At Moordale Secondary, the teens of Sex Education ruled. They were the big fish and Moordale was a small pond. But when their school closed and they were forced to transfer to Cavendish College for their final term of high school, they became small fish once again. 

Season 4 of Sex Education follows the gang as they meet new classmates at their fancy, inclusive new school. The cool kids are actually “the Coven,” a group of LGBTQ students who fancy themselves a source of positivity. Our returning Moordale favorites find themselves very intwined with this new group, and end up discovering new things about themselves along the way. 

Maeve (Emma Mackey) is studying at a special writing program at Wallace University in the US when she learns her mother has overdosed and is in serious condition. By the time she flies back and arrives at the hospital, her mother has died. Naturally, all her friends come together to help Maeve put on a beautiful funeral, and despite having second thoughts about returning to the program, she decides to leave her old life behind once and for all.

Otis (Asa Butterfield) butts heads with Cavendish College’s resident sex therapist, O (Thaddea Graham), and finds himself a bit distant from his best friend, Eric (Ncuti Gatwa), who’s struggling with his faith. 

Yeah, there are many faces to keep track of. But that’s part of its charm, as creator Laurie Nunn told Tudum earlier this year. “There’s a lot of strands and a lot of stories. For me, there’s a sort of messiness about that but I think that’s at the heart of the show. It’s a show that’s trying to speak to lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds, and I embrace the messiness that comes with that. It’s perfectly imperfect.”

Read on to find out how the perfectly imperfect characters ended their run in the Season 4 finale of Sex Education.

Do Maeve and Otis end up together?

Bad news first: No, they do not. But there’s good news, too: Otis and Maeve end their relationship knowing that they are growing in different directions. Maeve needed to go back to her writing program in the US and pursue her dream of becoming an author, while Otis needed to stay closer to home to be there for his mother and little sister. And they’ll always be each other’s first loves.

“Maeve and Otis, they’ve still got a lot of growing up to do,” Nunn told Tudum. “This relationship is something they will always carry with them, but timing has always been a bit of a problem. Your late teens and your 20s, you are very much still finding yourself. How do you balance those two things — finding yourself and finding your person? I think that’s very much central to the Maeve and Otis relationship and dilemma. I definitely think that they are each other’s first love, and no one can ever take that away from them.”

Thomas Wood/Netflix

Does Maeve go back to America?

Yes! And she tells her professor, Thomas Molloy (Dan Levy), that his harsh teaching style was the opposite of encouraging. In fact, his assessment that she might not be cut out for writing almost caused her to give up on the program altogether. “As a teacher, your words hold a lot of power... you don’t get to be the gatekeeper of my dreams,” she tells him. (Mic drop.)

“For Maeve, her storyline is really about her self-worth,” Nunn said, “and that she does really believe in herself and deserves good things.”

Samuel Taylor/Netflix

Are Otis and Eric friends again?

This one’s only good news: Yes, of course the longtime best friends reunite. Otis withdraws from Eric for a while when he can't exactly figure out how to discuss their different lifestyles — not just their different sexualities, but their religion, their family lives, their cultural heritage — but they love and miss each other. And once they actually talk it out, things are back to normal for our favorite besties.

“For me, Eric and Otis have always been the central love story of the show,” Nunn told Tudum. “Even though the show is about sex, it’s actually really about friendship. Otis can have blinders on and doesn’t realize that he’s very much the lead character in his own life, and he sometimes forgets that Eric is the lead character in his own life.”

As Nunn notes, growing apart from your childhood friends is a natural byproduct of getting older. “There’s something incredibly raw and heartbreaking about that because it’s not really anyone’s fault, and I think that is also something that Eric and Otis are going through,” she said. “They’ve known each other since they were 9, they absolutely love each other, and I think they’re always going to be best friends as long as they can continue to honor that friendship and have good communication, because that’s the key of all good relationships.”

Samuel Taylor/Netflix

Does Jean make up with her sister?

Jean’s younger sister, Joanna (Lisa McGrillis), shows up to help Jean with baby Joy — but she’s lived a nomadic adult life due to some trauma from their childhood. Once Joanna acknowledges that she needs to address her past sexual abuse — their mother’s boyfriend molested her when she was 12 — Jean acknowledges that she’s been in denial about her own postnatal depression. The two end the series watching TV on the couch, knowing they both want to help each other through their hard times.

Does Eric get baptized?

