Be careful! This text incorporates spoilers for “Sex Education” seasons three and 4.

Going into “Sex Education” season 4, I undoubtedly thought Ruby (Mimi Keene) and Otis (Asa Butterfield) would find yourself collectively. Maeve (Emma Mackey) and Otis had been all the time fallacious for one another — his obsession along with her all the time felt a bit too near idealization (much like Ken’s shallow love for Barbie within the “Barbie” film, mockingly), and their chemistry was additionally by no means truly so nice; it all the time felt to me like they had been too completely different from one another to actually work, and the scenes the place they lastly did get collectively simply felt awkward to observe.

In the meantime, Ruby and Otis’s Relationship was one of many sweetest components of season three. He appeared to assist her calm down and open up, whereas she helped him get himself collectively and try for greatness. They simply appeared to work, and like many different followers, my coronary heart broke when Otis rejected Ruby the minute Maeve turned an possibility.

I undoubtedly thought season 4 would see Otis understand that Ruby was all the time proper for him, and it did really feel just like the present missed a chance to permit them to discover their relationship extra deeply. Nevertheless, because of season 4’s writing, it could have been a horrible thought for the pair to finish up collectively. As a result of, in the end, Ruby deserves higher.

All through all of season 4, Otis treats Ruby poorly and reveals her that he is not prepared for a relationship along with her. He proves that he is keen to just accept all her affords to assist him however continues to drop her and even ghosts her afterward till he wants her once more. He additionally reveals her that he is keen to behave inappropriately along with her regardless of being in a relationship. (I am sorry, however falling asleep in your ex’s mattress when you’re in a relationship simply is not an important look, even whether it is an accident.)

Ruby could also be useless and a little bit of a bully, and she or he undoubtedly says some merciless issues to Otis and others alongside the best way. Nonetheless, nobody deserves the form of therapy Otis offers to her all through the season. If she’d been keen to this point him even after he prioritized Maeve whereas treating Ruby like she had no worth exterior of serving to him win his ego-driven election, that will have set a fairly poisonous tone for his or her relationship. And even when Otis hadn’t been so impolite to her, he’d nonetheless want time to heal from his years-long infatuation with Maeve earlier than leaping into one thing with Ruby. Briefly, it was by no means actually the suitable time for them to be collectively.

Having been in a not-so-great relationship of my very own with somebody who did not deal with me with as a lot worth as I deserved, I can undoubtedly say one of many key items of courting recommendation I picked up whereas making an attempt to be taught from it was this: when individuals present you who they’re, consider them. Regardless of what Hollywood rom-coms would have us suppose, we will not count on somebody to miraculously step up and alter their methods inside a relationship, particularly if purple flags are seen from the beginning.

I am not making an attempt to say Otis is an irredeemable villain or that his habits is abusive, however he is undoubtedly a jerk to Ruby. It is easy to neglect that because of his self-deprecating, nice-guy persona, however that makes his cruelty much more insidious in some methods — it permits him to get away with dangerous habits extra simply. Finally, regardless of what may have been, there are greater than sufficient causes to have a good time the truth that Ruby turns him down within the present’s final scene.

Nonetheless, it is potential that perhaps after they each mature a bit, they may reconnect. (They’re each literal youngsters, in any case, which is typically straightforward to neglect because of the actors’ actual ages.) Perhaps Otis spends a while therapeutic after Maeve and learns to deal with individuals in his life higher. Perhaps Ruby works on a few of her shallowness points that make her act so imply on a regular basis (however which merely conceal unbelievable vulnerability) and finds some real associates and self-love. Perhaps a number of years down the road, they meet someplace on the road and strike up a dialog. Or perhaps Ruby simply learns to thrive on her personal, which — as a lot as I perceive all of the followers who nonetheless ship them — nonetheless form of looks like the higher option to me.