‘Ginny & Georgia’ EP Reveals Hopeful Season 3 Plans & Explains Georgia’s Feelings For Joe (Exclusive)

‘Ginny & Georgia’ showrunner Debra J Fisher talks the ‘challenges and complications’ that would come in a potential season 3.

Ginny & Georgia season 2 ended with one heck of a twist. Georgia Miller finally got her fairytale ending, only to be arrested at her wedding for Tom Fuller’s death. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with showrunner/writer/executive producer Debra J. Fisher about what season 3 would have in store for fans.

“We’re going to have a lot more twists and turns in success of a season 3. We want it to look very grim, and I think we did a really great job,” Debra said. “We really wanted to mirror the end of season 1 with Ginny and Austin driving away on Marcus’s motorcycle cinematically mirroring the very end of season 2 when Georgia has been whisked away from a cop car and Austin’s chasing her. It’s beautiful the way they were shot.”

There will be plenty for everyone to deal with if the hit Netflix series is renewed for season 3. In the second season, Austin’s dad and Georgia’s ex Gil came back into the picture. During an intense fight, Austin actually shot Gil to protect his mother. Could Austin end up showing shades of his father? Debra weighed in about the aftermath of that moment.

“Obviously, there will be a lot of challenges and complications to that moment in success of a season 3 that we will get into with the fallout of that,” Debra said. “This is a show that deals a lot with mental health. We’ve seen a lot of it with Ginny. We see a lot of it with Marcus and other characters in various ways this season. We saw Austin stab Zach with the pencil in season 1. We know that the teachers at school at times are worried about Austin. In success of a season 3, we will dive deeper into all of this.”

Speaking of mental health, the eighth episode of season 2 was a moving and important exploration of Marcus’ depression. Debra opened up about the origins of this crucial episode.

“In the show, we always want to show true, grounded representations of teenagers and mental health for the younger audience and for the older,” Debra told HollywoodLife. “With Felix [Mallard], it was talked about and really formed in the room for season 2 to do a Marcus-centric episode where we would break through that POV and hear his voiceover and not Ginny or Georgia’s. I think it’s something that we take very, very seriously. It’s something that we’ve done with Ginny’s self-harm, and we got to go into Marcus a little bit deeper.”

The Ginny & Georgia team worked with a psychologist, Dr. Taji Huang, and Mental Health America to help tell stories within the show in an authentic way. “Ginny & Georgia isn’t an issue of the week show. We’re able to really show these issues and these arcs and have them stretch out season-long,” Debra continued. “We talked a little bit about Marcus in season 1. He was depressed with his best friend dying of cancer. So this season, we really were able to develop deeper into that and to have the reason that he and Ginny can’t be together anymore because he’s really struggling with his depression. We just want to show this really authentic, nuanced version of this and hope it really resonates.”

As for future episodes centered around other characters, Debra revealed that the writing team is “certainly open to it, but right now that was our big departure in wanting to see these different POVs. We call them our sister scenes. It was our way of just showing more layered nuances to these other characters, especially with Joe, and I can’t wait for that.”

In season 2, Georgia finally found out about Ginny’s self-harm in one of the show’s most heartbreaking scenes. Georgia broke down in tears when Ginny showed her scars, with the audience only seeing Georgia’s reaction to them. “We didn’t need to see her scars again,” Debra stated. “We saw them in season 1, and we just needed to see the reaction on Georgia’s face. That told us everything.”

While Georgia did marry Paul at the end of season 2, there’s no denying that there is serious chemistry between Georgia and Joe. Debra explained what we’re seeing between Georgia and Joe, who do have a storied history together.

“Georgia thinks of him as a very good friend. She feels very strongly for Joe, but I think we’ve seen enough where Joe really does have feelings for Georgia,” Debra said. “But right now, where Georgia is in her life and I’ll just speak to this because we’re talking about the Marcus-centric episode… Georgia really does love Paul, and Paul really does love Georgia. This is the life in Wellsbury that she always wanted. When she met Joe, that was at a time when she was looking for something and always thought about that. He really did get her to Wellsbury. Joe where he is right now… Georgia would eat him alive. We heard Cynthia say that, and that’s true right at that moment. But I will say, having a showed young Joe in that flashback, that Joe and Georgia are more alike than people realize, and that’s what we wanted to illustrate. So in the future, if things change, they’re more possibly suited for each other than people would know.”

Over the course of her incredible career, Debra has worked on hit shows like The O.C., the original Charmed, and more. She acknowledged that teen shows “really have evolved” since the early 2000s. For Debra, wanting people to “feel that they’re represented, showing different perspectives, and different point of view is something that is very important to me. So writing about mental health, anxiety, depression, self-harm, writing about a Deaf family, eating disorders, it’s very realistic and very grounded. I feel very honored, that we’re given the opportunity to really tell these stories because I think it’s so, so important.” Ginny & Georgia season 2 is now streaming on Netflix.