Exclusive Interview

‘My Life with the Walter Boys’ Boss on Season 3’s Shocking Breakup, Finale Twists & More

My Life with the Walter Boys Season 3 may put a pin in Jackie’s (Nikki Rodriguez) love triangle with brothers Cole (Noah LaLonde) and Alex (Ashby Gentry), but the drama doesn’t stop there. (Warning: My Life with the Walter Boys Season 3 spoilers ahead.)

Jackie and Cole officially start dating as early as Episode 1, but their bliss is only temporary, with an insecure Cole brutally breaking up with Jackie. He decides to get her back by the finale, but his car flips over before he can find her and tell her how he really feels.

Alex’s love life is just as complicated in Season 3, despite moving on from Jackie. He gradually develops feelings for his best friend, Kiley (Mya Lowe), who has had a crush on Alex forever, but she’s still going strong with Dylan (Kolton Stewart), locking him into yet another love triangle. Alex and Kiley kiss while she’s dating Dylan — how the tables have turned — but decide it was a mistake. Like Cole, Alex backtracks in the finale, but he doesn’t get to fully explain how he feels to Kiley before Dylan interrupts them.

All the way until the end, Season 3 delivers plenty of twists and turns, so Swooon asked showrunner Melanie Halsall to break down all the biggest ones while we wait for Season 4.

Swooon: Could you tell me about deciding to end the love triangle between Jackie, Cole, and Alex in Episode 1?

Melanie Halsall: Well, I think we really wanted to give the audience what they’ve been craving for such a long time. I felt we’d tortured them long enough, really, to be honest — and not just our cast, but our crew and our audience. So, we wanted to kick off the show in a really positive way, and we didn’t want to retread all ground. We wanted to do something new with Season 3, and we toyed around with a few things, but ultimately we just thought that not retreading old ground was the most interesting thing we could do.

And the most interesting thing we could do was get these two characters together and give Jackie the the impetus and the drive to do that, as well as the confidence to do that. Obviously, everything that happens with George [Marc Blucas], they kind of try and stay apart, so and you have that. And I think for Episode 1, you think you know which way it’s going to go, and then she makes this decision, and she makes that decision. She takes the bull by the horns, quite literally, and I think that’s so empowering.

We really wanted to empower her a little bit. All the trauma she’s been through, everything that we put that poor girl through. I wanted to give her a triumph moment. And I didn’t think anyone was going to expect it, so that’s also delicious. As a creator, as a writer, you really want to give people something they are not expecting.

I love that shift in Jackie this season, too. Some of the characters say the change in her is due to Cole’s bad influence, but I think she’s just a lot more confident.

Halsall: Yeah, it’s absolutely that confidence of understanding who you’re becoming and having a bit more self-awareness and that confidence of being in love for the first time. A real kind of maturity that comes from that. So yes, that’s absolutely part of it.

And also, everyone thinks the shift in Jackie is because of Cole, but I don’t think it is. I feel like we were going to get here regardless of if she got with Cole.

Halsall: Yes, I think it’s almost chicken and egg, isn’t it? I think it’s her confidence that makes her get with Cole, and then they help each other grow. That’s what’s so lovely about their relationship. It’s actually really healthy for a while. Not always, because that’s not drama, but they really do complement each other, but she has to have that confidence in the first place because he wasn’t going to do it, so she had to. Jackie in Season 1 would never have done that. So it is absolutely a testament to who she’s become for that to happen.

What was it like on set, having that Jackie and Cole tension pay off, especially with that waterfall kiss?

Halsall: I mean, it was wonderful. We’re very lucky. We have a great cast and crew. That particular day was a bit of a splinter group because we’re on the side of a mountain with a waterfall. So, it wasn’t like the whole crew was there, unfortunately. Although that’s probably not a bad thing, but I mean, it was just such a release. We have this incredible location with a fantastic director, this incredible location, an amazing cast that led it so beautifully. The costumes are fantastic.

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We spent a lot of time in prep, in pre-production, just crafting those final couple of moments of the episode, and I’m glad you think it paid off. You know, intimate scenes are often quite tricky for actors and for crew, but we’re lucky because we’ve all worked together now for, at that point, three years, and so I believe — hopefully the cast will say the same thing — that they feel completely supported and safe in those environments. It really is a family affair. It’s a group effort. I mean, of course, great kudos to Nikki and Noah for pulling it off so beautifully. We knew we got it when we shot it. Everyone was very happy because everyone knows that’s been the culmination of a long time. So it was a wonderful moment.

