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Major spoilers from the entirety of Never Have I Ever Season 3 ahead.

The saying goes that you can’t love someone else until you love yourself first. Unfortunately, that adage rings true for Sherman Oaks High’s newest official couple in Season 3 of Never Have I Ever.

In a surprising twist, Devi Vishwakumar (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) and Paxton Hall-Yoshida (Darren Barnet), lovingly known as Daxton, break up in the season’s third episode.

Given the two seasons’ worth of build-up as Devi wavered between Team Paxton and Team Ben, their breakup is a blow for viewers as well as the characters. Yet everyone can take comfort in the fact that the separation is borne out of love rather than spite. Devi can never wrap her head around why Paxton would want to be with her, no matter how many times he tries to assure her how beautiful, smart and awesome he thinks she is — to the heartbreaking point where he can’t try to convince her anymore. There’s nothing he can do if she doesn’t have confidence in herself.

Devi & Paxton's Relationship from Never Have I Ever in 3 MinutesRemember when Paxton gets Devi to walk again just by being hot? Us too.

“Kudos to the emotional maturity of Paxton to recognize that this is not good,” Ramakrishnan tells Tudum. “On his side of things, like, of course, yes, Devi is going through a lot of self-love [issues] and not being able to love herself. But that aside, kudos to Paxton for having the emotional maturity to say, ‘I need someone who is sure of themselves, because I can’t keep reminding you of that.’ I think that’s good for young men to see.”

Barnet agrees. “There's just definitely a lesson there of the classic, ‘You spend so much time vying for someone else that you forget to do the work on your own self,’” he says. “Even Niecy Nash points it out as [Devi’s] therapist [in the Season 3 premiere]. She's like, ‘Are we learning that relationships don't solve everything?’ And it's true. Especially as a young adult, that's a worthwhile lesson to learn. Because I think it happens all the time, even when you get older, but if you can learn it young, even better.”

When the show’s writers — who, like the cast and crew, are all a healthy split of Team Ben and Team Paxton — were breaking the season, they knew they wanted to explore self-confidence as it’s something a lot of adolescents struggle with. “We just wanted to show that you can have everything you want in life, but if you don’t believe in yourself or like yourself, then it’s kind of worth nothing. You have to love yourself first,” says Never Have I Ever co-creator Lang Fisher. “To kick off her journey of the season [realizing] she's not this sort of dorky loser that she's always imagined herself to be, we wanted to have her blow up the thing she wanted the most.”

For Fisher, the key to writing the mature breakup and fallout of Devi and Paxton’s split was realizing that “the breakup itself comes from a place of immaturity on Devi's part, but maybe maturity on Paxton's. And then [we’re] letting her grow up a little to the end of the season where she is a little more self-assured, and a little more feeling good about herself.” She adds, “We wanted to watch her actually have the ability to mature, and we have a time jump in the middle [of the season] there, but just [to see] her grow up and realize what's important in her life.”

What ends up being important in Devi’s life is that bond she shares with Paxton, even if their romantic future is uncertain. After montaging her way through the stages of post-breakup grief, Devi arrives at a place where she can still support Paxton — and the same goes for him in terms of supporting Devi — by the end of the season.

“I was very happy about that because I think that's a testament to these two characters,” says Ramakrishnan. “[Darren] said it, actually, earlier that Devi and Paxton have a lot of differences, but a big similarity they have is truly their care for each other. And their good hearts to try and do right for each other.”

Paxton may nudge the door open in the finale when he unequivocally dedicates his graduation speech to Devi before heading off to Arizona State University, but Devi knocks on a different door when she decides to spend her “one free boink” card on Ben in the closing scene of the season. Though it’s up for debate if she actually does end up spending the night with Ben, going into Season 4, one thing is for sure. Per Fisher: “The love triangle is not over.”

Never Have we Ever… been more excited for next season.

Paxton Breaks Up With Devi | Never Have I Ever S3E3Paxton has had it with Devi's insecurities.

Additional reporting by Chancellor Agard.