Love, Victor stars and producers break down 'beautiful' series finale ending
Warning: This article contains spoilers about the series finale of Love, Victor, now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
Everyone on Love, Victor got a happy ending in the series finale, but while Hulu's LGBTQ+ rom-com is officially over after three seasons, the characters' lives are only just beginning.
Season 3 featured a lot of ups and downs, both romantic and otherwise, for Victor (Michael Cimino) and his friends, but by the end of the finale, the titular teen reunited with his first love Benji (George Sear) on the iconic ferris wheel. It was the culmination of three seasons of will-they-won't-they after Victor came out and Benji struggled with his sobriety, but at least for now, their love story got a "happily ever after" conclusion.
"One of the really nice things about the finale is this sense of everything's going to be all right," executive producer Brian Tanen tells EW. "We're launching these kids into the world, they have journeys that are complete, but also life happens and things may not be perfect, but these kids have grown up with the tools they need to process relationship problems and come through them on the other side. Victor now feels like a really mature and actualized person, so my expectation is he's now going to have a successful college career and end up doing something he loves. He's knows who he is, and he really did not at the beginning of the show."
Below, the stars and producers of Love, Victor break down that "beautiful" and "perfect" series finale ending and more.
Gilles Mingasson/Hulu Michael Cimino stars in 'Love, Victor'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How did you feel when you found out Victor chose Benji instead of Rahim in the final season?
GEORGE SEAR (Benji): They just went through so much, so it's more gratifying for them to be together at the end. And as soon as you get that happy moment where Victor picks Benji then it goes straight back into more challenges for them right away. It was interesting being able to explore all these separate things with our characters. In previous seasons they're more often than not together or in scenes together, so it was interesting exploring the characters individually and then how that impacted the relationship when they would come back together.
MICHAEL CIMINO (Victor): They did need some time to figure out themselves. I think that's such an important message to share. Benji needed some time to fix some things in his life, and Victor needed to do the same and explore life and get some more experience under his belt before he committed to one person. Instead of being like, "you are my person out of naiveté," it's, "he is my person out of experience."
SEAR: They had different emotional needs. Your partner can't always be that person that's going to meet all of your needs, and they're young, it's their first love, so yeah, Michael's right, it's important for them to have that first and then be able to come together as a unit.
ANTHONY KEYVAN (Rahim): I didn't know until we got the script who Victor chose. I know that it was a really tough decision for the studio and for the writers room, and I'm not going to lie, I was a little bit bummed. But I'm really grateful that regardless of the outcome of the love triangle, the writers still found an amazing place in the story for Rahim. I was reminded that this character is so immensely important. I was supported in that way through the writers room who brought Rahim up and showed things that other characters weren't able to show or represent onscreen. I feel like, in a way, getting away from the love triangle gave Rahim the opportunity to fully come into his own and we got to see sides of him that we wouldn't have been able to see if things were different. Although it stung a little bit, I was really, really happy with how things turned out and I feel it was for the best.
After Victor chose Benji, they immediately had more problems as Benji relapsed. Why did you want to pull them apart again for the majority of the final season?
ISAAC APTAKER (executive producer): Especially on Victor's side of things, his coming out was simultaneous with his entering into a relationship with Benji, so he never got a chance to explore who he was as a single gay person in the world. It felt to us that until he goes on that journey and really sees what that's like, how could he ever be with Benji for real? I know people who married their high school sweetheart, but I know very few people who didn't hit pause and sort of explore and figure out who they were as an independent person, so season 3 was really about Victor going through that process.
ELIZABETH BERGER (executive producer): It was also really exciting to us to get to tell a Benji backstory and to show fans this glimpse of who he was before he met Victor. It's something we hadn't previously gotten to see. And also to have the space to watch a Benji growing up story, it really is up to him ultimately in this season to figure out what he wants and what's best for him. He has a lot of voices in his ear telling him what's best for him and what he needs, but we're really seeing him grow up and transform and step into this adult version of himself.
Kelsey McNeal/Hulu
Was the series always going to end with Victor and Benji back together?
