The Sex Lives Of College Girls Team Talks Nico's Absence, Essex's New Eye Candy And [Spoiler]'s Hookup

Warning: The following contains spoilers for the first two episodes of The Sex Lives of College Girls Season 2. Proceed at your own risk!

It's like the saying goes: When one eye-candy door closes, another eye-candy window opens. The Sex Lives of College Girls returned for Season 2 on Thursday sans Gavin Leatherwood's Nico — the actor announced his exit from the HBO Max comedy in March — but the premiere made up for his absence with the shirtless introduction of a new resident hottie, Jackson (played by Mitchell Slaggert).

Back on campus after the Thanksgiving break, Leighton announced to her suitmates that her brother wasn't returning to Essex College. When Kimberly turned over his frat's collection of tests to the honor board, they began an investigation, leading to Nico's expulsion. But don't worry, daddy made a donation to Cornell, so Nico has moved on to a new school. And then Bela spoke for many viewers when she replied, "I'm so sorry. Your brother was gorgeous, and I'm going to miss seeing his face and body around campus."

"Nico embodied so much of the spell that young Kimberly was under as she even applied to Essex," co-creator/showrunner Justin Noble tells TVLine. "He is this person who has access to everything and doesn't deal with the socio-economic strife that she deals with in her day-to-day life, and he was an objectively gorgeous human. So she just fell under the spell of this shiny object, but then he was pretty brutal to her."

Kimberly eventually learned last season that while they were having sex, Nico had a girlfriend who was studying abroad. "He lied to her a lot and cheated on her," Noble continues, "and I don't think we're super invested in telling the story of redeeming someone who cheated when there's a sea of other people who Kimberly could pursue."

Co-creator Mindy Kaling echoes the sentiment, noting that while "the character was so useful for us last season for so many reasons and unlocked a lot of storylines for a lot of our girls," it's important to stay authentic to the college experience, not to mention the show's title.

"The beauty of a show like this and a lot of shows about dating is we want to, like, keep them coming. We want to keep it interesting. You've waited a year, and now there's some new fun love interest," Kaling says, adding with a laugh, "This show is a show about male torsos."

On that note, Kimberly and her suitmates' jaws nearly hit the floor when they first spotted their new floormate Jackson, a climate refugee from Kansas whose school was destroyed by a tornado.

"Jackson's just a very different guy than Nico," who had a "Manhattan playboy vibe" and "gets whatever he wants," Kaling describes. The newcomer, meanwhile, is "an uncomplicated, nice guy," whom Kimberly "underestimates because she thinks that he's just like this hunk or whatever, and that's fun for us to see how they first see him and what he actually is like."

Read on for more scoop on what's in store for Kimberly, Leighton, Bela and Whitney in Season 2, then grade the premiere!

After coming out to the rest of her suitmates and seemingly the whole campus, judging by all the attention she was getting from Essex's queer popular, Leighton is "exploring being herself in a lot of ways," her portrayer Reneé Rapp previews. "You sort of just see her figure out who she is, publicly, which doesn't really change how she carries herself, but definitely is indicative of who she's coming."

Another thing Leighton will be exploring: Essex's many interested ladies. "I love Leighton's story through Season 2. It's one of my favorite things I've ever been involved in," Noble says. "There is just something intrinsically true [about] that making-up-for-lost-time feel. There's no judgment on it. It's just if you live a repressed life for your entire teenage years, as soon as that door is opened, you sort of embrace who you are and you try new things. And it's so exciting to see someone like Leighton, who's maybe a little more hesitant and judgmental, dive into something with two feet."

Bela's dream of a starting a female-only comedy magazine on campus will hit several speedbumps over the course of the season. "Bela was so idealistic about starting this new magazine, thought it would be so easy and would be kept warm by, like, the sisterhood of feminism or something," Kaling shares. "Then [she] was like, 'Oh, this is really hard,' and they're not going to be perfect, and it's not going to be this institutionalized great thing like The Cattalun."

To make things even more complicated, Bela hooked up with Cattalun co-editor Eric in the season premiere, even though the two are comedy rivals. "I think Bela's emotions hit her kind of like lightning, Noble says, "and I think in a given moment, she's kind of spurred [into] thinking, 'This is what I want. This is what I should do,' or, 'This is what will be good for me.' She kind of sprints in those directions without necessarily thinking of the ramifications. And that's what makes her so fun to watch, and why Amrit [Kaur] plays her so well, is she keeps us on our toes, because sometimes it seems like Bela isn't even sure if she knows what she wants."

Whitney's journey to figure out who she is in the off-season from soccer will lead her down some unexpected roads, academically, in Season 2 and also expose fault lines in her relationship with Canaan.

"I think she's more insecure than she thought she was. That crosses over into her relationships and her own identity," her portrayer Alyah Chanelle Scott shares. "I think she tied herself and her worth to soccer. As people do, you have that thing that is your thing. She kind of thought she would just ride on that thing forever and things would work out, and she [learns] that that is not the case and that there has to be more to her and maybe she didn't think that there was, but there is, and she sort of finds it and finds competence."

As for her romance with Canaan, Whitney's insecurities reared their green-eyed head in Episode 2, when she got jealous of Canaan's smart and pretty new coworker Zoe. Canaan later reassured Whitney that she's his "dream girl," but the pair's troubles are far from over.

Given the role that Kimberly played in Nico's expulsion and their relationship history, "I think that it's not nothing to her that he was expelled," he portrayer Pauline Chalamet says. But while Kimberly was "a little boy crazy in a way" last season, she now has bigger and more important priorities with the loss of her scholarship.

"Season 2 starts off on such a different note because the stakes are so much higher," Chalamet describes. "The opportunity of going to bang-bang with a hot guy is like down here, whereas like, 'Am I going to be able to stay at Essex?' is like really up here. So I think that for Kimberly, the love interests of Season 2 take a backseat."

Instead, the coed will turn her attention to trying to find a way to afford tuition, and despite several creative (and disturbing) ideas, there weren't any quick fixes for her financial problems in Season 2's first two episodes.

"I'm excited for people to be able to see how Kimberly addresses the very dire issue that she's faced with at the end of Season 1, with how she's going to be able to pay for school. I liked that storyline a lot, how it's explored," Chalamet says.