One of Us Is Lying: Here’s a Season 1 Recap Before You Dive Back In

One of Us Is Lying? More like All of Them Were Lying. The extremely bingeable teen mystery is back for a Season 2 on Oct 20 — and, unless you’re fresh off a Season 1 viewing or a read of The NY Times-bestselling series it’s based on, chances are you could use a refresher on all of the lies (okay, some of the lies — we’d be here all day, otherwise) that the Bayviewers spewed at us in the first eight episodes.

Below, we’ve created a cheat sheet for this very purpose. You can think of it like the one Bronwyn Rojas infamously snatches in Chem class except, well, we’re actually advising you to use it. Yale admittance is not at stake. And, if you stick around after class, we’ll review some unanswered questions that may or may not come into play in the new season. So, cancel your evening plans (unless your S.O. gifted you Phoebe Bridgers concert tickets) and don’t bother lathering on that peanut oil — because we’re about to get our hands quite dirty.  

Heavy spoilers below. 

The setup 

On the first day of school at Bayview High, five students enter detention, but only four come out alive and all of them have secrets to kill for.  

The death   

Simon Kelleher (Mark McKenna)  

The cause 

Simon, who is allergic to peanuts, consumes peanut oil which has been placed inside a capsule and dropped into his cup of water when no one is looking. That includes Miss Avery, overseeing detention, who has run outside to address some rowdy streakers from a neighboring high school. We later learn that this was completely orchestrated, and that the streakers were paid through an anonymous user on Venmo via a Reddit post to create a diversion. (Shout out to Anarchi$K.) And, more to the point: We learn that a series of errors led to the ultimate murder of Simon. The planned prank, as detailed through Xbox chats, was that Simon would put peanut oil into his own beverage, sending himself into anaphylactic shock. He would then be resuscitated with an EpiPen, and everyone in the room would look like suspects. Instead, what happens is: Jake deliberately kills Simon (spooked by a chat in which he threatens to use the recorded conversations against him) by removing all of the EpiPens from the nurse’s office. He then attempts to frame his cheating girlfriend, Addy. Got all of that? 

Simon Kelleher  

Simon is a vindictive, straight-A student, gunning for the title of valedictorian. He runs a “gotcha”-style blog called “About That” in which he divulges juicy secrets about the Bayview High students. His only friend is Janae Matthews, a queer punk who is very good at mean stares and, in the aftermath of his death, dropping F-bombs while miked at school assemblies and football games.  

Bronwyn Rojas 

Bronwyn (Marianly Tejada), like Simon, is a straight-A student — but she almost wasn’t. She struggles in Chemistry, and desperation to get into Yale drives her to steal the answers to a test one day while staying late working in the lab. Further muddying the waters, Rojas steals Simon’s laptop in an attempt to delete her secret from getting out into the world, which then gets into the hands of her younger sister, Maeve. We learn that Maeve was in love with Simon and when Bronwyn discovers explicit messages between the two, she goes over to his house and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t leave her little sister alone. It works, and Maeve harbors a deep resentment for her sister when she finds out this is the real reason he ghosted her. Bronwyn breaks up with her well-meaning boyfriend just as sexual tension (and Hitchcock viewing hours) reach an all-time high between Bronwyn and Nate Macauley. 

Addy Prentiss 

Addy (Annalisa Cochrane) is a popular blonde cheerleader, despised (at first) by the school misfits, like Janae, and as the plot thickens, her best friend Vanessa. Addy cheats on her boyfriend Jake with his friend TJ while he’s in Greece for the summer. She cuts off all her hair with the help of a scandalized stylist who has apparently never cut short hair before, and becomes a new person (“30% less like an a**hole,” according to Janae), no longer deferential to men like Jake. This is much to the displeasure of her mom, who urges her throughout the season to be ladylike, flirtatious, and — you guessed it, folks — an influencer.  

Cooper Clay 

Cooper (Chibuikem Uche) is a closeted star baseball player who chooses to hide his sexuality from his peers out of fear that it might jeopardize scholarship opportunities. He “dates” his best friend Keely to uphold the appearance that he is straight, but all the while is seeing an openly gay guy named Kris. Later on, Cooper buys painkillers off of Nate Macauley so that he can perform his best in a game. This shows up in his drug test, and his dad squashes the evidence before anyone can find out. Cooper ends up (somewhat inadvertently) coming out to his dad, who tells him that he’s proud of him — not for being gay, but for staying in the closet to make sure he has a future in sports. Meanwhile, a “juvenille record” from Cooper’s former life in Mississippi threatens to come to light. Ultimately, the felony is not as life-ruining as we are led to believe: He was involved in a physical altercation with the homophobic older brother of a guy he was seeing, and broke his nose while defending himself. By the season's end, Cooper is motivated by his relationship with Kris to live authentically as an out gay man, accepting any risk that might come with that decision.

Nate Macauley  

Nate (Cooper van Grootel) is the season’s all-too-easy red herring who has built a reputation for being a drug-dealing burnout. He begrudgingly sells to an intoxicated Janae, who nearly dies from overdosing on the drugs. The other dark cloud looming in the distance is the story of Nate’s parents. He tells everyone his mother is dead, though she is actually just estranged and reenters the picture to apologize for her mental illness and drug abuse, and not protecting him when she had the chance. His dad, we learn, is suffering from PTSD and has also turned to substances to cope. Nate is arrested during homecoming when the police find EpiPens stolen from the nurse’s office on his motorcycle and is later released when Bronwyn bails him out. Crucially, Nate owns a pet lizard named Stan. We have to stan. 

Unanswered questions:  

Who actually shot and killed Jake?  

Episode 8 of Season 1 ends with Nate and Bronwyn seeing a flash and hearing a gun shot go off. They race over and see that Jake has been shot in the chest, though we never see who fired the gun. Janae, Addy, and Cooper are the only other people at the scene.  

Is Bronwyn getting into Yale? 

Last we checked in with the Yale-obsessed teen, she was trolling her parents with a reading of her entrance essay in which she discussed her involvement in the so-called “Murder Club.” Now, she is even more embedded in a murder case.  

Is Miss Avery coming back? 

Miss Avery, an eleventh-hour suspect in the killing of Simon, is terminated from Bayview when it is discovered that she drove Vanessa to get an abortion and paid for the procedure. Will the students rally behind her now that they see that she has been mischaracterized?  

Is there a romantic future for Janae and Maeve? 

The two shared a kiss after Janae shyly confessed to having confusing (and very off-brand) feelings for her.

How about Nate and Bronwyn? 

Bronwyn was discouraged from hanging out with Nate (and anyone from the “Murder Club,” for that matter) while the Simon investigation was underway, and getting involved in yet another murder does not bode well for the two spending quality time together. Will they have to stick to streaming Hitchcock from their separate bedrooms? 

Who is still blackmailing the teens and are they linked to Simon’s death? 

In the very last moments of S1, the teens all receive texts that read “SIMON SAYS DO AS I TELL YOU OR EVERYONE WILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID” 

Watch One of Us Is Lying now.