What Happened Leading Up to Season 3?

Season 1 of Dead to Me introduced us to Jen Harding (Christina Applegate) whose husband Ted was killed in a hit-and-run while jogging before the season opened. At a grief support group, Jen met the quirky, but lovable Judy Hale (Linda Cardellini), the women connected, and Judy moved into the Hardings’ guest house. Judy quickly bonded with Jen’s sons Charlie (Sam McCarthy), and her younger son Henry (Luke Roessler), and began to help the family heal. After Jen broke down one night and blamed herself for Ted’s death, Judy confessed that she and her ex-fiancé Steve (James Marsden) were in the car that hit Ted, and they fled the scene rather than stopping to help. Drunk and distraught after being kicked out, Judy was walking into oncoming traffic when she received a call from Jen asking her to come home, where Steve was floating face down in the pool.

Season 2 starts off the very next morning with Jen and Judy agreeing not to go to the cops, and to continue acting as if Steve is alive and well, not currently stuffed in Jen’s freezer. At first, Jen claims that Steve attacked her, and she had no choice but to kill him, but it is slowly revealed to us — and eventually, Judy — that Jen actually killed him in a fit of rage after Steve made a crack about her husband being miserable with her and calling her “a mean fucking bitch.”

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After an infestation of rats that are potentially eating Steve’s frozen corpse, they try to come up with an alternate plan for the body. Jen is caught researching body disposal by her son’s friend Shandy (Adora Soleil Bricher) who was previously ousted as a sociopath when she took a souvenir from Ted’s body and also “accidentally” killed Henry’s dad-bird. She suggests hiding a body in Angeles National Forest, and after Jen sees a dissolved rat, the power goes out, and Steve starts to defrost, they decide it’s their only option.

Getting Away With Murder

One of the main obstacles they face in getting away with murder is Steve’s semi-identical twin brother Ben, who shows up at Jen’s house looking for Steve who is “missing.” He breaks the news to Jen that the FBI is also looking for Steve, forcing Judy to reveal that she turned Steve in to Detective Ana Perez (Diana Maria Riva) for his involvement in money laundering, and tax fraud and has been cooperating with the FBI.

Next up is Jen’s awkward neighbor Karen (Suzy Nakamura) whose Mossad-level security system recorded Steve entering the backyard on the night of the murder. She also mistakes Ben for Steve and asks him about “being here the other night,” which Jen deflects by claiming to have been sleeping with a man named Timothy. Ben turns out to be a far better man than his brother, and he and Jen drink wine and talk, the two bond over their emotional and literal scars, and he asks her to find him a short-term rental, so he can get out of his parents’ house.

Judy makes a connection with the daughter of a new resident, Michelle (Natalie Morales), whose feelings about her mother refusing to move on after her father’s death speak to the guilt Judy is feeling over Steve. Michelle catches Judy yelling at herself in the bathroom and takes her to the restaurant where she is the chef, and the two begin a relationship. Judy tells her more about her past and Michelle confesses that she still lives with her ex-girlfriend — who happens to be Detective Perez. When she learns about this, Jen forces Judy to break up with her.

Endless Complications

Jen’s eldest son Charlie, is obsessed with getting a car and visits the family storage locker and, believing that Steve’s car is a present for him takes it for a drive with his girlfriend Parker (Sadie Stanley). He calls his mom when it runs out of gas on the side of the road, and after Judy takes the kids home, Jen douses the car in fuel and uses a lit cigarette to light it up. She then discovers Parker’s Instagram posts, which show them in the car, with the car’s license plate legible, and pays her $1,000 to take them down.

Detective Perez offers former detective (and Judy’s ex) Nick Prager (Brandon Scott) a job working with her. He declines because of the racist and misogynist Chief of Police Hastings (Jere Burns), but hands over everything he has uncovered regarding the hit-and-run, Judy, and Steve. He does rejoin the force, however, finds Steve’s burned-out car, and answers calls on the “Steve Wood Tip Line.”

