SPOILER ALERT – Do not read ahead if you haven’t watched the new episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls!
Renee Rapp‘s time on The Sex Lives of College Girls has officially come to an end.
Back in July 2023, the 24-year-old actress/singer announced that she was leaving the MAX series.
The first two episodes of season three have been released and we now know how Renee‘s character Leighton Murray was written off of the show.
Keep reading to find out more…In the season three premiere, Leighton discovered that her high-level math class was canceled due to lack of students enrollment. Her professor tells that since she can’t take the course at Essex, she can take a bus to a nearby college to do so.
However, due to an unpleasant experience with public transportation, Leighton begins to question the direction of her life. Her girlfriend Alicia (Midori Francis) also reveals that she’s dropping out of college to work for the mayor of Boston.
Leighton then makes the difficult decision to leave Essex and transfer to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to continue her studies, but initially doesn’t tell her suitemates – Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet), and Bela (Amrit Kaur).
The suitemates then find out about Leighton’s decision to transfer from former suitemate Jocelyn (Lauren Spencer) and decide to confront Leighton, who apologizes for not telling them sooner.
“I came to Essex thinking I was going to date men and I would be in Kappa — and I would have done those things. And I would have been miserable,” Leighton tells her suitemates through tears. “And then I met you three, and you gave me the strength to be myself.”
The suitemates then all reconcile and enjoy one final night of partying – including a pregame in their old dorm suite – before Leighton hits the road with her father.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the show’s co-showrunner Justin Noble opened up about how they came up with Renee‘s farewell storyline.
“We kind of landed on this pretty quickly,” Justin shared. “I mean, when you start to think about ways that college students leave, you’re pretty limited.”
He continued, “It’s not like Reneé’s character was gonna go on a hike, and then Kimberly’s like, ‘You mean the rocky, dangerous hike near the cliff?’ And then, she falls off or something. Really, the only thing that could happen was that she would transfer to a different school.”
While Renee may have left the show, several actors have joined the cast for the new season!
New episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls are released on Thursdays on MAX.