BERGER: We always suspected it would. Once you're deep into debate with your other writers and you're hashing things out, you definitely think about all the different ways things could end. The love story of Victor and Benji always felt pretty deeply baked into the DNA of the show. They have this beautiful meet-cute in our first episode of the show and he remains such a through line throughout the series. And we love the wish fulfillment of it all, that you track this big, beautiful love story and there's bumps along the way, and they separate for a while, but ultimately they are meant to be. There's something just classic and very satisfying to us about that and we wanted to give that to fans.
What was your reaction when you found out Victor and Benji ended up getting back together in the series finale on the ferris wheel?
CIMINO: It was just beautiful that Benji and Victor came back together after they fully discovered themselves. So many young shows are like, "this is a portrayal of love and it's supposed to be amazing and beautiful all the time," but realistically, sometimes you do need to take a step back from the person that you love to discover who you are and then re-approach the situation because now it's like, "I know who I am now, and you know who you are, and I still feel like we can still work together."
SEAR: I thought the ending was really well done because it was very full circle too. I think the fans of the show will really enjoy that. And Benji has that great line where he's like, "Look, I've still got a lot of work to do, if we're going to do this," and I think that is also an important part of it because we're all a work in progress kind of all the time. There's never a final destination, and so being with someone that supports you and makes you feel like your best version, which is ultimately how Benji felt about Victor, was a really lovely ending. And the Ferris wheel is so iconic now to the Love, Simon universe so it was a really nice nod to that as well. I did see some people on Twitter actually guess that it was going to end like that on the Ferris wheel.
BERGER: I love our ending. It was such a full circle moment for us. To be able to return to that setting and close things out there, it just felt so perfect and so right. We were so glad that that worked out.
Greg Gayne/Hulu Michael Cimino and George Sear on 'Love, Victor'
Since Love, Victor is a spinoff of Love, Simon, would you be interested in coming back for another spinoff in the future?
CIMINO: Absolutely, I would love to revisit Victor at some point. I think that right now at this very moment in time they need to be given some air, let Victor and Benji live their lives off-screen for a little bit, but it would be cool to see where they are in a few years and revisit things.
SEAR: Yeah, it definitely would be fun and I'd love to work with Michael again. We just had such a good time on set.
KEYVAN: I've always said that Rahim is my favorite character I've ever played. And this job didn't feel like a job. Every day I was happy to go to work. So to be able to do that again, whether it be for one season or for like a spin-off movie, or whatever, I would totally do it at the drop of a dime. If someone called and were like, "We're doing a spin-off, we want Rahim to guest star" or something, I would totally do it.
BERGER: We're totally open to it. I think it would have to be the right story and it would have to feel really purposeful to us. What was exciting about telling the Victor chapter of this story was getting to live with a Latinx family that felt really different than Simon's journey. It would totally depend on who is the character, and what makes their story different? What makes this really exciting? But it's a world we love and we would be totally open to revisiting.
BRIAN TANEN (executive producer): There's lots of queer stories out there that deserve and need to be told. When we were making this show in season 1, there was a little bit of a question of like, is it still a big deal to have to come out as gay in 2019? We talked to teenagers about it and the answer was it kind of depends. There's places that are very progressive and it's not a big deal in their high schools, and then for other kids it was a huge deal. So it felt like it was a vital story, and here we are, a number of years later, the political climate has changed, there's all these sort of draconian laws against trans youth, against gay teachers being able to just identify as who they are. There's this "don't say gay" bill in Florida that is terrible. It speaks to a world where gay people being able to exist and move through the world is somehow a threat, and it makes it especially meaningful to be able to tell these stories, to let gay kids be seen, to see themselves in happy relationships and to know that things are going to be all right. It takes on this added feeling, at least for me, that this kind of television is really meaningful and important.
Where do you think Victor and Benji's love story goes from here?
CIMINO: To college. They'll graduate and start living their lives the way that they want to.
SEAR: I hope Benji joins a cool band, and stays sober. Do you think they'll stay together?
CIMINO: I think that they'll stay together.
SEAR: You do?
CIMINO: Yeah, I do. I think that also it'd be beautiful to do a spinoff to see Victor as an adult, see how much he's grown since he was in high school, and same with Benji. That'd be something that would be really cool to explore.
Love, Victor's third and final season is now streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
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