What Happened To Macy In The Tell Me Lies TV Series & Book?

This post contains spoilers for “Tell Me Lies.”

A lot of bad stuff happens on the Hulu original series “Tell Me Lies” — helmed by Meagan Oppenheimer and adapted from Carola Lovering’s hit novel — and one of the very worst things happens to Macy Campbell (Lily McInerny). A young woman who ends up caught in Stephen DeMarco’s (Jackson White) orbit (which is largely troubling because Stephen is terrible to women) and who has a connection to the series protagonist Lucy Albright (Grace Van Patten) in both the book and show, Macy meets a terrible and tragic fate, and in both narratives, it ends up creating huge consequences for everyone.

“Tell Me Lies,” which mostly focuses on the tortured relationship between Stephen and Lucy in the book but devotes plenty of time to the supporting characters on the Hulu show, is pretty dark, and the story of what happens to Macy is no exception. The bottom line here is that Macy dies in both the book and the TV show, but her character changes quite a bit in the adaptation process, shifting her backstory to streamline the narrative a bit. Here’s everything you need to know about Macy Peterson in both versions of “Tell Me Lies,” and the impact her sudden, shocking death has on the story both on the page and onscreen.

In both versions of “Tell Me Lies,” Macy dies in a tragic car accident … and the accident involves Stephen. So how is it different? Let’s start with Carola Lovering’s novel, where Lucy arrives at Baird College to begin her freshman year haunted by the fact that her childhood friend, Macy Petersen (her name is different in the show), died in a car accident (this is all made much more complicated by the fact that Lucy always pined after Macy’s older brother Gabe, who, in turn, slept with Lucy’s married mother CJ). After meeting Stephen and getting involved with him, Lucy eventually discovers something absolutely horrifying: Stephen also knew Macy and was secretly dating her. (Lucy ends up remembering, at a certain point in the book, that Macy revealed she was quietly seeing someone with a girlfriend but that he assured her the relationship was over.)

Lucy confronts Stephen about this and he lies to her, which she immediately clocks. “I know he’s lying the way you know it’s going to storm, the electrical charge in the air that precedes lightning,” Lovering’s book reads. “I know what he did to Macy — it’s an instinct in my gut so overpowering that it has to be Macy knowing, too; silently passing this knowledge to me from her side. There are no specific details I can grasp in my mind; there is no proof or evidence, only inexplicable yet incontestable certainty.”

While Macy’s last name is Campbell and she’s Lucy’s freshman roommate at Baird in the series, the end result in the same. Stephen is still in the car with Macy when they crash — a crash which kills Macy instantly — and in season 1 of “Tell Me Lies,” we actually see it happen. In a gutting scene, Stephen, who was driving the car (while drunk), moves Macy into the driver’s seat and flees the scene, making it look like Macy simply crashed on her own.

In the novel “Tell Me Lies,” Lucy finds out that Stephen was involved in Macy’s death … but because nobody at Baird knew Macy, the realization only affects her. On the show, because Macy is a student at Baird when she dies, the fallout is more widespread.

Lucy still finds out first when she finds a doodle in Macy’s belongings that she also saw on a piece of paper that belonged to Stephen, but he manages to convince her that, even though he was in the car, the accident was actually fellow student Drew’s (Benjamin Wadsworth) fault. (Stephen simply tells Lucy that Drew, who was also driving drunk that night, drove them off the road and doesn’t admit that he was also drunk and wildly distracted.) Furious, Lucy writes a public letter accusing Drew of killing Macy, devastating Drew … which is only compounded when Drew also dies of an accidental drug overdose at the end of season 2.

Aside from Drew, another person is deeply affected by Macy’s death: Stephen’s serious girlfriend Diana (Alicia Crowder). In the book, we don’t know a whole lot about Diana unless we hear it from Stephen, who, to say the least, is an unreliable narrator. In the show, we watch as Diana discovers nude photos of Macy on Stephen’s computer — as well as photos of the two of them — and quietly deletes them, protecting Stephen from facing any consequences regarding Macy. Still, she takes action and tells Stephen she failed her LSATs and is now disconnected from her rich, powerful father, which she knows will result in Stephen leaving her, and Crowder told Cosmopolitan that the photos of Macy directly inform this plan. “She knows after she sees the pictures of Macy that she has to get away from him. He’s dangerous,” Crowder said. Yet another understatement.

“Tell Me Lies” is streaming on Hulu now.

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