Do Jackie and Cole Get Back Together in ‘My Life with the Walter Boys’ Season 3? Unpacking the Cliffhanger Ending

‘My Life with the Walter Boys’ returned for season 3 on Netflix on August 6. Here’s everything to know about how ‘My Life with the Walter Boys’ season 3 ended.

NEED TO KNOW

Season 3 of My Life with the Walter Boys explores Jackie Howard’s personal growth and her complicated relationships

The Walter family faces major life changes, including health struggles, career decisions and romantic challenges

The season ended with a cliffhanger in which one major character’s life is on the line

My Life with the Walter Boys is back with a new season, leaving viewers with yet another cliffhanger ending that has fans on the edge of their seats.

The Netflix series, based on author Ali Novak’s novel of the same name, returned for season 3 on Aug. 6, picking up right after Walter family patriarch George’s (Mark Blucas) health scare at the end of season 2. As the season progresses, the rest of the Walter family faces the complications of life as high school students, navigating the pressures of school, new hobbies and, of course, relationship drama.

As for the show’s protagonist Jackie Howard (Nikki Rodriguez), the Manhattan-raised teen seems to finally figure out her love triangle with brothers Alex (Ashby Gentry) and Cole Walter (Noah LaLonde). That is, until her childhood friend Eliot (Naveen Paddock) shows up to Silver Falls, Co., with Jackie’s uncle Richard (Alex Quijano). His arrival causes cracks to form in her current relationship with Cole, leading to their eventual breakup just before the final episode of season 3.

So, where do Jackie Howard and the Walter family end up in the finale? Here’s everything to know about how My Life with the Walter Boys season 3 ended.

How did season 3 of My Life with the Walter Boys end?

It’s a season of departures for the Walter family. Will Walter (Johnny Link) and his wife Hayley (Zoë Soul) are off to Atlanta for her new job, while Nathan (Corey Fogelmanis) is getting ready to head to Europe for a summer band trip.

Cole finds out that he’s gotten accepted to the University of Texas, while Danny (Connor Stanhope) is accepted to Carnegie Mellon after being rejected from Juilliard earlier in the season.

Jackie is supposed to head off to Greece for a summer trip — though those plans are up in the air by the end of the season — and Lee (Myles Perez) and Isaac’s (Isaac Arellanes) biological mom Hannah (Erin Karpluk) shows up unexpectedly, only to leave her sons once again.

By the final episode, Cole — who developed a newfound passion for drag racing in season 3 — has gone off the deep end following his and Jackie’s breakup, driving him to regularly participate in dangerous street racing. He’s reprimanded by local drag racer Mac (Chad Rook) as well as his best friend Dylan (Kolton Stewart), who punishes him by not allowing Cole to use the car he bought to race anymore and kicking him out of the house where he’s been staying since his breakup.

When Cole returns home, he keeps his family at a distance, until disaster strikes at the community center a week before it’s slated to open and he quietly brings everyone together to save Jackie’s Roaring Twenties-themed party. Back at the party, however, Alex tells Jackie everything that Cole did to help save the evening, leading Jackie to break her bout of silence with Cole and send him a text to thank him for his help.

Meanwhile, Cole is at a qualifying race for the Colorado Grand Prix. There, Walter family matriarch Katherine (Sarah Rafferty) encourages Cole to go to the party, but he responds by saying that Jackie should be with someone who “really gets her” and “her world,” someone like Eliot. Katherine offers an alternative perspective, telling Cole that Jackie deserves to make her own decisions about who she dates.

When Cole sees the appreciative text from Jackie, he blows off the race and heads straight for the party — but he’s not alone on the road.

Danvers Stacey (Jedidiah Goodacre), his opponent from the race, is tailing him and tells him that because he didn’t compete in the qualifier, neither of them get the prize money and now Cole “owes” him. Cole can’t shake Danvers and eventually, he runs Cole off the road, causing his car to flip several times and leaving the season to conclude on another dramatic cliffhanger.

Do Jackie and Cole get back together?

Jackie and Cole’s relationship throughout the three seasons of the show has been anything but consistent. After George’s stroke, they spend the first episode of the season skirting around each other until Jackie boldly declares that she doesn’t want to be just friends with Cole — she wants to be with him romantically.

They spend much of the season in bliss, with Jackie enjoying life as a normal teenager, though some of her prior commitments fall to the wayside. This doesn’t go unnoticed by Jackie’s uncle Richard, who has high expectations for his niece. His position intensifies when Jackie, Cole and Alex end up in the back of a cop car after a fight at a party she threw at Richard’s rental while he was away.

Richard is disappointed in Jackie, but he blames Cole for her change in behavior. When Richard tells Cole that he’s a bad influence on Jackie, their relationship begins to slowly unravel. Jackie confesses to Cole that she doesn’t want to go on her summer trip to Greece and wants to go on a road trip with him instead. She also misses a makeup exam to raise her grade after they ditch school to go swimming.