The show also took a spicier turn with Jackie and Cole. Tell me about deciding now was the time for that.

Halsall: It’s that confidence, isn’t it? Jackie in Season 1 wouldn’t have done anything that she did in Season 3, but because she has been through all these things, because she’s discovered who she is a little bit more, because she has faced her demons a little bit more and made mistakes and come back from those, and now she’s with this boy that she really wanted to be with and didn’t feel like she could be with, she took the bull by the horn. She made that happen. I think we could allow ourselves to do those slightly more mature storylines and those slightly spicier and slightly more edgy things that we do in Season 3.

Jackie leaves one love triangle and kind of finds herself in another one by the end of the season. When Jackie kisses Eliot, does she have feelings for him, or is it too soon to tell?

Halsall: She’s known Eliot for a long time, you know? What Elliot does is he represents a life she might have had. He represents the life she probably would have had if her parents hadn’t been so tragically killed, and she stayed in New York. I think that’s really compelling for a young person, for anyone really, because it’s like the road you didn’t travel. Where she is now, she’s in love with Cole, but Elliot represents safety in a way. He represents what was going to happen to her, and I think that he’s the only person, one of the very few people now, that’s known her since she was so young. That’s hard to kind of walk away from. And I think that’s part of his pull, part of the appeal of him.

I also wanted to talk about Jackie and Cole’s breakup. Did you always know you wanted to break them up this season? If so, was it important for their growth?

Halsall: I mean, they get completely caught up in each other, and I think there is something about those very passionate first loves that means you can lose yourself a little bit. And when we start their relationship, when they’re living in that bliss for such a long time, it’s fantastic. But when that becomes more of a — it’s not quite codependency, but when it becomes something that’s actually affecting the rest of your life, especially as a young person, especially someone like Jackie who needs to get on in life, it’s not necessarily the healthiest thing it could be.

I think with the spanner and the works thrown, Cole sees in Elliot someone that Jackie should be with because Cole’s got his own demons and feels inadequate. He always has. I think that’s always going to make things difficult to just keep on one path. I think they need to break up in order to develop further, to kind of grow as people.

I was curious about that, if Jackie really believes what he’s saying. 

Halsall: We’ve all been there, haven’t we? We’ve all been there having a conversation with a person we’re in love with, and they’ve said something, and we’ve all had our hearts broken. I think it’s a rite of passage.

In the aftermath, obviously, she’s struggling, and she’s hiding it, but she’s also kind of thriving, winning the track meet and impressing the college counselor. 

Halsall: It’s about where she’s been, where she’s come from, what she’s been through, where she’s ended up, and of course she’s heartbroken. But I think where we’ve taken Jackie and how she’s developed and grown over the time we’ve been with her, we don’t want her to be completely broken by a boy. You know, it’s quite important to me that we aren’t telling our audience that love is everything. That your first love, if it doesn’t work out, your life is over, although it might feel like it for a while.

I really wanted to show that Jackie will get over that hurt. She will become stronger for it, and we all will. We all do, don’t we? When it happens to us, it happens. Like I said, it happens to everybody. So, yeah, I think it’s very important that the show isn’t just about romance. It’s not just about that. The show is about people growing as people and having other things.

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Alex and Kiley also do a lot of growing this season and get a romance arc. Does Kiley have real feelings for Dylan? How do they compare to her feelings for Alex?

Halsall: Oh, that’s complicated. That’s so complicated. I think with Kiley, I think she’s been so in love with Alex for so long, that to her, he’s the ultimate. I always said, and I said to both Mya and Ashby, who play Kiley and Alex, Kiley loves Alex so much. It’s so pure, this love, that she just wants to see him happy. She’d just be happy with him being happy.

So when he was going out with Paige before we started the show, when he was going out with Jackie, she’s still happy for him, even though that hurts her feelings. I think she really likes Dylan, and who wouldn’t? I mean, he is fantastic, and I think they have great chemistry, and he’s a great boyfriend, and they make a fantastic couple, and I hope she’s happy. That’s all I’m going to say.

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From the beginning, did you always envision Alex and Kiley getting to this point, even when Alex was in the Jackie-Cole triangle?

Halsall: I’ve always known that I wrote this because this wasn’t in the book, Kiley being madly in love with Alex, and I always wanted at some point for that to be reciprocated, possibly, or for Kiley to find love somewhere else. She’s quite an important character for me, and for our audience as well, I hope so. I always think there’s some complications in that relationship that need to be explored.

My Life With the Walter Boys, Season 3, Streaming Now, Netflix