This article discusses the full third season of Nobody Wants This.

Joanne and Noah are going to make it. Two seasons of so many highs and lows, will-theys and won’t-theys, makeups and breakups had gotten a bit repetitive. So it comes as a relief that Season 3 of the Netflix romantic comedy Nobody Wants This all but guarantees us Kristen Bell’s formerly secular sex podcaster and Adam Brody’s hot rabbi will live happily ever after. With Joanne taking conversion classes, the couple checks off commitment milestones in quick succession: cohabitation, then engagement, and, in the finale, an unplanned exchange of wedding vows after the bride emerges, officially Jewish, from an ocean mikvah. It’s a lovely, duly earned culmination of their interfaith courtship. But it raises the question of where the show can go from here. 

The season’s other main storyline—and sole substantive source of conflict—suggests that creator Erin Foster and her co-showrunners, Jenni Konner and Bruce Eric Kaplan, are staking its future on the relationship between Joanne’s erratic, underachieving sister, Morgan (Justine Lupe), and Noah’s eccentric, underachieving brother, Sasha (Timothy Simons). Morgan is fresh off her latest ill-advised romance, an ethically dubious relationship with her ex-therapist (Arian Moayed) that imploded at their engagement party. Sasha is separating from his wife, Jackie Tohn’s Esther. (This is her choice, probably because writers remain sensitive following complaints about the portrayal of Jewish women in the first season and wanted to avoid making hot, blonde Morgan the cause of the split.) And so the best buddies, who’ve been flirting since Season 1, are finally single at the same time. But is it actually a good idea for the show to bring them together, as it briefly does in the second half of this season? I’m of two minds about that.

What the Morgan-Sasha romance has going for it is the unlikely, off-kilter yet undeniable chemistry between Lupe and Simons, which has somehow surpassed even the electric connection of Bell and Brody’s soulmates. (Let’s take a second to appreciate the versatility of Simons, whose other great performance was as Veep’s toxic West Wing staffer Jonah, a character who would never be attractive to anyone.) Morgan is a brash, blunt, benignly self-absorbed icon in her own mind who also, in her darker moments, fears she’ll never get her life together. Awkward, self-deprecating Sasha is genuinely dazzled by her. For a guy who sacrificed his youth to marriage and fatherhood, she represents all the fun he never got to have. And because they’ve never seemed like viable partners for each other, they have a better rapport than either could manage on a date with someone who’s more their type. “Act the way you act with me,” Morgan advises Sasha as he apprehensively delves into the apps. “You should pretend that you’re talking to me every time you talk to anyone, because I bring out the most charming side of you.” She’s conceited, as usual, but she also happens to be right.

The most refreshing aspect of their friendship is their mutual honesty. So it was clever of Foster, Konner, and Kaplan to make that the driver of their storyline this season. When Sasha fills in for Joanne on the sisters’ podcast, his banter with Morgan is, of course, gold. He explains how he has used the Let Them theory to make peace with professional setbacks—then she calls B.S., and goes on to improvise her own Make Them theory, a pure expression of her aggressive approach to getting what she wants. The episode goes viral. Morgan starts to see a future for herself as a self-help author. Sasha is there to encourage her to dig deeper when her early attempts at writing fall flat. And she can be counted on to inform him that his “lucky shirt” is not exactly the chick magnet he imagines it to be. Yet they also frequently build each other up. 

Each faces more disappointment as the season goes on. Morgan blows a meeting with a publisher (Poorna Jagannathan, in her third of four high-profile TV role this year. Hey, I’m not mad about it). Sasha tries to force a connection with a woman who gets confused when he mentions the social contract. So they’re both in a tender place when Morgan impulsively invites him to accompany her to New York, where she’s been booked to talk Make Them with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. The season’s seventh episode is almost entirely devoted to the trip. That it is such a pleasure to, er, watch what happens between them is a testament to the power of great characters to reinvigorate old genre tropes. From the shopping montage where Sasha buys Morgan a dress, Pretty Woman style, to her earnest speech as they walk the High Line, to the false starts that end with them in bed, familiar rom-com beats feel exciting because of the affection we have for these two. Morgan’s epiphany that, “When I was younger, I always fell for people I wanted to be seen with. And now I think I just wanna be with someone who sees me,” could be a Carrie Bradshaw koan. It hits, though, because it’s so true to her character arc.

