie and Cole Are Ready to Be a Couple
At the end of the third season’s first episode, Jackie confronts Cole to tell him she’s ready to be together. The pivotal scene, which LaLonde says was the “first scene” they shot, became a jumping off point for the couple.
“I was very surprised that it came so quickly in episode one,” LaLonde tells THR about the anticipated moment. “It’s only right that Jackie is the one to really initiate the relationship to begin.”
Of Jackie being the one to initiate, Rodriguez says it showcased a matured Jackie, ready to be honest with her feelings. “I think Jackie’s really growing up and kind of taking responsibility as much as she can,” the actress says. “Season one, she literally left. This season she’s doing her best to follow her heart and also try to do right by everybody, which is like a very difficult space to be in. You kind of see how that develops over the season, but she does for the first time kind of just stand by what she says.”
With Jackie being sure of her feelings, LaLonde explains why Cole is initially hesitant and wary.
“I think he’s been quite scarred by the previous experiences,” he says. “So many times he thought like, ‘Oh, maybe this is the right time.’ And I think this is maybe the first time where he looks ahead a little bit and is like, ‘I don’t think I can find out that this isn’t the right time again.’ He’s really scared, and I don’t think he’s ever going to stop feeling that way about her. Luckily, we don’t have to live in a world for very long that he has to wonder.”
The Next Chapter for Jackie and Alex
Jackie and Cole may be ready to be together, but Rodriguez reiterates that things needed to be resolved with Alex in order for Jackie to fully move on.
When she and Alex have an honest conversation about their relationship, they come to a mutual understanding that the effort they put into making it work wasn’t necessarily reflective of a healthy relationship. While Jackie expresses that being with Alex was “really good,” Alex even admits, “It’s not the same as it is with Cole.”
Reflecting on their conversation Rodriguez says, “Jackie cares about Alex. That’s not just going to go away. I think that they do have such a mature conversation in that first episode. I don’t think Jackie would allow herself to move on with Cole had that conversation not happened, and she feels like Alex isn’t OK. She wants to make sure that Alex is OK. That’s really important to her.”
Despite there being “more space between them” this season, “they’re always going to care about each other” and be supportive friends to each other, Rodriguez says. Though season two showcased Alex’s coldness toward Jackie and Cole as he dealt with his hurt, season three sees a more accepting, cordial Alex, who is ready to move forward.
“I think she kills the part of him that’s romantically in love with her, and I think it’s more of a familial love,” Gentry tells THR. “Oftentimes when a romantic relationship ends, it doesn’t mean you stop caring about that person holistically. Your paths go in divergent directions.”
Given that Jackie’s initial love confession to Cole was interrupted when George was rushed to the hospital, the family starts the season focused on supporting him during his hospitalization. Jackie struggles to visit George due to the trauma of losing her parents and sister in a car accident. Having now experienced a scare and family tragedy of his own, Gentry says Alex chooses to give Jackie grace because he “understands the depth of her loss.”
“He’s excusing it because he understands the place she’s coming from, for the first time on an intimate level, which is a very mature thing to do,” Gentry says. “It doesn’t excuse what she’s done, yet I think he gets that she’s been through a lot, and sometimes when people go through grief, they do things that aren’t easily explainable. I think he understands that.”
As for Alex’s relationship with his brother, Gentry says they may still ”bond over their shared affection for Jackie,” but Alex is truly ready to move on and not hold grudges.
“I don’t necessarily know that that’s an irreparable rupture in the relationship but life goes on. You have to keep it moving,” he says.
For the first two seasons, the love triangle brewed between Jackie, Cole and Alex. And while fans may have chosen sides, Gentry admits he “always knew how it was going to end.”
“I never viewed this as a serious love triangle, in my opinion,” he says. “To me, the story is very clear that she is in love with Cole, but [she] has love for Alex. I think if she could choose logically, she would choose Alex, but that’s not how it works.”
Now removed from the love triangle, Gentry admits there’s “relief to some degree” in no longer having to “propagate this idea” that a choice truly exists. “It’s not a real choice. You can tell from the first episode, in my opinion, that it’s not a real choice,” he says.
However, Gentry quips Alex is the ”better brother” and he’ll always be on his team.
“Which brother is the better brother? Alex, 100 percent, sorry. Which one does Jackie like? I mean, that to me is obvious. It’s not Alex. I wish she did, and I’m sure he does too. But that is not the world we live in, and sometimes that’s how it goes,” he says.
Meanwhile, LaLonde argues Alex was the right choice for Jackie early on.
“There are things that Jackie really needed from Alex when she got them from him in the beginning—a feeling of comfort and safety,” he says, while also adding that Jackie and Cole had some “growing up to do” before moving forward together.
Jackie and Cole Have a Healthy Start as a Couple
For most of season three, the audience gets to see Jackie and Cole navigate being a happy couple. The minor hiccups they experience stem from being so distracted by each other that it interferes with their focus on their studies, track, coaching and work. To help Jackie prepare for her track race and Cole focus on work, the two comically refuse to be affectionate or spend time alone together until they meet their goals.
