‘Tell Me Lies’ Star Returning for Season 3 in Surprising Update

The actor previously said his character was “not someone that I will be celebrating when I look back in my career.”

May 9, 2025, 3:02pm

Disney/Josh Stringer

Tom Ellis’ Oliver will return in Season 3 of Tell Me Lies.

The Lucifer star, 46, told PEOPLE Wednesday that his philandering professor Oliver will be back following his messy extramarital affair with Bree (Catherine Missal) in Season 2.

Videos by PopCulture.com

“Yes, I’m going back. I’m actually going there on Saturday to start shooting,” said Ellis who is married to the Hulu series’ showrunner, Meghan Oppenheimer. The actor told the outlet that after reading the first four episodes of Season 3, fans would “not be disappointed.”

“It is as dark, toxic, and funny as ever,” Ellis said. “And just when you thought our characters couldn’t do anything more ridiculous to themselves, they ended up doing it.”

(Photo by Daniele Venturelli/Daniele Venturelli / Getty Images)

At the end of Season 2, Ellis’ character revealed that his wife Marianne (Gabriella Pession) knew about his affair with Bree the entire time, and the actor says that Season 3 will bring about “a lot of redeeming moments” for his character. “I’ve got to be honest, the focus isn’t so much on my character this season,” he said, “but it still plays very much into the Bree storyline.”

Ellis previously described Oliver as a “broken soul” to PopCulture.com ahead of Season 2, pointing out that his “lack of care about consequence and choice” alludes to him being “sort of quietly narcissistic and broken.”

But following the Season 2 finale, the actor told PEOPLE he “thankfully” felt like he had left his “despicable” character in his past. “I think, thankfully, I’ve left Oliver behind now. But no… I felt really dark at the end of it,” he said at the time. “I felt dark because I’d been part of telling that story. And yeah, I did need to kind of just remind myself of who I am and all those things.”

“I don’t think it’s something that I’ll want to kind of remunerate too much about in the future,” he continued. “It’s just, ‘Okay, I’ve done that, and I’m glad I’ve done it for the purposes that we’ve done it,’ but it’s not someone that I will be celebrating when I look back in my career, I don’t think.”