Jen’s relationship with both of her kids slowly improves over the season. Concerned that she may be taken away to prison at any point, she makes plans for her children’s care if the worst happens. She initially considers Ted’s pill-popping mother, Lorna (Valerie Mahaffey), but eventually settles on Judy.

When the cops find Steve’s car, Ben is rattled, which leads Jen to offer to organize a vigil. Steve and Ben’s mom Eileen (Frances Conroy) seems to like Jen, but continues to openly dislike Judy. During the vigil, Ben gives Jen his jacket and the two share a kiss, which Judy sees. Charlie attends the vigil and after watching a slideshow of Steve, realizes that it was his car he stole. When he confronts his mom and Judy, they lie and say that Steve gave Jen the car as an apology for backing out of the real estate deal, and then when it wouldn’t start, she left it on the side of the road where it got torched.

After the vigil, Ben tells Jen that he was blackout drunk (after being sober for a year), implying he doesn’t remember their kiss. He then asks Jen to help sell his parent’s house, which she agrees to when she finds out it is worth over $10 million. He later shows up at her house and confesses that he does remember, has wanted to kiss her for some time, and they sleep together. Jen freaks out in the morning and the two of them “dance it out.”

Charlie and Jen come home to find I KNOW WHAT YOU DID spray-painted on their garage door. Jen uses this opportunity to get Karen’s husband Jeff (Marc Evan Jackson) to delete the street camera footage for the last month. When she views the footage, she sees that it was Parker, Charlie’s ex, who also calls the tip line and shows Nick the photos of the two of them in Steve’s car.

Judy attempts to call her mother Eleanor (Katey Sagal) but is told she is in prison. She goes to visit her, and it is revealed that Judy testified against her own mother when she was a child, which her mom tries to leverage into a lawyer for her upcoming parole hearing. Judy finally learns to say no when her mom blames her for becoming addicted to drugs due to Judy’s crying as a baby.

Taking the Fall

Judy and Detective Perez put aside their differences for a moment when Michelle’s mother, Flo (Renee Victor), has a stroke and goes on life support. Judy brings Perez a drawing of Flo and asks for help finding her paintings. Along with Nick, Perez confronts Judy with pictures of Charlie and Parker in Steve’s car, and they imply that Charlie killed Steve. When Judy tells this to Jen, she asks that Jen let her take the blame for Steve, and in a mirror image of the moment from Season 1, Jen finally confesses to the truth about that night. That Steve told her Ted jumped in front of their car to get away from her, and she got angry and killed him while he was walking away. When Judy tries to comfort her, Jen points out that Judy will love anyone: her, Steve, and her “shitty, fucking asshole mother.”

Jen writes her sons and Judy letters, puts the murder weapon (a wooden bird) in the safe, leaves the emergency binder and goes to Detective Perez’s house, and confesses to Steve’s murder. She leads Perez into the woods, where she tells her everything that happened the night Steve died. On the way back from the woods, when they are unable to find the body, the two bond over their dead moms (breast cancer and murder, respectively). Perez tells Jen she wants “to be a person” and tells her to go home and tell her kids she loves them. Jen returns to grief therapy and talks about her mom’s battle with breast cancer, and realizes that her anger at her mother for dying is the root of her anger at herself and the world.

Charlie gives Judy the bag of stuff from Steve’s car, which contains a voice recorder. Judy takes it to Nick, asking him to “play it somewhere private where the chief won’t be able to hear himself.” As a result, Hastings goes to Federal Prison and as a thank-you, Perez brings Judy her paintings, which are filled with cash. Jen and Judy use the cash to buy out their house from Ted’s mom, and Jen quits her job, giving the Wood Estate to Lorna.

In the final moments, Ben receives the news that Steve’s body has been found and goes out for “ice cream.” Jen and Judy are driving home with a new car for Charlie (who, while looking for marijuana, finds the letters Jen wrote before confessing to murder) and are T-Boned by a drunk Ben who drives away.

If it’s anything like the previous season, that’s where Dead to Me Season 3 will start off, right in the thick of the action.

Dead to Me Season 3 is streaming on Netflix, starting November 17.