With Richard’s comments in his head, Cole turns a romantic evening planned by Jackie into the demise of their relationship after she tells him that her future “isn’t more important than what’s in front of me right now.”

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Cole sabotages their relationship in a matter of minutes, telling Jackie that he doesn’t want to drag her down more than he already has. He embodies a Cole of the past, telling her that he’s just getting “bored” like he always does in relationships and that he isn’t her “tortured hero,” effectively ending their relationship.

Despite being the one to end things, Cole continues to look out for Jackie, moving out of the house to give her space post-breakup. He even secretly helps her when the opening of the new community center in town is threatened by last-minute repairs that are seemingly too costly and timely to be fixed in time for the party.

In the final moments of the episode, Jackie shares a kiss with Eliot at the party just as Cole’s car flip gets in the way of any kind of reunion.

Does Alex confess his feelings for Kiley?

Alex and Kiley’s (Mya Lowe) friendship goes back to before the events of season 1, and Kiley has made it clear that her feelings for him run deep. However, after Alex’s on-and-off-again relationship with Jackie throughout the first two seasons of the show, as well as his brief romance with Blake Hartford (Natalie Sharp) in season 2, Kiley finds an unexpected partner in Dylan, high school football star and Cole’s best friend.

While Alex remains single in season 3, Kiley and Dylan’s relationship progresses, often leaving Alex as a third wheel to the couple when they hang out together. But when Alex and Kiley spend one-on-one time together, their chemistry is undeniable, even to Dylan, who Kiley initially keeps at an arm’s length to shield him from her home life.

In the penultimate episode of the season, following a stressful day trying to find Kiley’s grandma amid a storm, Alex and Kiley kiss, which he later tells her was a “stupid mistake” after she dodges his calls and messages.

By the season finale, Alex realizes he has feelings for Kiley, but she wants nothing to do with him, with Dylan telling Alex to keep his distance for the time being. Alex doesn’t listen to Dylan’s suggestion, showing up to Kiley’s house at the end of the finale to tell her that the real mistake was telling her the kiss was a mistake.

However, he is interrupted by Dylan appearing behind Kiley in the doorway, stopping Alex in his confession before the door is closed in his face.

What’s next for Danny and Erin?

At the beginning of the season, Danny gets rejected from Juilliard and starts to act out after the news, including shielding the truth from his girlfriend, Erin (Alisha Newton). Danny eventually shares the news with Erin after a party, and the conversation somehow leads to him drunkenly proposing to Erin, who says yes. The next day, Danny confesses to Cole that he proposed to Erin and decides to pretend it never happened the following day.

However, Erin is clearly upset that he’s said that he remembers nothing from the night before, though he later says that he lied and remembers the proposal. Erin says that her answer is still yes — even sober — and Danny brings her to the gazebo in town and properly pops the question with a temporary ring.

While Danny’s dreams of New York were thwarted, he gets accepted into Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh by the end of the season. Although he is excited, he is worried about the long distance with Erin. She encourages Danny to go to Pittsburgh because it’s his dream. However, Danny says his dream is being with Erin wherever she is, leaving his collegiate future up in the air.

Does Alex go back to the rodeo?

Alex’s time riding for the Hartfords is short-lived, as he struggles to fit in with the rest of the riders, including rival Wylder Holt (Jake Manley). As the youngest of the group, Alex spends the beginning of the season finding his footing with the crew, even inviting them to a party Jackie and Cole host for her friend Grace (Ellie O’Brien), which ends in a fight and the arrival of cops.

After Wylder is too injured to ride bareback, Alex steps up, but the training is hard on his body and Wylder gives him pain medication to take to keep him loose. After riding through injuries of his own and still feeling like the odd one out, Alex tries to explain his position to Blake, but she tells him that everyone has made an effort to be friends except for Alex. He tells Blake about Wylder’s use of pain killers both before and after riding, but she later tells Alex that he was just trying to help.

While Blake suggests Alex take a week or two to let things calm down, he quits by episode 7, telling Blake that there are “lines [he] won’t cross.”

Without the rodeo, Alex appears listless, until Katherine takes in an injured wild horse that Alex is able to wrangle and tame for treatment, opening up a new realm of possibilities for his future.

Is George’s health in the clear?

In the first episode of season 3, Katherine tells her family that George’s health is “something they’ll have to deal with for a while.”

After his weeks-long hospital stay, George surprises his family with his return home, but his recovery is far from over. He’s not cleared to walk up the stairs at first, staying downstairs on the couch until he’s recovered long enough to make the trek to the bedroom upstairs.

George appears to be getting along just fine throughout the season, until the penultimate episode when he’s walking down the stairs and hears a ringing in his ear, nearly falling before dropping the box he’s carrying.

George later disappears for hours, leaving Katherine worried, until he reveals he went to the doctor and got an MRI and a CAT scan to check things out. After a second opinion in the penultimate episode, they receive some happier news when it’s revealed there were no signs that George suffered a second mini stroke.

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