While Eric is estranged from Otis, he spends the season preparing to be baptized in his church. He’s conflicted, though, because as much as he loves his church community and his family, he knows that being gay is technically a sin in their eyes. At the last minute — like, literally, the very last minute before he would take the plunge into the blessed baptismal waters — he announces that he’s gay and wants to know who in the church will accept him. When his mother stands and tells him she loves him the way he is, he knows he doesn’t need a baptism to verify his own love of God. In fact, after communing with God herself (Jodie Turner-Smith), he decides he wants to become a pastor.

Wait, who is Jodie Turner-Smith playing?

You read that right. She’s God — or at least a physical manifestation of God who helps Eric realize his true calling.

“He’s such a charismatic and enigmatic young man,” Nunn said. She realized while writing Season 4 that “he would make an amazing pastor and religious leader.” 

“But obviously, the church has got a lot of history in terms of not accepting LGBTQ+ people,” she added, “and therefore, if we were going to tell that story, we had to explore it in all of its nuance and gray areas. We really wanted talk about him as a Christian character and take his faith seriously.”

What happens to Cal? 

In the final episode, all of the teens come together to search for Cal (Dua Saleh), who has been experiencing major depression about being unable to get the surgery they need to confirm their identity. Luckily, their friend is OK, and they decide to put the money from their big fundraiser toward their gender confirmation surgery. 

“It was really important to tell a trans story that really highlights — talking from a UK perspective here — the difficulty that a lot of young trans people are going through at the moment in terms of being able to access the affirmative health care that they need,” said Nunn. “We wanted to deal with it in a way that felt nuanced and sensitive and that made it clear that Cal is a person who has struggled with anxiety, but their mental health issues are being completely compounded by the fact that they cannot access the health care that they need in order to live the life that they want to live. I think we leave them in a place that is hopeful and I really believe that as a character, past that point, they’re going to move forward and thrive. But it felt important to me to explore the truth of that situation and how serious it is.”

 Samuel Taylor/Netflix

How does Sex Education end for the rest of the cast? 

Adam (Connor Swindells): After getting a job as a farmhand, Adam realizes he’s really great with animals — and his father (Alistair Petrie) realizes his son’s talent too. Finally, they’re able to communicate, and Mr. and Mrs. Groff (Samantha Spiro) end the series back together as a happy family.

Ruby (Mimi Keene): Ruby didn’t always have such a steely exterior — it turns out that as kids, O was responsible for Ruby getting bullied about wetting the bed. But once Ruby outs O’s bullying past and O apologizes, Ruby realizes that outing O didn’t actually feel good at all and her positive new school is rubbing off on her and making her a better person.

Samuel Taylor/Netflix 

Jackson (Kedar Williams-Stirling): While Jackson was raised by two very loving moms, he wants to learn more about where he came from. But when they won’t tell him the truth, he digs into the past and discovers he’s the product of an affair between one of his moms and a former married co-worker who wants nothing to do with him. His moms explain that by keeping his paternity a secret they were just trying to protect him, and they love him very much.

Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood): With the help of new love Isaac (George Robinson), Aimee learns she has an eye for art and photography — and she’s able to heal from her assault and learn to trust and be in a relationship again.

Viv (Chinenye Ezeudu): Once Viv’s friends help her realize that her new boyfriend is actually controlling and abusive, she stands up to him once and for all — and realizes that she doesn’t deserve to be treated that way.

Samuel Taylor/Netflix

O (Graham): Otis challenges O’s position as student therapist, but by the end of the season he realizes it’s because he was threatened by her. In fact, he sees she was doing a great job helping her classmates work through their problems and believes she should continue doing it in the future — and maybe Otis can partner with her to help everyone.

The Coven — Abbi (Anthony Lexa), Roman (Felix Mufti), Aisha (Alexandra James): By the end of the season, Abbi realizes that maybe her excessive positivity isn’t necessarily a good thing, and that it’s OK to complain — and in fact, maybe that’s actually key to keeping relationships healthy. Her sex life with Roman improves once she confesses what’s been bothering her. Aisha, meanwhile, is the one who helps Abbi have this breakthrough by telling her she enjoys gossiping from time to time. And once Aisha tells the school how she feels isolated because no one’s tried to accommodate her disability, her friends realize that they can learn sign language and make sure she knows they want to put in the effort to be her friend.

Will there be a Sex Education Season 5? 

No, this is the planned end for the series, but we wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to start watching again from the beginning. Plus, as Nunn told Tudum, “I’m definitely taking a break and thinking about other things… But Moordale is a really rich world, and writing about teenagers is always a lot of fun. So I think that there’s always potential for more to be explored in that world.”

This interview was conducted earlier in 2023.