But what’s the endgame for Sasha and Morgan? Presumably in order to save some material for Season 4, Nobody Wants This pulls them apart just hours after their hookup. Sasha awakens to a note that says Morgan has hopped on an earlier flight home. There, she crashes out in bed, resigned to the impossibility of a long-term relationship with her future brother-in-law. When it dawns on Joanne that her sister is serious about Sasha, she gives Morgan her blessing. Yet by the time Morgan tracks him down and delivers another big monologue (“I don’t wanna half-ass you”), he’s decided he can’t endure her avoidance so soon after Esther left him. Then he sleeps with Esther, who’s dating a rich guy a full generation her senior (Steven Weber), laying the groundwork for an absolutely disastrous encounter between Joanne’s and Noah’s families at the mikvah.  

No end to the season could have been more apt than Joanne and Noah pledging their eternal love while, in a gorgeous beachfront rental just steps away, their parents and siblings tear each other apart. And, again, the scenes Sasha and Morgan share have become some of the most exhilarating of the show. But Nobody Wants This has always been better with isolated situations and screwball dialogue than it is with big-picture plot. With that in mind, I worry it’s written itself into another corner with this relationship. A Season 4 love triangle, with Sasha forced to choose between Esther and Morgan, could only lead back to the same old referendum on Jewish women. If the two Jewish brothers did both end up with the two gentile sisters, that would make its own, somewhat discouraging statement on the latter issue. 

Even if you can get past those implications, it’s hard to imagine Morgan and Sasha’s long-term romance arc going anywhere worthwhile, narratively speaking. We’ve already seen the culture clash, the parental pushback, the conversion drama. Are we going to do the same thing all over again, with the same abrasive mother-in-law, brief breakups, and tearful reunions—except with lower stakes because Sasha isn’t a rabbi? I’m not saying nobody wants this. I just need to be convinced. 

Nebraska native Sydney Loofe was looking for love, or at least for some fun, while scrolling through Tinder back in 2017. But the resulting date quickly went wrong, and she never made it back home. The new three-part Hulu true crime docuseries Swipe Right on the Devil tells the harrowing tale behind Loofe’s 2017 murder, how she was lured into a satanic BDSM ritual for so-called witchcraft, and how her murder led to authorities uncovering a years-long scheme run by two cult leaders. It tells the story, in part, through interviews with surviving women who escaped the cult weeks prior to her murder. 

The docuseries marks the first time the Loofe clan is sharing their side of the story, along with Nebraska investigators and an FBI agent assigned to the case. Loofe’s mother Susie Loofe wrote on Facebook that her family had been contacted by at least 100 production companies looking to make a documentary about the murder before putting their trust in Imagine Documentaries.

Swipe Right on the Devil director and executive producer Brian Biegel tells TIME that Loofe’s “mysterious disappearance” quickly became a far more “complex [story] than the headlines suggested.” Biegel, who previously worked with FBI officers while helming the ESPN 30for30 documentary The Counterfeiter, spent approximately three years immersing himself in the Loofe case. The experience forever changed his views on the occult: “As a documentary filmmaker, I'm naturally skeptical and always looking for evidence, but I also believe there are aspects of the human experience we don't fully understand,” he says. He spent years talking with the man convicted of Loofe’s murder and hearing firsthand from the women he drew into his orbit. “I wouldn't say this experience made me a believer in the supernatural, but it did make me more open-minded about what might exist beyond the physical world.” 

A Meet-cute gone awry 

Loofe, a 24-year-old hardware store clerk at Menard's in Lincoln, Neb., first connected on Tinder with a woman she believed to be named Audrey. Loofe went on two dates with “Audrey.” But she never came home from the second one, on Nov. 15, 2017. When she didn’t show up for work the next day, Loofe’s coworkers called the police to do a wellness check at her home; the officers found her car in the driveway and her purse still in her apartment. Loofe was reported missing.

It was then that one of Loofe’s friends took matters into their own hands: They created a fake Tinder profile to find Audrey, who seemed to be the last person Loofe had made contact with. Loofe’s friend matched with Audrey and gave her details to investigators, who soon discovered that the phone number belonged to a 23-year-old woman named Bailey Boswell. The search for Loofe continued. 

Her family held out hope that she would be found unharmed. But their prayers went unanswered. Loofe’s remains were found in garbage bags on Dec. 4 along the state highway in rural Clay County, Neb. She had been dismembered into 14 pieces, in what seemed to be a ritualistic manner. Her left upper arm was never recovered, and her internal organs were still missing. Authorities then set out to find out what really happened to the woman her family described as “the crystal-blue-eyed girl with a soft heart”—and why. 

A self-proclaimed vampire and his witches’ coven

Boswell’s social media apps were just the beginning of the disturbing investigation. Boswell turned out to be part of a couple with Aubrey Trail, 51, a self-declared vampire. The duo shared an apartment and both had extensive criminal histories, including theft and financial scams, across various states. Loofe was just one of the many targets that both Boswell and Trail had found on Tinder to try to lure into their makeshift “coven” under a cult-like manifesto. 

A trio of women in their early 20s,  all of whom have chosen to remain anonymous, testified in court and later in Swipe Right on the Devil that they had each met Boswell on Tinder, and were soon also introduced to Trail. They were showered with expensive clothes, spa treatments, and drugs, and given weekly allowances ranging from $150 to $200. The cost? Participating in group sex with Trail (“Daddy”) and Boswell (“Mommy”), while also helping the couple sell stolen goods. The women each testified that Trail would call himself a “vampire,” and claim that he had supernatural powers such as being able to fly and read minds. Trail also told the women that they were all now “witches” belonging to his cult, with Boswell as their leader.

Both Trail and Boswell claimed they were practicing witchcraft and black magic with required ritualistic violent acts to gain entry to their coven. Trail told the members of the “coven” that they would have to torture someone and complete a killing in order for him to gain more power as their messiah; he also wanted to film the murder and share the profits of the snuff film with each of them. The women claimed they left Trail’s cult shortly thereafter in November 2017, right before Boswell lured in Loofe. 

After authorities discovered that Trail was connected to Boswell, they searched the couple’s home and found a BDSM dog leash, duct tape, “a sauna suit with the crotch cut out, zip ties, a hatchet, a plastic drop cloth smeared with blood, and a book on anatomy.”

In the trailer for Swipe Right on the Devil, one of the women claims that Trail told her after meeting on Tinder that he and Boswell “knew witchcraft and had 12 women [and] needed a thirteenth to complete the coven.” Another survivor describes how Trail had “rules” for the coven which included being naked while around him and allowing him to watch lesbian encounters. The documentary features a segment in which one of the women tells an officer that to be in the “the inner circle,” he said she would “have had to kill somebody and take their soul.” 

“While this is fundamentally Sydney's story, it's also about the other young women manipulated by Aubrey Trail and Bailey Boswell at a vulnerable time in their lives, when they were searching for something universal: love and connection,” says Biegel. “They spoke candidly about the challenges of finding queer relationships in their conservative Midwestern communities, and how Bailey exploited that loneliness through Tinder. Once drawn into their world, they found themselves trapped in a disturbing web of manipulation, witchcraft, and demands to kill as a path to supernatural power.” 

Biegel’s fellow executive producer and Imagine Documentaries executive Christopher St. John adds that the team behind docuseries was “struck by the bravery of the three women who tell their stories at the center of this series.” St. John continues, “They lived through such an incredibly traumatic experience, but they still believe it’s valuable to share the story, whether in court or on camera.” He says the team elected to tell the story in three episodes because they had too much material to do the story justice in a feature-length film, and even still, there were elements that didn’t make it into the final cut. “Hopefully, viewers will really get an accurate sense of their thinking and where they were during this intense period of their lives.” 

A swift confession before a tumultuous trial

Trail confessed to Loofe’s killing right away, but maintained that her death was an accident. He told the police that he had engaged in consensual BDSM acts with Loofe and two other women, with the participants paying him $15,000 to film. Trail said that he had strangled Loofe with an extension cord during an erotic act and did not intend to kill her. Following her death, Trail dismembered Loofe’s body to avoid getting caught. He emphasized that Boswell was not part of the crime at all. During messages uncovered throughout the investigations, Trail is shown telling Boswell that he should be the one taking all the blame, and that she should change her narrative to come across as another “victim.”

During the three-week trial, Trail yelled out in court that Boswell was “innocent” and then slit his throat with a shank; the trial was put on hold as he was rushed to the hospital and recovered. Trail also suffered from two heart attacks and a stroke over the course of the case being presented to a jury. He changed his story during the trial, telling the jury that he killed Loofe out of fear that she would “expose my lifestyle.”

Trail was found guilty on all counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and improper disposal of human remains. He was sentenced to death on June 9, 2021. Trail currently is on death row and petitioned the state of Nebraska in August 2023 to set his execution date; Trail is 10th in line on death row for the state. The first and only execution via lethal injection in Nebraska took place in 2018, with the execution of convicted murderer Carey Dean Moore. Trail’s appeal in 2025 was denied. 

It was during Trail’s time on death row that he started to open up to Swipe Right on the Devil filmmaker Biegel. Over the course of a year, Biegel sought to gain Trail’s trust and participation. “Ultimately, that persistence gave us something rare in true crime: 360-degree access to the story, allowing us to explore its many layers and conflicting perspectives,” explains Biegel. 

Boswell stood trial in September 2020. There was ample physical evidence for the case against her, including DNA found on a latex glove that was in the same trash bag as Loofe’s remains. Boswell was found guilty on all counts of first-degree murder, conspiracy, and improper disposal of human remains in October 2020, and was sentenced to life imprisonment in November 2021. 

“I don't see Swipe Right on the Devil as another true-crime retelling. It's a discovery of a mystery, unfolding for the first time through the firsthand accounts of those who lived it,” says Biegel. “This isn't a whodunnit: It's a whydunnit. What really happened to Sydney Loofe, and why? The series explores the unsettling collision of ancient witchcraft beliefs and modern digital dating culture. [These are] two killers who, by their own accounts, would have continued killing had they not been caught so soon.” 

Loofe's legacy

Sydney Loofe’s family launched the Sydney Loofe Foundation in 2019. The foundation has raised more than $30,000 to be awarded in scholarships and $26,000 to be distributed to community causes. “Sydney, with a ‘y,’ never stopped to ask ‘why’ when it came to helping others,” the Loofe family wrote on the foundation website. “Although she often struggled physically, financially, and emotionally, she opened her home and heart to others. And those who knew Sydney knew of her love of family, her affinity for animals and pets (especially cats), her interest in fishing as a pastime, her fascination with beautiful crystals, and her soft heart…Sydney Loofe was a unique child of God, one who proudly had this tattooed on her arm, ‘Everything will be wonderful someday.’ Her family holds tight to the faith that indeed in heaven, that is true.” 

Correction, Oct. 22

This story originally misstated the month in which Bailey Boswell was sentenced to life in prison. It was November 2021, not July 2021.