Never Have I Ever's Co-Creator Revealed Whether Paxton Will Be In Season 4
With Paxton going off to college, is Darren Barnet done with the show?
Four seasons really is the perfect run for a high school show. But while it totally makes sense for Never Have I Ever to end with its upcoming fourth season, that doesn’t mean saying goodbye to Devi and her chaotic dating life is going to be any easier. Even worse, the final moments of Season 3 seemed to tease that one of the show’s beloved main characters may not be part of the final season at all. After finishing the penultimate season, fans were left wondering if Paxton Hall-Yoshida will be in Never Have I Ever Season 4, or if that graduation scene was Darren Barnet’s farewell to the character. Thankfully, fans don’t have to wait until the final season drops to get an answer, because co-creator Lang Fisher revealed Paxton’s future.
Spoiler alert: This post contains spoilers from the Never Have I Ever Season 3 finale. The ending of Season 3 saw both Devi and Paxton facing similar life-changing decisions. But while Devi ultimately decided to turn down the invitation to attend an academically advanced boarding school away from her friends and family for her senior year, Paxton made the choice to embark on a new chapter in his life by striking out on his own at last. Much to his bestie Trent’s despair, Paxton enrolled at Arizona State University for college, meaning he’ll be far from Sherman Oaks High School in the upcoming fourth and final season of Never Have I Ever. Adding to the theories that Paxton may be done with the show was his graduation speech, which showed just how much he’s grown throughout high school, which felt like a perfect goodbye to the character.
But thankfully, Paxton fans don’t have to bid him farewell just yet. Never Have I Ever co-creator Lang Fisher confirmed Darren Barnet will return as Paxton in the final season during an Aug. 13 interview with Deadline. “I want you to know Paxton Hall-Yoshida is in Season 4,” Lang said, before going on to confirm his role in the season won’t be diminished at all. “He’s in it as much as in Season 3, so the love triangle is not over.”
Although Season 3 ended with Devi showing up in Ben’s bedroom, seemingly hinting she was finally choosing him, Fisher’s confirmation that the Devi-Ben-Paxton love triangle will still be at the core of the final season definitely complicates that moment. “The love triangle is the skeleton of the show and you can’t take it away for the final season.”
Fisher also explained how Devi and Paxton’s relationship will be significantly different in the upcoming fourth season. After experiencing the highs and lows of being Paxton’s girlfriend, Devi was finally able to take him off the pedestal she’d viewed him on and see him as just another guy at the end of the season. “We wanted the end of the season to show that now she sees them as peers, equals,” Fisher said. “So I think we can say goodbye to Paxton as her dream guy and in Season 4, we’ll see Paxton as a person who is at the same level as her.”
It’s still unclear just how the final season is going to work around the distance between Paxton and the rest of the characters to still feature him heavily, but at least the Paxton stans can rest assured that he’ll continue to be a central part of the series up until its very end. The fourth and final season of Never Have I Ever will premiere on Netflix sometime in 2023.
