Emily in Paris season 3’s cliffhanger ending explained

Emily in Paris season 3 spoilers follow – including its ending.

Well. Lily Collins wasn’t kidding when she said that we were in for the “ultimate cliffhanger”, with the latest season of Netflix’s Emily in Paris dropping a fairly hefty clanger just before the end credits rolled.

We’re about to get into all the details, so if you don’t want it spoiled for you we suggest that you look away until you’ve finished the series.

We already knew that Emily had been forced to bury her true feelings for restaurateur
and neighbour Gabriel, after it was revealed in season two’s closing episode that he’d be making a go of things with on/off girlfriend Camille right when she was about to confess her love for him.

Season three picked up right where we’d left off. Emily and her new bangs were busy channelling all of her energy into her relationship with Londoner Alfie, as well as her work, while still trying to maintain a friendship with Gabriel and his other half.

It didn’t take very long for viewers to suss that she was conflicted though; she and Gabriel were very much still harbouring something. After all, the ‘will they, won’t they’ has formed a pretty large part of the show’s storyline so far, so why change things now?

It all came to a dramatic climax in the season three finale (which just so happened to be Gabriel and Camille’s engagement party-turned-last minute wedding).

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Camille, who’d been hiding an affair from Gabriel, decided at the very last minute not to marry him. Emily, who’d spotted her kissing Sofia on the roof of a swanky party earlier in the series, had confronted her, and then Camille had spotted a tender moment between her fiancé and Emily during their engagement evening.

While saying their vows at Camille’s family vineyard chapel in front of their closest friends and family, she decided instead to announce that Gabriel loved Emily – and that he had done ever since he had first met her.

Poor Alfie, who was watching on, walked out on Emily, calling time on their relationship as he realised that he had been second choice all along.

For all of a few seconds, it looked as though the path was finally clear for Emily and Gabriel to act on their feelings. But just as they were sitting together, regrouping from the dramatic events that had just unfolded, Gabriel dropped a sentence that could change everything.

“Emily, there’s something you don’t know,” he told her. “Camille didn’t come back from Greece to revive our relationship, she came back to tell me that she’s pregnant.”

Earlier in the season, Camille met artist Sofia at her gallery and the pair had become romantically involved before they went on the Mediterranean trip together. Gabriel wasn’t aware of the nature of their relationship, but while Camille was away he had become suspicious that she might have been cheating on him with an unknown person when he spotted photos of her partying on social media.

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When she arrived home, Emily was fully prepared to have to console Gabriel, believing that Camille was going to come clean about her affair. Little did Emily – or us, for that matter – know, until this final revelation, that Camille was instead returning to tell Gabriel that they were expecting.

With this added context, we can start to view Camille and Gabriel’s behaviour in season three through a different lens.

Did Camille, for example, break things off with Sofia because she really wanted to be with Gabriel instead, or because she felt she should give things a shot with him (again) for the sake of the baby?

Was Gabriel’s intensified ambition for his restaurant, and a pay rise, spurred on by the knowledge that he would soon have a little one to support? What’s more, was his sudden proposal plan born out of his love and commitment for Camille, or simply a knee-jerk reaction to being told he was about to be a father?

The nature of the cliffhanger means that we don’t yet have any of these answers, but hopefully the already-greenlit return of Emily in Paris season four will explore it all further.

For shippers of Emily and Gabriel, their future is hardly clear-cut (despite the fact that the third season leaves them both technically single and obviously still very much into each other).

After the non-wedding shenanigans, Gabriel’s decision to check in with Emily instead of fighting for Camille could arguably be a fairly big clue as to where his heart truly lies. But the road has never been smooth for these two, and that is clearly not about to change now.

If Emily and Gabriel were both to decide that they wanted to follow their undeniable feelings, there’s a lot they would need to talk about first.

As for Camille, she clearly has some decisions to make as well. Whether she decides to have the baby or not, she might end up wanting to explore her feelings for Sofia now that she’s finally broken away from Gabriel (and her family’s expectations).

Aside from this continuous love triangle, the season three finale leaves plenty more to be explored in season four.

Mindy, Emily’s BBF and possibly the best part of the show, has Eurovision calling, which aside from being incredibly iconic is also something we’d love to see included in the next drop of episodes.

What’s more, it’s something she’d be doing with her ex Benoît, so could a rekindling be on the cards there too? We’d like to think so, given new boyfriend Nico’s shady antics.

Either way, we’ll have to wait to find out. But, with another season definitely on the way, hopefully we’ll be back in Paris soon enough.

Emily in Paris is available on Netflix.