Never Have I Ever season 3 review: A penultimate season racing to the end

Retrospectively, I can see how high school was really short and sweet. The new season of High School was, for better and worse. Never Have I Ever Also, decides speedrun his junior year.

Netflix returns to Devi Vishwakumar’s life as a highly-achieving high school student (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan). After her father’s death, Devi spent freshman year as a social pariah, and the first two seasons of Never Have I Ever focused on her quest to gain some social status during sophomore year, continue excelling at her studies, and balance her strict mother’s expectations. Devi has a great, diverse cast of people to complete her. Never Have I EverHe was able to balance out his exaggerated hijinks and show genuine love. This allowed him to fully experience the feelings that come with being a teenager.

The new season has some of those elements, but creators are determined to speed up the process to get everyone to where they need to for senior year and season 4. In the rush to the finale, much of the show’s special qualities are lost.

[Ed. note: This review contains some setup spoilers for Never Have I Ever season 3.]

Image by Netflix

Season 3 kicks off with Devi and super popular Paxton (Darren Barnet) making their official debut as a couple — much to the shock and disbelief of the rest of the school, who can’t believe that a nerd like Devi is dating a hot jock. While Devi is finally living her dream of having a relationship with the hottest guy in school, she is still fixated on what other people think about her, which ends up causing her to doubt Paxton’s feelings. Meanwhile, her friends grapple with their own relationship problems: robotics nerd Fabiola (Lee Rodriguez) tries to navigate a suddenly long-distance relationship; theater kid Eleanor (Ramona Young) isn’t even sure if Paxton’s slacker friend Trent (Benjamin Norris) is into her; and Devi’s academic rival Ben (Jaren Lewison) keeps flubbing his relationship with athletic Aneesa (Megan Suri). At home, Devi’s cousin Kamala (Richa Moorjani) deals with their grandmother’s disappointment after she turned down a marriage proposal.

This all seems like enough setup and plot to fuel a whole season, but the show resolves all of those separate plot points pretty quickly — only to introduce completely new problems that also get rapidly solved. Never Have I Ever This comedy is made up of 30 minute episodes. So some episodic separation is to be expected. The threads linking the episodes are thinner this year. It’s not quite a “one problem per episode” sitcom formula, but it doesn’t have as much throughline this time around compared to seasons past.

Image by Netflix

The cast is larger than ever. The show doesn’t just explore the lives of Devi and her friends, but also dives into Ben’s, Paxton’s, Kamala’s, and Devi’s mother’s journeys. This is pretty in line with the previous seasons, where Fabiola’s coming out storyline and Eleanor’s complicated relationship with her mother helped to flesh out their character arcs. There are so many characters this season that it is easy for some to fall by the wayside. Each character gets their own story moment. It is then compiled for a few episodes before it’s quickly tied down and taken away to make room for another.

It’s particularly frustrating because these characters are still compelling and their storylines are still engaging — and the previous two seasons took great care in giving every character’s story enough time to gestate. The pacing is rushed this time, so these arcs don’t have as much room. The first two seasons of the show take place in the first half of Devi’s sophomore year. But this season has a time skip a few episodes in, jolting Devi and her friends into their junior year and hustling them along so that they can wrap up the school year and get everything in place for the show’s last season. Season 3 lacks the same steady pace as the previous two seasons. It feels more like somebody rushed ahead and didn’t let go.

There could be a meta commentary in there about how school days pass so fast, but it doesn’t feel intentional. The characters are introduced and then pushed to the forefront of plot significance before being quickly forgotten. The focus must be on the core cast of character, which makes sense. But the main cast doesn’t even really interact much anymore, which is another big reason this season feels lacking. Kamala realizes that she doesn’t want to be defined by milestones in her marriage, and then disappears for half the season when she is involved. Aneesa’s romantic troubles become a pivotal plot point and then never come up again. Devi and Ben, in particular, don’t have as many scenes as they once did. This is especially surprising considering that the two first seasons built Devi up as a romantic interest, and delved into their compelling rivalry which turned to friendship.

Photo: Lara Solanki/Netflix

However, Ben will not be completely absent from the show. His part is significant and he gets to develop as a character. All of them do. The characters at the centre mature, and they learn more about the world and themselves. Their journeys are complete and rooted in reality at times towards the end. Devi is the central character. Her transformation from being selfish, insecure and impulsive to someone who can sit down and think about the major changes she has made in her life is satisfying. The last few episodes in particular put her in situations where she would have previously acted rashly and cynically — but because of what she’s gone through, she’s able to approach them with more maturity and reason (though she’s still Devi, so she still makes Some impetuous decisions, but this time they’re a bit more warranted).

By the end of this season, everything is set in place for the fourth — and final — one. The only problem was that it took 10 hours of scrambling to get everybody to their desired places, physically and emotionally. Season 3 is not a smooth, well-crafted path. Instead, it feels more like a shortcut connecting the younger and less mature characters to the older, and sometimes even more mature, versions that they require for the satisfying conclusion. But because it’s a quick bypass instead of the scenic view, there are definitely some moments missed along the way. Season 4 should slow down and allow these characters to fully embrace their senior years.

The 10 Episodes of Never Have I EverOn August 12, Netflix will premiere season 3.