The Sex Lives of College Girls fans were devastated to learn that season 1 hottie Nico (Gavin Leatherwood) wouldn't be returning in the HBO Max comedy's second season. But worry not! Where there is a college show, there will also be an attractive man who seems to have lost his shirt.
EW has the exclusive first look at Jackson (Mitchell Slaggert), the show's newest (half-naked) addition. "Jackson is loosely based on something that happened to me in college, which is that when I was in school in 2005, my school took in a bunch of students from Tulane after Hurricane Katrina," co-creator Justin Noble tells EW. "One thing I wanted to touch on in season 2, and [co-creator] Mindy [Kaling]'s really passionate about as well, is making a real stamp on our show about climate change, but doing it in a fun and light way. So he will be a climate refugee coming from a different school that's had an incident, much like all of the people from Tulane who showed up at Yale in 2005 and were noticeably hotter than the people at Yale."
Sex Lives of College Girls Mitchell Slaggert, Alyah Chanelle Scott, and Amrit Kaur in ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ season 2 | Credit: Isabella Vosmikova/HBO Max
Although fans might be tempted to assume Jackson will be Kimberly's (Pauline Chalamet) new love interest — given her involvement with Nico — Noble doesn't want to say for sure just yet. "I won't say who he's attached to, but I will say he's a series regular this season so we'll be seeing quite a bit of him."
But one thing Noble will say about Kimberly is that she's going to have some options this year. "There's going to be new interests, whether they're sexual interests or love interests or romance, thrown her way throughout the season. I've always loved shows that keep people on their toes with juggling multiple interests and bringing new people into their lives. She'll definitely have some deeper personal stuff to be dealing with, but there'll be a lot of fun, new, exciting love interests coming her way."
As for Nico, will fans still hear mention of him? After all, he is Leighton's (Reneé Rapp) brother. "People are just going to have to tune in and see how that is addressed," Noble says, adding, "But yes, he's attached to our show in multiple ways. Despite being Leighton's brother, he largely played on our story as a love interest for Kimberly and then he cheated on her, which is a thing that fictional love interests rarely come back from. So we kind of feel like that was done. But yes, he's still tied to our universe in that way through Leighton, for sure."
The Sex Lives of College Girls returns to HBO Max this November.
Make sure to check out EW's Fall TV Preview cover story — as well as all of our 2022 Fall TV Preview content, releasing over 22 days through Sept. 29.