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Hope Haddon Doesn’t Deserve Redemption

Sex Education created a vile character that doesn’t deserve redemption

Morena
2 min readNov 14, 2021

Hope Haddon is the new headmistress of the school in Season 3 of the show Sex Education on Netflix. Obviously spoiler alert for season 3 if you have not made it through the season.

Hope has done numerous questionable and downright criminal things in this season. For starters, she imprisoned a student against their will (locked them in an empty room by themselves at the school where only she could unlock the door). Next, she tried to spy on students through other students. She continuously attacked students for their choice of dress (clothes, pins to be attached to clothes, and hair). Hope also made a big show about public humiliation, making three students wear signs around their neck as a means to humiliate them among their peers (this lasted a handful of episodes, mind you). Keep in mind, this is a high school so students that are roughly aged 14–18.

The kicker at the end? They tried to paint her as a character we should feel sorry for and forgive by showing her feeling deeply emotional at having trouble through fertility treatments. I understand that “job vs personal life” is a thing with people, but if she is willing to imprison, humiliate, among the other terrible things she did to teenage students, why on Earth should we feel for this character?

It would have made a lot more sense for the students and/or their parents to press charges for the false imprisonment Hope imposed upon the student (Cal Bowman). It would have made a lot more sense that once Cal dropped out of the ceiling during the music number to publicly announce to the visitors at the school what had just happened to them (Hope imprisoning them) to show the true colors of Hope.

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Morena
Morena

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