“I was pleasantly surprised about how well they communicated together. I feel like at the beginning in those first few episodes, they really tried to help each other grow and navigate their own challenges. That was really really nice to see,” Rodriguez says.
The Jackie and Cole from season one “would not have had this dynamic,” Rodriguez says. “In season two, they begin to have deeper conversations with each other that I feel helped their relationship through season three. They’ve known each other for a long time, so that really helps and plays into their relationship.”
“The same foundational things that pull them to each other are the same foundational things that allow them to promote each other’s growth early on,” LaLonde says of Jackie and Cole as a couple.
“Before Cole gets hit [with] a problem, Jackie helps strip down the problem and understand it from its root and build it out. Like, ‘Hey you don’t have this thing anymore, but let’s reroute and we’ll get you into college. We’ll get you into coaching. We’ll figure out a way to solve the problem and not give up and self-destruct.’ So I think that is the thing that keeps Cole coming back and [why he is] so drawn to her. She stands to be this beacon of hope. He really respects that about her. So I was really happy to see that translate into what I thought was a really healthy start to their relationship.”
They may hit some “rough spots,” but they overcome them. When Jackie expresses her discomfort with Cole being interested in racing, he listens and understands her fears, wanting to respect her concerns.
“It feels like a different level of maturity in a relationship with these people who have kind of been trying to find their way for a little bit,” LaLonde says, also noting that it helped that they ”had all these little relationship fights already” in the first two seasons.
“I think because they’re pretty opposite, they work well together,” Rodriguez says. “They help each other in the ways that they need. Jackie helps Cole with the UT stuff and Cole helps Jackie just get out of her shell and live life a little bit, which is so needed. I actually think they’re kind of great together.”
A Brutal Breakup Leads to an Uncertain Future
The outside noise eventually becomes too much for the couple. As Jackie begins to slip in her grades, studies, role in the student body and track performance, criticism is directed at Cole for being a negative influence on the normally straight-laced teen. Things take a turn when, after throwing a party, Jackie, Cole and Alex are detained by police and given a warning. Jackie’s uncle and close friend Elliot also reminds Cole that he’s not the kind of guy Jackie needs as she works toward her Princeton future.
“The outside noise, I think he started to see those things in her,” LaLonde says. “Jackie was so straight edge that for her to not explore that could have not been good either. She’s going through her own natural progression, [but] it’s easy to attribute those things to him. I don’t think he wants to be contagious to her. The self doubt just kind of creeps in, and it’s like, ‘I can’t do this to her.’ “
Rodriguez argues that “Cole gets too much criticism” this season and didn’t agree with everyone’s belief that he’s negatively influencing her.
“I think Cole’s a light to her,” Rodriguez says. After her family tragedy, Jackie has spent so much time “trying to hold it together” and “for the first time, she wasn’t so incredibly perfect.”
Jackie spends season three attempting to grow into her own person, while navigating the opinions of others. “So many people are trying to tell her what she should be and what she should want, and I think Jackie should make those decisions for herself,” the actress says.
But when it comes to her relationship with Cole, Cole seemingly makes a decision for both of them. After being blamed for negatively influencing Jackie and steering her away from the person she was, Cole’s doubts begin to grow, ultimately convincing him to end things with her.
Rather than be honest about what he’s feeling, Cole chooses to tell her that he’s bored with her and reiterates that he’s not a relationship type of guy. However, his words don’t reflect the truth: He’s pushing her away to do what he thinks is right.
And Jackie, who spent the last two seasons growing closer to Cole and seeing past the facade and assumptions of him, actually believes him.
“I think there’s two parts why she believes that,” Rodriguez says. “They’ve really only ever had honest and open communication up until this point, so there was really no reason for her to believe otherwise. I think deep down, he says some of the stuff that is Jackie’s worst fear. Originally she did worry that she maybe wasn’t exciting enough or like wasn’t the kind of girl that he would like. It’s so blindsiding that I think she just believes it.”
“I think he could have just been honest with her,” LaLonde says of Cole’s choice. “But I think it’s a testament to the fact that he is still human, and he’s still on this growth journey.”
“That breakup scene is pretty brutal,” showrunner Halsall says. “I’m hoping that it will enrage and outrage fans for lots of different reasons.”
Filming the scene proved to be just as emotional to those on set, with Halsall noting “everyone was in tears.”
Cole may have had the “best of intentions,” but Halsall admits “it’s going to take Jackie a long time to realize that, and it’s going to take him a long time to come back from that.”
Jackie attempts to move forward by pretending she’s unfazed by the breakup. Her behavior just exemplifies how she “processes pain,” Rodriguez says. “That’s how she’s dealt with the family trauma. She internalizes everything. When Jackie feels hurt or she doesn’t know what to do, she kind of funnels all of her emotions into what she can control and that’s grades or [preparing for] college. That’s what she puts her focus into because everything’s just too much for her.”
