A Full ‘Off Campus’ Timeline of Hannah & Garrett’s Relationship (So Far)
Off Campus Season 1 made millions fall in love with Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli) and Hannah Wells’ (Ella Bright) romance. For those who had already read Elle Kennedy’s hockey romance books before Prime Video’s TV adaptation came out, Garrett and Hannah’s fake-dating-to-friends-to-lovers arc made them swoon all over again.
Based on Kennedy’s The Deal and set at the fictional Briar University, Season 1 follows a college hockey team’s star center, Garrett, and a shy music major, Hannah. When he realizes that Hannah is acing their difficult philosophy class, Garrett tries to convince her to tutor him. Hannah isn’t convinced until he offers to fake date her, which would get the attention of her crush, Justin (Josh Heuston). From there, Hannah and Garrett become friends and learn to trust each other before embarking on a relationship that changes both their lives.
Season 1 saw almost the entirety of their book romance play out, leaving Dean (Stephen Kalyn) and Allie (Mika Abdalla) to take over as the primary couple in Off Campus Season 2. Though Hannah and Garrett will reappear as supporting players in the follow-up season, we’ve already hit all the major points in their story — barring their future in Kennedy’s The Legacy and second-generation books — so we had to give them Swooon‘s relationship timeline treatment. Get the full recap on Hannah and Garrett’s love story, with insights from stars Belmont Cameli and Ella Bright, below.
Illustration by Rebecca Perlmutter / Prime Video
Off Campus, Season 1, Streaming Now, Prime Video
Hannah & Garrett (sort-of) meet (Episode 1)
Hannah and Garrett’s story starts with literal steam. Hannah has a part-time job at the hockey rink, and she assumes no one is there when she’s cleaning up the locker room. Little does she know that Garrett was getting some extra ice time in and hit the showers after. She stops in her tracks to stare at Garrett, who’s totally naked. “You looking for someone?” he asks, unruffled and amused when he catches her. She panics and stumbles out of the room.
“I’m glad that the water was warm,” Cameli told Swooon, though he admitted the showers broke at one point while they filmed the sequence. “I was so scared it was gonna be cold, but they kept it nice and steamy.”
In the same interview, Bright elaborated on the change from the book, which sees Hannah and Garrett run into each other after their philosophy class. Hannah drops her belongings, including her A+ paper, and Garrett helps her pick them up. Seeing her grade, he tries (and fails) to convince her to tutor him.
“I think [the meet-cute change] is great, because obviously in the books, it’s a first-person narration, so it’s hard to kind of let the audience understand that they’ve been in each other’s orbit,” Bright explained. “Hannah knows who Garrett is, but he doesn’t know who she is. And it’s kind of like [he’s] the hockey god around school. There’s a way to translate that that we had to show without using voiceover.”
In the show, Hannah and Garrett have actually met before their locker room encounter, unlike the book. Hannah has another part-time job at Malone’s, a restaurant popular with the hockey crowd near campus. She’s waitressed for Garrett before, but he doesn’t remember that until Logan (Antonio Cipriano) jogs his memory. Garrett doesn’t even remember Hannah’s name when he asks her to tutor him for the first time. But he doesn’t let that stop him from his mission.
Hannah & Garrett make the deal (Episode 1)
Hannah refuses Garrett’s tutoring request multiple times, explaining that she’s too busy preparing for the school’s pop showcase and working her jobs. However, it’s at Episode 1’s block party — not a frat party like the book — when Garrett clocks Hannah’s crush on Justin (Josh Heuston). Justin is the lead singer of a band that often plays at Malone’s, rather than a football player like he is in the books.
However, Hannah’s crush on Justin remains the same in both. Hannah rarely crushes on anyone, so she’s eager to get Justin’s attention. Sensing an opportunity, Garrett offers to fake date Hannah to do exactly that. Dating the most popular hockey player on campus will surely turn Justin’s head. Meanwhile, Hannah will help Garrett study for and pass their philosophy midterm, going over to his house for tutoring sessions.
Hannah & Garrett’s first kiss (Episode 2)
Now that they’re fake dating, Hannah and Garrett are acting like a loved-up couple in front of others on campus. Garrett convinces Hannah that they need to practice kissing to make their act seem real. In the book and the show, they kiss for the first time with that goal in mind. However, Kennedy has Hannah kiss Garrett after a tutoring session in his bedroom. Dean walks in on them making out, and Hannah says Garrett was just helping her work on her kissing kills. Dean offers to help, and Hannah stuns him when he takes him up on it. The show places the scene to the hockey team’s weight room, and Logan takes Dean’s place. (It definitely contributes to Logan’s unrequited crush on Hannah.)
Both kisses spark something in the back of Garrett’s mind. They become closer at Beau (Khobe Clarke) Dean’s (Stephen Kalyn) costume-themed birthday party. Hannah and Garrett bond over music, and Garrett opens up about how his father pushed him towards a career in hockey. “He’s created control over all aspects of his life,” Cameli told Swooon. “He has a plan in mind, and all he really does is work to serve that plan… He wakes up, and he plays hockey, and he takes care of all the other things in his life he needs to do to make sure that he can keep playing hockey. When he meets Hannah, it opens up a lot for him.”
Hannah and Garrett become friends before feelings are totally realized on either side. “I loved their fun banter from the very beginning,” Bright added in the joint interview. “They start as friends, and they have this challenging each other aspect to their relationship, which is really fun.”
