Here’s How ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ Said Goodbye to Reneé Rapp

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[This story contains spoilers from The Sex Lives of College Girls season 3, episode 2, “Lila by Lila.”]

The OG girl group in The Sex Lives of College Girls has officially lost a member.

Bela (Amrit Kaur), Kimberly (Pauline Chalamet) and Whitney (Alyah Chanelle Scott) said their goodbyes to Leighton ( Reneé Rapp ) in the second episode of the Max show’s third season, which aired Thursday. While fans always knew Rapp would be exiting the series this season , they just didn’t know exactly when or why — until now.

The second episode sees Leighton make the difficult decision to transfer from Essex College to MIT. While her girlfriend, Alicia (Midori Francis), is also in Boston, Leighton is ultimately transferring because of MIT’s math program, which will help her with her future career in finance.

“I don’t wanna go,” Rapp tells her friends at one point. “I can’t imagine not having you guys with me. It is terrifying. But I think this is what I have to do if I care about my future.”

But before Leighton officially hits the road with her father, she spends one final night partying at Essex with her besties, which includes a pregame in their old college dorm suite.

Co-showrunner Justin Noble also previously spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about how they decided on Rapp’s farewell storyline: “We kind of landed on this pretty quickly. I mean, when you start to think about ways that college students leave, you’re pretty limited. It’s not like Reneé’s character was gonna go on a hike, and then Kimberly’s like, ‘You mean the rocky, dangerous hike near the cliff?’ And then, she falls off or something. Really, the only thing that could happen was that she would transfer to a different school.”

“But as we started talking about it, Mindy and I were chatting, we’re like, ‘This is Leighton Murray we’re talking about. The only thing Leighton Murray does is win,’” she continued. “So there’s no world where she would leave other than to take a massive step towards what would be her best, most powerful life moving forward.”

News broke over the summer of 2023 that Rapp, who has gone on to launch a hit music career, would be … Read More