'Sex Education' Season 2 Isn't Afraid To Go There, Physically And Emotionally

How do you bring a global as bright and lush because the one in Sex Education to life? It accommodates to start with Moordale Secondary School, the fictitious high school where Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) and Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa) and their companions hold court. It's a place where students swap questions about sex, sexuality, gender, and everything in between as frequently as they swap saliva — also it supports the that the production agency in back of the hit Netflix show were able to find a pre-built school with as much character as, well, the beloved characters of Sex Education themselves.


The former campus of the University of South Wales, in Newport, Wales, feels like a global all its own. For starters, the facade of the abandoned school right now serves as Moordale Secondary's front door, and nearly every room inside of the labyrinthine campus has been transformed into a living set. Posters for school clubs line walls, and in the event you look closely you'll visualize that some have been artfully graffitied over by set designers who premeditated horny teenagers's worst impulses.


Other rooms serve their own worlds within worlds, too: you must pass a facade of the local mall to reach the abandoned history classroom Dr. Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson) takes over any time while she starts to offer sex therapy to Moordale students, and in case you enter the former university gym, you'll find the upstairs and downstairs of the Milburn family member house, split into two sets yet the exact size and layout of a pretty comfortable abode. Whenever MTV News visited the set last July, Otis had just thrown a party, and the carnage was still laid out across the living room and kitchen.


"Season one, it was sort of like we opened a door and peeked into Moordale a bit," Butterfield told MTV News while in a filming break. "And right now we're totally immersed into the world."


That world includes everything from the very American lockers where students trade a hotbed of gossip, to the small variety of mobile houses down the hill from the school that Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey) calls house. While in the campus are signs that this isn't an actual living universe — the endless quantity of power cords are a dead giveaway, as are the production offices that have been customary in former classrooms — however all of that melts away thanks to the bright colors and impeccable detail that inform Moordale's world.


And then there's the story itself, which pops off the screen in a way that is at once relatable, tender, and hilarious. Immediately considering that, sex — and discovering what you're into, and who you want most to do those things with — is as susceptible and nerve-wracking as it could be embarrassing and empowering and magical and funny. That so few schools teach sex education to young people in a holistic and judgment-free way largely sets those people up for failure in several ways. Some days the curious turn to Google for help, other times they turn to each other. In season two, unlicensed and unofficial sex therapist Otis asks and gets asked questions that stump even him — how to douche perfectly before anal sex, or exactly "how" to finger someone in a way that gives them pleasure. And no matter the offer, the physical acts also speak to larger emotional truths — including how to open up to someone, how to tell them you love them, why as well as how to feel safe in your body while sharing it with someone else.


"All the subjects that we touch upon, and arcs that every one of the individual characters have are just quite realistic, and based in universal truths," Mackey told MTV News.


Gatwa agreed, adding that acquiring the scripts for season 2 immediately made him excited to get back to work. "I was just like, 'I cannot wait to get sucked into this,'" he said. He pointed to Eric's new arc, which includes plenty of screen time with a transfer student, Rahim (Sami Outalbali), and certainly, with his BFF Otis, who has plenty of drama to deal with of his own, given that he has to navigate a new relationship with Ola Nyman (Patricia Allison) and rebuild his friendship with Maeve.


"I really wanted to show off that tension," Allison told MTV News about the subverted love triangle that is infinitely more complex than girl-likes-boy-likes-other-girl. "Ola really wants to be companions with Maeve, nevertheless she can't because Otis is getting in the way,  and the jealousy that she feels with Maeve Otis, and why well they get on, and why obvious that is to her." She added that such chemistry doesn't exist in the same way for Ola and Otis — which leads to a heartbreak that is as confusing as it is bittersweet. "Ola and Otis are missing that little something that [Otis and Maeve] seem to have so conveniently she said.


And because several of us spend years attempting to find that something, it's easy to relate to any assortment of the characters who show up  — and open up — while in the season's eight episodes. Because much because the show isn't afraid to go there, it also remembers to come back home.