Hannah tells Garrett about her past (Episode 4)
Similar to the book, Bright told Swooon that Hannah and Garrett’s friendship in Season 1 builds the trust between them. “These conversations that they have about really hard aspects of their lives that they might not be able to have with other people is really beautiful to see unfold,” she said.
Realizing that she wants to sleep with Justin, Hannah decides that Garrett is the perfect candidate to help her practice intimacy. She was drugged and sexually assaulted in high school, and she hasn’t been able to finish with guys. When Hannah relays what happened to her to Garrett, explaining why she wants to sleep with him, Garrett assures her that she isn’t broken. He’ll help her.
Cameli and Bright told Swooon that Hannah and Garrett’s Episode 4 conversation was one they were “particularly careful about” while filming. “She’s dealt with things in the way that she thinks is best, even though there are some holes in that process that I think she’s compartmentalized, and she’s shut down some parts of herself,” Bright said in another interview. “She’s found a way where she’s not defined by what’s happened to her. She’s confident in the situation that she’s in, and she’s comfortable.”
Hannah & Garrett sleep together (Episode 4)
After that conversation, Hannah and Garrett make a plan to hook up again later — Garrett is so concerned about it going well that he asks for advice from Dean. He wisely tells a nervous Garrett that intimacy is all about trust. That’s what Garrett tells Hannah when he arrives at his house and they get the ball rolling in his bedroom. Garrett puts Hannah at ease by initiating an impromptu dance party before the tension becomes undeniable.
However, Hannah finds herself getting lost in her head the further they get, which Garrett notices. He says they should take a break. After talking it out, Garrett suggests that they watch each other get themselves off so they’re equally vulnerable. To Hannah’s surprise, it works. It kicks off the sexual side of their relationship, even before they’ve confessed or fully realized the depth of their feelings for each other.
“For Hannah and Garrett, their story can’t really be told without the sex element,” Bright told Swooon. “The show is so sex positive, and we had those kind of equal conversations offset as well, and kind of discussing how these scenes move the storyline forward. It was important for us to get that right.”
Garrett & Hannah start dating for real (Episode 5)
After they sleep together, Garrett is the first to realize that he likes Hannah as more than a friend. He plans to confess to Hannah at Drunk Shakespeare, but he doesn’t get to when she takes Justin as her date. However, it’s at the event that Hannah tunes into her own not-so-platonic feelings for Garrett, ending things with Justin. Hannah finds Garrett at the hockey rink, performing “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” over the speakers to reveal her feelings. It’s the song they played during their pre-sex dance party and the favorite song of Garrett’s late mom.
They become an official couple in Episode 5, getting serious quick (and hooking up often). At this point, Garrett has only admitted that he has a “complicated” relationship with his dad (Steve Howey), who physically abused him and his mother during his childhood. Garrett brings Hannah home to Thanksgiving, hopeful that his dad might be trying to change. However, during dinner, Garrett discovers that’s not the case. His dad is hurting his new fiancée. Garrett opens up to Hannah about his dad’s abuse during the car ride back to school.
Garrett breaks up with Hannah (Episode 7)
Despite Hannah and Garrett’s relationship being stronger than ever at the start of Episode 7, the arrival of Hannah’s rapist at Briar — he’s a rival hockey player — shakes it all up. Delaney (Quinten James) provokes Garrett during a faceoff by saying horrible things about Hannah. Garrett throws his stick down and pummels him, getting himself suspended from the team. Hannah reprimands Garrett after, not wanting him to risk his professional hockey career because of her. When she says his behavior scared her, Garrett ends their relationship, fearing that he’s becoming like his father.
In an interview with Swooon, Bright relayed how showrunner Louisa Levy explained Hannah and Garrett’s breakup to her. It’s different from the book, which sees Hannah break up with Garrett when his dad threatens to financially cut off his son if she doesn’t. Phil thinks she’s a distraction from hockey. Garrett sets out to get Hannah back, correctly assuming that there was more to the story. She later reveals what Garrett’s dad threatened to do, and they get back together.
“This breakup scene is so tough because both of these characters are having their worst day possible at the same time,” Bright told Swooon. “And if it was just one of them going through this, the other would be able to help them get out of this situation, or comfort them, or give them advice that the other could listen to. But there is this miscommunication, and there is no other way that this would have ended up.”
Garrett & Hannah get back together (Episode 8)
Both the book and show version of Garrett and Hannah manage to get their happy ending. For most of Episode 8, Hannah and Garrett are both miserable without each other, but Garrett reaches a place where he realizes what he did was wrong. With the help of Logan and Dean, Garrett decides to get Hannah back and support her at her pop showcase performance. After she gets second place, Garrett apologizes to her in the parking lot.
Hannah forgives Garrett instantly. Bright told Swooon, “I think she realizes [that] they both just have this miscommunication. I don’t think she blames him for anything. I think she understands why he made that rash decision because she sees where he’s coming from and what he heard with the selective hearing of being afraid to some extent.”
She continued, “I just think that him also showing up for the pop showcase is a big romantic gesture that meant a lot to her. I think that was an apology in itself. And it was just a really beautiful, very rom-com-esque moment for them to get back together in that way.”
Though they’ll no longer be the primary couple of the show, Cameli said that there’s more ground to cover with their relationship. “We’ve watched them get to a place where they’ve basically decided that they can and should and will be together, and that’s very much a beginning for a relationship,” he said. “So we don’t know where it goes after this. But no relationship is perfect out of the gate, so they’ll have new challenges and opportunities to grow, just like everybody else.”
