There are spoilers in this story. On Sunday night’s episode of “Insecure,” a lot happened. Issa and Molly were robbed by their college “buddy” after Kelli pretended to die. The breakup of Issa and Lawrence was, however, the most important story point in the season premiere. Lawrence picks Issa up from the airport in the last minutes of the show after she and the daughters (and Tiffany’s husband, Derek) visited their alma school, Stanford University. It’s clear that their vibes are very different. Their typically clever, energetic rhythm is missing from their banter. Instead, the discussion about what they’ll have for supper comes out as forced and difficult to watch.
Lawrence arrives at Issa’s house to drop her off, expecting to follow her inside. “I had an opportunity to think,” Issa tells her on-again, off-again ex, Lawrence, who is about to become a father to a child that isn’t hers. Her throat is constricted. She is unable to complete her thought. She doesn’t have to, though. The silence is deafening. Lawrence nods his head and regrettably responds, “Yea, I know,” after a pregnant pause.”And just like that, the dream of Issa and Lawrence having a happily ever after together is seemingly squashed. In a roundtable conversation ahead of the premiere, Rae discussed why it was important for the writers to end that chapter. She emphasized the importance of Issa and Molly’s relationship being the central relationship of “Insecure.”“That was the most important thing for us to acknowledge and repair. That’s why Issa and Lawrence make their decision at the end of the episode: “Issa needed to figure out where she was with Molly and restore that connection before she could make a decision about what was best for her,” Rae told HuffPost. “In the room where Issa would be, we had a lot of debates about that, and the idea that she just wants to go forward in her life is reflective of her decision at the end,” she continued. “Even in the second episode, you’ll see that we really wanted to move forward with these individuals and see where they ended up,” says the director. Issa and Lawrence reignited their flame in season four’s “Lowkey Happy” episode.
This last season focuses on how the characters mature and adapt to their new roles in life. Rae noted during the discussion that she intended to highlight that the program’s characters go on even after we’ve lost access to their fictional (but all-too-real) world. “I didn’t want to write a program where every character is the same. “That gives me more comedy vibes,” she explained. “So this journey, again, of figuring oneself out and evolving and evolving with intention was something that we set out for each character. If you look at season one and the end of season five and these characters are the same then we failed.”
