How Starstruck Makes Us Root Against The Traditional Happy Ending (Sorry, Tom!)

There's a fatal flaw in many Hallmark movies: One party in the love triangle is so innately unlikable, it makes you question the type of person who would choose to be with them. Or it would, if you didn't just accept that you need to think so little of that party that you're cool with him or her being dumped after a week-long work trip, hometown visit, or forced cross-country road trip. Season 3 of Max's rom-com Starstruck, which is best binged as a two-hour film, knows better. It gives Jessie (Rose Matafeo) and Tom (Nikesh Patel) new love interests that are worthy of them. And spoiler: When Jessie and Tom — who break up in the premiere's opening montage, then reconnect two years later at Jessie's best friend Kate's wedding after Tom is engaged — don't end up together in the end, we agree that they've made the right decision. Let's break it down.

The first three minutes of the premiere is an Up-quality montage of their relationship since cinema employee Jessie waded across a pond to tell famous actor Tom that she loves him in the Season 2 finale. They're living together in London, celebrating Christmas and her birthday with her friends in between games of phone tag while he's away on shoots, her hanging a Welcome Home! (Again! Once More!) sign up in their flat, and them fighting on the way to a black-tie event. The other key moment: Jessie blindsides Tom when she says, "Remind me never to have a kids" while they're playing with screaming children in the park. Eventually, they don't even speak when Tom walks in the door, and Jessie moves out. 

At Kate's wedding reception, Jessie and Tom find themselves looking for a lost child in the same area and realize they're both calling for her as if she's a dog. "Is there a difference?" Jessie asks. 

"Well, you actually wanted a dog, didn't you?" Tom responds. "I'm sorry, I don't know why I said that."

"Yeah, kinda weird," Jesse says, laughing it off. But you get the feeling they never had a serious conversation about it if Tom's taking that jab two years later.

They kiss twice in the season: First, when they're saying goodbye at the end of the reception, which feels like a response to Tom—who's always craved a sense of normalcy in his life—seeing Jessie flirt with new acquaintance Liam (Lorne MacFadyen) while he is there solo. His fiancée, French actress Clem (Constance Labbé), is in Budapest working. In Episode 3, after Jessie regrets telling new beau Liam that they should keep seeing other people and has a bad date with a boring bloke, she visits thespian Tom at a theater and they end up lip-locked backstage. Why did Jessie go there? Because knowing Tom still fancies her is good for her self-esteem, even if she takes this shot at him when he initially joins her in his dressing room: "It's kinda like old times.... Hanging around in a sad room, waiting for you."

Both Jessie and Tom are torn between two paths until the season finale, when they're at the hospital for pregnant Kate's delivery. Tom is pulled away by a fan to come meet her and her wife's new baby, which reminds him that he wants to have a wife and kids. And Jessie can't reach him on the phone to tell him that Kate has had a girl. The bottom line: He wants someone to have a family with, and Jessie, who's living in London far away from her loved ones in New Zealand, wants someone who'll always be there when she needs him. 

In the chapel, as they sit in front of the altar, they finally get to have a conversation without anger or resentment. They imagine their wedding, with Vin Diesel officiating. They both well up as Jessie gets to the part where Vin would ask if Tom takes her as his wife. "And I'd say, 'I think you're doing this with the wrong person,'" Jessie says. "And that we've always wanted different things. That's not gonna change. And even though we loved each other so much, I think we're pretty stupid to think it can't happen with someone else. Because it has, hasn't it?" It's so tender, and so moving that Jessie has emotionally matured to the point that she can articulate this. They're both sorry, and they both mean it when they say they're happy for each other. An older gentleman opens the door to find them hugging and apologizes for their loss. Laughter through tears is the perfect way to end their love story.    

Clem is likeable from the moment we meet her in Episode 2 at her engagement party and we realize she wasn't acting when she enjoyed the story of Kate and Ian's Paris honeymoon train debacle. She's genuinely interested in getting to know Kate and Ian, and asks Tom, "Why did we invite so many boring work people?" 

In Episode 3, she's excited to find Jessie at Tom's theater because she wants the exes to remain friends. She means that, too; her ex-husband is her best friend. Clem gains Jessie's respect when she tells Tom's agent Cath to "shut the f–k up" after she condescends to Jessie, and when she says she hates actors even though she is one. The real beauty of Clem is that she can see the absurdity of her and Tom's profession, but also respect the job enough to care when Tom says he's having a bad show. 

In Episode 5, when their flat is full of people in wedding planning mode, Clem is used to the chaos but also wants the people gone as quickly as possible. Tom asks to speak to her, and even though she's trying on her wedding dress, she walks out in it to talk with him. Presumably she'll want a new gown now, so she's not walking down the aisle in the dress she was wearing when Tom told her he'd kissed Jessie. But you know what, Clem might be mature enough to see that moment differently: It was the gown she was wearing when Tom stepped up to have the kind of difficult conversation needed to make a marriage work. 

