Note: This story contains spoilers from “Ginny & Georgia” Season 3, Episode 10.
Despite Antonia Gentry’s Ginny and Felix Mallard’s Marcus breaking up at the end of “Ginny & Georgia” Season 2, their flame continues in Season 3. But what Mallard calls a “massive wedge” stands in between the teens by the end of the season.
While Ginny confides in Marcus about her mother’s murder trial and her abortion, Season 3 sees Marcus hiding a drinking problem that raises eyebrows from both his sister, Maxine (Sara Waisglass), as well as Georgia (Brianne Howey) when she spots a dozen empty bottles in his art studio and causes him to “burn bridges” all season, according to Mallard.
“He’s turning to a coping mechanism that I think initially helps him and gives him better confidence, and allows him to show up and be the person that he wants to be,” Mallard told TheWrap. “As he slowly loses a grip on that, and it gets on top of him, then we see those support systems around him slowly get eroded further and further away.”
Mallard noted that Marcus’ drinking problem comes from “self-loathing.” “It comes from him not thinking that he deserves love and that he’s going to be damaging to those around him.”
While series creator Sarah Lampert sees Ginny and Marcus’ relationship as having a “boy next door fun teen element,” she pointed to the undercurrent of both characters struggling with their mental health in different ways, and being a safe space for each other to do that. “What we see in Season 2 with Marcus … he’s really telling Ginny, ‘I don’t have the bandwidth to be in a relationship right now … so I don’t think it’s fair to you to be with me — I’m not OK,’” Lampert said.
Ginny is left in the dark about Marcus’ drinking until the Season 3 finale, when she finds him extremely intoxicated — to the point of wetting the bed — after Maxine dragged him home from a party.
“I think she really sees a glimpse of what he’s actually going through, and the journey he has in front of him,” Lampert said. “We see on Ginny’s face a little bit of shock and fear … I think she finally realizes, ‘Marcus might not be wrong.’”
By the time we see Marcus again he’s in the car with his mother, Ellen (Jennifer Robertson), who seems to finally be accepting that Marcus needs help, and we can assume Marcus is headed to a facility to get formal treatment for his alcoholism. “We leave him still in a state of denial, probably very hungover, but also just not wanting to address how self destructive and violent he has become,” Mallard said.
While Mallard notes the drinking creates a “huge wedge” between Marcus and Ginny, Ginny sends him off with a poem that Mallard describes as saying “I’ll always love you; I’ll always be there for you [and] I understand that you’re dealing with this stuff.”
“I think for Marcus to go and do the work and to come back at it with with a sense of self-love, and hopefully be able to reciprocate that love back to Ginny, hopefully they can reconcile,” Mallard said.
“They’re so young, and … they have so much to learn from and grow into that until they grow into the people that they need to be, that’s when I want to see them together,” Gentry said. “I love them both together and separately, but the protective actor in me, I want them to be in their best mental states as they can be, before they come together as a couple.”
“Ginny & Georgia” Season 3 is now streaming on Netflix.
