[Editor's note: The following contains spoilers through the Season 3 finale of Sex Education.]Aimee Lou Wood was a showstopper in Sex Education Season 2. With such an exceptional ensemble, there’s a slew of unforgettable character arcs in the series, but Aimee’s experience with sexual assault and then trying to navigate the challenges of processing what she’s been through was especially powerful. So powerful in fact that the performance won her the BAFTA for Best Female Comedy Performance.
The thing is though, coming to terms with such trauma isn’t something you solve and move on from. Yes, Maeve (Emma Mackey), Olivia (Simone Ashley), Ola (Patricia Allison), Lily (Tanya Reynolds) and Viv (Chinenye Ezeudu) do help Aimee take a big step forward in that respect in Season 2, Episode 7, but Aimee’s still got quite a bit of growing to do when it comes to her understanding of what happened that day and also how other experiences and personality traits are all wrapped up in her search for clarity and personal growth.
Sex Education Season 3 spends a good deal of time on Aimee’s tendency to be a people pleaser. She doesn’t want to break up with Steve (Chris Jenks) because she doesn’t want to hurt him and she’s also utterly crushed by the idea that Maeve could be mad at her, all while she's still trying to fully accept the fact that what happened on the bus was not her fault. It’s a situation where one form of personal growth or one piece of advice won’t do the trick. It’s all connected.
When I brought that up on Collider Ladies Night, Wood noted, “I think that is so true to life as well.” She added, “It’s almost like once something’s been pointed out to you, once something’s been named, you then just see it everywhere.” Wood also took a moment to revisit where Aimee’s head was at at the end of Season 2 and discuss why the chain of events in Season 3 have contributed to her continuing to change for the better:
“Aimee in her brain, by the end of Season 2, she was starting to kind of think, ‘You know what? It wasn’t my fault. What happened to me wasn’t my fault. It was his fault,’ and the girls help her with that and there’s that, but she hadn’t quite properly internalized it. She hadn’t quite truly in her bones believed it and accepted that it was not her fault and I think that actually, as you say, it takes a lot of different things happening to put her in a place where she is open and vulnerable enough for when Jean says, ‘It was not your fault,’ it actually permeates and it actually goes in. For the first time, it really goes in. And I think that could only happen because of the argument with Maeve, and I think then that conversation with Jean that then leads on to being with Maureen, and that’s the only reason why she does have to break up with Steve. All of these things, they just kind of feed into each other.”
Even though fighting with Maeve is mighty painful for Aimee who only wants the best for her closest friend, Wood did insist that that argument was necessary for Aimee to take her next steps:
“This is where the biggest difference between me and her is, that I live in my head and overthinking everything whereas Aimee is very good at being present, but I think it takes her going into that pain in that argument with Maeve. The scariest thing in the world for Aimee is that she’s not pleased someone and actually, she’s confronted with, ‘No Aimee, you’ve pissed me off and that has annoyed me,’ which is her biggest fear would be to hear Maeve say that. And then another huge fear would be to hear, ‘You need to break up with your boyfriend because you’re people pleasing and that’s the only reason why you’re with him.’ It’s like, all of these things that she’s known, she knows in her brain, but it hasn’t ever been named and then someone says it and it’s like everything just opens up and it’s painful, but it is also so necessary because it means that then when she goes into that therapy session, she is more open and she’s ready to truly, truly, truly hear that it wasn’t her fault and I think that’s the real moment for her.”
Looking for even more on Sex Education from Wood? She walked us through her entire journey working on the Netflix series thus far on Collider Ladies Night. You can listen to the full, uncut conversation in podcast form below: