“We knew we needed to push our characters to the limit,” Ginny & Georgia creator Sarah Lampert told TV Insider, and the show certainly didn’t hold back. From Georgia’s (Brianne Howey) murder trial to Marcus’ (Felix Mallard) alcoholism to Ginny’s (Antonia Gentry) abortion, every character faced struggles in Wellsbury.

The third season, which dropped on June 5, ended with a not guilty verdict for Georgia, thanks to her kids framing Austin’s (Diesel La Torraca) father, Gil (Aaron Ashmore), for Tom Fuller’s death. Ginny and Austin had to go to the edge of darkness to save their mother, but will they pay a price in the already-confirmed Season 4?

The writer and executive producer explained that Ginny becomes “the healthiest she’s ever been” as she juggles her mother’s trial in Season 3. “She really learned how to establish boundaries. She almost relapsed with her self-harm once, but she didn’t. She made active progress in not self-harming, therapy, and with her mental health,” Lampert said.

However, the creator admitted that Ginny “may have overcorrected” in the final episode “because she’s a little bit cold to Maxine. She’s not trying to be mean, but her boundaries are firm at the moment. Maybe there’s some flexibility there going forward for her, but she really needed to harden to survive.”

Amanda Matlovich / Netflix

Speaking of Max (Sara Waisglass), she felt the brunt of Ginny’s boundaries in the Season 3 finale. When Max wanted a status check on their friendship because she felt something was off, Ginny told Max that they “grew apart” during their sophomore year.

Lampert was quick to break down what was really happening in that scene. “She appreciates their friendship and loves Maxine, but has just gone through so much she really doesn’t need Maxine putting anything on her in this moment in time,” she explained about Ginny’s perspective. “She’s fresh out of the most traumatic experience of her life, and she has to protect her peace. It is the number one priority for her right now if she’s not going to backslide into self harm. So she must protect her peace. She’s not angry at Max. She loves Max, but she’s not going to go there. She’s not going to go into this conversation in the same way that Max needs her to. It really is just a miscommunication. She also just heard from Marcus that Max ratted him out, and it’s before the scene where she sees him wet the bed, so she is more willing to believe Marcus’ side of that story. She might have a little bit of a bias going into this scene coming from Marcus. But even with that, she’s not mad at Max. Max isn’t mad at her, and yet, it still it feels like a fight.”

But what does the future look like for MANG [Max, Abby, Norah, and Ginny] in Season 4? Can this group of besties get back to what they once were?

“I will say, this is the first interview I’ve said this in, so I’ll give you a fresh thing. Season 3 was always going to be our most explosive, darkest season,” Lampert told TV Insider. “It had to be. We knew we wanted a big murder trial. We knew we wanted things to go viral. We just knew a lot of what we were dealing with. We knew we needed to push our characters to the limit. We need to break everyone. Everyone needed to break with the possibility to rebuild. Season 4, I think, will be tonally a little bit lighter, a little more hopeful still, with the tone balance that we always play with. But in answering the question about MANG, I am hopeful that they can rebuild.

As for Austin, Lampert outright said Austin’s false testimony was “highly traumatic” for the preteen, which sets up an intriguing storyline for the fourth season. “It matches up nicely with this idea that before it’s really been Ginny and Georgia, and Austin’s kind of been a bit of a tagalong because he’s a child. For the first time, and we see it really this season and especially in Episode 10, he starts to have a real point of view, and he starts to really enter the family dynamic in a new way.”

The third season culminated with yet another school musical: Mousse. Naturally, the fall musical will be top of mind for Max and the rest of the theater kids in the fourth season.

“Well, I’m going to give a hint about something that I don’t know if it’ll get picked up on that it’s a hint,” Lampert teased about the Season 4 musical. “We’ve talked about the fall and spring musical. We don’t know what they might be.”

Lampert couldn’t give away “any kind of timeline” for Season 4—there’s still summer to go!—but she did leave us with this clue: “We’ve heard a lot about junior year. We’ve heard that it’s hell year. Here’s the thing about our show, we’re aware that we take our time, and I think that that’s important.”

Ginny & Georgia, Season 4, TBA, Netflix