As already mentioned, it makes total sense that Jessie, a woman living more than 11,000 miles from her family and with a small circle of friends, would want a partner who's in town most of the time. She finally has her aha! moment about Liam when he's the first person she thinks to call when Kate needs a ride to the hospital. He comes to Jessie's aid, even though they've broken up by this point, and waits hours in the parking lot for her. Jessie walking to his car in the rain in the season's final moment, reminiscent of her crossing that pond to Tom, isn't the only noteworthy parallel. Let's back up.

At Kate's wedding reception, Jessie first notices Liam when he interrupts her predictably bad toast by returning from the loo — a nod to Jessie and Tom meeting in a men's room on New Year's Eve in the series premiere. Jessie and Liam later chat near the bar, which she and Tom also did, and she finds out that Liam's not a frat bro like Ian ("f—k no," he says) and that he's an electrician (which she doesn't believe, just as she didn't believe Tom when he told her he was an actor). They chat again outside when she bums a cigarette and admits she's been hiding from her ex-boyfriend all night. Liam suggests she kiss someone else as a "palette cleanser," but he doesn't necessarily mean him — a callback to Jessie telling Tom he didn't have to kiss her at midnight and him saying it never crossed his mind. In both cases, Jessie puckers up, of course. Whereas she and Tom drunkenly made out in the back of a cab on their way to a presumed one night stand, she and Liam share a surprisingly swoonworthy kiss and exchange numbers. 

In Episode 2, Liam calls her for a date. While he's clever enough for her wordplay, Jessie learns he actually says what he means. He takes her bowling, and we know we like him the moment we see he sucks at it so badly that he asks to use the bumpers. It's a far cry from Jessie and Tom being overly competitive at bar trivia. Other good signs: Liam believes Jessie when she tells him Tom is her ex (if he thought she was joking, immediate dismissal!). He embraces her quirky side, like her insisting on using the most fun-colored balls even though her fingers are too small for the holes. After she gets another ball stuck on her hand, he retrieves the cooking spray (again) to help pry it off. When her new roommate Joe phones her to come home early because he's gotten himself trapped in a room while trying to assemble a bed, Liam not only goes with Jessie, he puts together the bed and other furniture. He also treats Joe with more kindness than Jessie typically does as the men bond over heartbreak: Joe is separated from his wife; Liam had a marriage proposal turned down 10 years ago.

That list bit probably explains why Liam lets Jessie dictate the speed of their relationship. After another great kiss at the end of that first date, when he's already asked to see her again, she tells him they're going to keep this casual. Cut to Episode 3 when Jessie shows up at Liam's door after that bad, boring date and meeting Clem after kissing Tom at the theater. Jessie tells Liam she wants them to be a couple, but he needs her to be the one to say "I like you" first. She does it. She's learning not to leave room for the misunderstandings that she and Tom had at the start of their relationship.

In Episode 4, Liam joins Jessie and her friends at a cabin. He's there to catch her when she stumbles on a nature walk — something her ex Ben didn't do when she tripped after his nan's funeral in Season 2, and something Tom doesn't do in the Season 3 finale when she trips acting out how she'd jog down the aisle (this time, Jessie catches herself). Whereas Tom once accidentally ingested pot brownies at a dinner party with her friends, Liam purposely avoids the wild mushrooms because he doesn't want to do anything embarrassing in front of her pals (of which he even likes caustic Shivani, because she speaks her mind). 

Liam's finest moment in that half-hour is the way he handles learning that Tom had told Ian that he still loves Jessie and that Jessie and Tom had kissed. Liam calmly leaves the room to let Jessie have it out with Ian and Kate, and then finds her outside. He's not angry or trying to make her feel guilty, he's just coming to tell her that he's going to leave. And then he asks if it's OK if they break up. He understands that she has a lot to sort out. When Jessie, who can't say no, cries over what a waste it seems, Liam hugs her. As we wrote when we proclaimed Matafeo the TVLine Performer of the Week, you start to wonder if Jessie ever let herself be that vulnerable with Tom when part of their relationship was her proving to herself she was strong enough to be in it. She's more comfortable with Liam in what should be this awkward moment than she is with Tom in any of their Season 3 scenes until the chapel.

"I'm a f—king idiot," Jessie says as Liam continues to hold her. "Yeah, maybe," Liam answers, being honest but also knowing it'll make her laugh. He sweetly kisses her neck a couple of times before walking away. Seeing how upset Jessie is in that moment, more than when she says her final goodbye to Tom, the choice is clear to us.