“She trusted him so much, she gave him so much. She had relaxed finally. They were together, vulnerable, open with each other, and then he hit her with this,” Halsall says. “And he hit himself with it. He’s doing it for the best reasons. He’s doing it because he’s flawed and broken, and he really genuinely believes he’s doing the right thing. But that’s something they’re both going to have to repair and rebuild.”
Jackie and Cole Are Left to Grapple With Their Identities
Throughout the third season, viewers witness Jackie and Cole navigate not only their evolving relationship and heartbreaking breakup but also their struggles with their pasts and their journey to rediscover their true selves.
This season, Jackie makes mistakes, lives a life for herself and tries to find a way to merge her Silver Falls and Princeton worlds. However, her uncle and childhood friend Elliot see her growth as a setback.
“I think I think in a perfect world it would be a mix of both but I don’t know what that looks like,” she says of whether Jackie can merge the two worlds.
Meanwhile, Cole attempts to prove he’s a matured person only for others to discredit him and see it as temporary before he resorts to self-destructive behavior.
There’s a version of Cole “the audience never got to see,” says LaLonde. In season one, the terminology “the Cole effect” spoke to the “status he had” at school. Having such an impact on others blurred his sense of identity, LaLonde explains.
“I don’t necessarily think that he ever abused it but I do think when he lost the core element of what that was,” the actor says. “The first two seasons [was] him building himself back up. The foundation of the build up is only as strong as the way in which he’s made to feel confident about how he’s building himself back up.”
“Nobody really saw that Cole Walter was a good person,” the actor says. “They knew that he was a good football player and likable enough. It was the ‘Cole effect’ but the ‘Cole effect’ was really just enough to make the first impression good. We watch the doubt come in, and I think the thing that sets Jackie apart is she sees it the core [of] why he’s a good person. I think there’s been moments where he’s had the doubt that even she sees those other things about him and let those things define him.”
Throughout the three seasons, LaLonde cites the varied moments Cole expressed the negativity he imposed on himself.
“Some of these lines stick out in my head from the first couple of seasons,” he says. “Lines such as: ‘Alex is the good guy and I’m the bad guy, because everybody just wants to assume the worst about me’; ‘Mom and Dad spend all this time on my leg, but it doesn’t matter because it still doesn’t work’; ‘People are putting time into me and it’s not working. People don’t believe in me because it’s not working’; and ‘Well, that’s just what Cole does. Cole doesn’t settle down … he’s not a girlfriend guy.’”
After being unable to play football because of an injury and working to improve his studies so he can get into college, Cole faces the “daunting task” of trying to “come up with any other version of yourself that’s even a sliver of what you used to be. So when the noise gets in your head and all those other things stay the same, it’s all kind of placed upon this facade of what you were.”
Jackie, choosing to ignore her hurt after the breakup, is her reverting back to her old habits of focusing solely on school and achieving her dreams of the Ivy League.
“I think at the beginning and middle of season three, she has an idea of what she thinks she might want or is becoming. But I think at the end of season three, everything is so off course that she really is like, ‘Maybe I was right all along with just trying to focus on my goals and dreams and the plans that I had when I first got to Silver Falls.’ At the end of season three, she’s more confused than ever,” Rodriguez says.
Jackie and Cole’s Cliffhanger Ending
In true Walter Boys fashion, the season ends on a cliffhanger for Jackie and Cole. While at an event, Jackie begins to slow dance with Elliot and the two share a kiss.
Are Elliot and Jackie a sure thing? Rodriguez thinks it’s just a result of Jackie and Cole’s miscommunication.
“What Elliot represents is her old life, and he’s living that life that Jackie always thought she wanted for herself. She’s enamored by that idea of what her life could be, and what she might be leaving behind by choosing to stay in Silver Falls,” she explains.
Meanwhile, Cole has an epiphany about the need to be honest with Jackie regarding why he ended their relationship and rushes to win her back. However, his attempt is tragically interrupted when his rival racer, angry over losing money because of Cole, causes his car to crash.
“It’s scary to think what could happen to him,” LaLonde says of his character’s unknown fate at the end of the season.
But whatever is in store for their love story, in season four, Rodriguez and LaLonde want their characters to still find happiness within themselves.
“I want him to continue to lean on the people he can trust, like his mom and his dad, who have been proven over these seasons to be really good figures in his life, his twin brother, even Alex,” LaLonde says. “I want him to let people help him because he’s doing a really good job. What I hope for him is that he made it out of that [crash] and that he sees how precious those decisions can be once you make them. I think it’ll put the whole breakup in perspective for him. I hope that he learns from that.”
“What I want most is a happy ending for Jackie, whatever that is,” Rodriguez says.
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All 10 episodes of the third season of My Life with the Walter Boys, as well as the first two seasons, are streaming on Netflix.
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