How Selling Sunset Season 3 Warps Time & Space, Episode By Episode

It might've taken more than a year for Netflix to bring back its glossy real estate reality soap Selling Sunset, but the streaming service did not make that same mistake with season 3. Filmed immediately after the second season, the new batch of eight episodes is filled with even more scandalous drama set against the ever-present chrome-and-glass real estate porn of the Hollywood Hills.

The second season ended with the long-anticipated wedding between Mary Fitzgerald and her French beau Romain Bonnet, and the third opens shortly after the couple tied the knot in October 2019. As promised in the juicy trailer for season 3, the episodes include the build-up to Christine Quinn's wedding, more custody problems for Amanza Smith, and Chrishell Stause's bombshell divorce from her This Is Us star husband, Justin Hartley. There are also rumblings of some realtors striking out from the Oppenheim Group to form their own ventures.

Somehow, these incredibly dramatic people also find time to sell real estate too — including the $45 million (£34 million) house that got plenty of airtime in the first two seasons of Selling Sunset. This show has always been about interpersonal drama with some gorgeous real estate thrown in, so while the cast members have plenty of important conversations at open houses, the house tours are not necessarily what you're tuning in for. Let's get to dissecting the drama:

Manufactured Event: Getting back into the groove of this series means remembering that every episode has some sort of loosely relevant "event" where the producers have clearly told cast members to bring up their most dramatic complaints about each other. Some make sense, like all of Mary's wedding-related festivities in season two, but others, like Christine's "birthday party" — a.k.a. a cast dinner in the back room of a West Hollywood restaurant — were clearly created for the show. Sorry, this is a woman whose engagement party included exotic animals and fire dancers, and you're expecting us to believe she just had a chill hang for her birthday? A tarot reader was on hand to give delightfully shady and often accurate readings to everyone — except the birthday girl, whom she described as not liking drama. So take the rest with the grain of salt.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: Maya Vander tells Heather Young that she's about three months pregnant with her second baby, who was born in mid-May. That means she was three months along in November 2019. But the women were celebrating Christine's birthday, which is Oct. 14, and the episode picked up a few weeks after Mary and Romain's wedding, which was Oct. 12. Did the producers fudge Christine's "birthday party" a couple of weeks after the fact as a way to get everyone back in the same room?

Christine's Shenanigans: Christine is a woman born for reality stardom, and she knows exactly what to do to get the screen time she craves. This week, it's plotting a memorable broker's open featuring Botox and burgers, despite the protests of her co-listing agent, Monika.

Most Fabulous Look: These women rock a blazer like no other, and season three does not disappoint in that department. Even better, although this season was filmed concurrently with the last one, there aren't many repeat looks. While Christine can always be counted on for some eye-catching ensembles and perfectly lacquered lips, the head-to-toe red suit Heather wears to a showing in this episode is simply stunning.

Most Egregious Foreshadowing: The second season featured Chrishell discussing her then-recent wedding as Mary planned her own, and in this season the former soap star discusses newlywed life quite a bit. It's uncomfortable to watch knowing the shocking divorce news that will break at some point during the season — which makes it even harder to see her gush in the season premiere about the "dream house" she and her husband just bought.

Notable New Real Estate: Christine takes on the listing for a $5.495 million (£4.1 million) four bedroom, four bathroom home in the Mount Olympus neighbourhood of the Hollywood Hills.

Manufactured Event: Anyone who's watched the previous two seasons of Selling Sunset could tell you that Christine would completely ignore her co-lister Monika's input when planning their open house event, but Monika seemed to hold out hope that Christine would come up with a slightly classier idea than "Botox and Burgers." She didn't. Plenty of people turned up for the event anyway, which included "Quinn-n-Out" branded burgers and some professionals giving out free Botox to anyone who wanted (Mary wanted, and probably a few others who weren't shown on camera).

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: A journalist who profiled Selling Sunset (and The Hills) creator Adam DiVello for Buzzfeed News mentions attending the Burgers and Botox event while tagging along with the executive producer for "a couple days of filming in November," so it would definitely make sense that the events of this episode are taking place in the early days of that month. However, the reporter revealed an incredibly important piece of behind-the-scenes information: The news of Chrishell's divorce broke during the party, but producers wouldn't let the cast talk about it on camera that night. Several other events the reporter describes that play out over subsequent episodes were actually filmed before the Burgers and Botox party. The magic of reality TV!

Christine's Shenanigans: Well, ya know, there's the whole Botox and Burgers thing. But Christine also started some new drama with her closest work ally, Davina Portratz, when she tagged on to the massive $75 million (£57.5 million) listing that the Oppenheim brothers were so hesitant about. Then she brought her fiance, Christian Richard, to tour the property without Davina's knowledge, making things awkward when the owner asked Davina about it and she had no clue WTF was going on.

Most Fabulous Look: Christine wears a gorgeous sage green checkered suit to the office one day, which is probably the nicest anyone has ever looked while discussing smoothies with her coworkers.

Other Drama: Amanza, who has been conspicuously absent from many work events due to her ongoing custody battle, got a talking-to about her lateness.

Manufactured Event: Brett Oppenheim's finally ready to throw a housewarming party for his coworkers in his new condo — yeah, the one that he showed off in season 2 when Heather came over for an awkward talk about why they never dated, or something. It is a perfect setting for some simmering problems to bubble to the surface, including some good news (like how Mary visited a fertility doctor, and she's in good shape if she and Romain want to have kids; and how Maya is having a baby girl), but mostly for Davina to discuss extending the $75 million listing and Jason Oppenheim to shoot her down so harshly that she storms out of the party.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: Davina had the $75 million listing for three months, and one of the news pieces Jason mentioned (from the LA Times) ran on Oct. 4. If that article took about a month to pull together, and it's early in November (about a month after), it makes sense that Davina would only have a couple of weeks left.

Christine's Shenanigans: We already knew about this, but Davina did confront Christine about her shadiness with her covert house tour. This is not a very exciting transgression, and it did not make for explosive television. But it was exciting to see Christine called out.

Most Egregious Foreshadowing: Mary and Chrishell meet up for a heart-to-heart about married life and a discussion about having children and Mary potentially freezing her eggs. Mary praises Chrishell and Justin's marriage and calls them "couple goals," and Chrishell confides that she thought that she and Justin, who got married in 2017, would've had children by this point.

Notable New Real Estate: Amanza and Heather team up to help the seller of a property on Fennell Place, a three-bed, four-bath property priced at $3.5 million (£2.7 million), via the Oppenheim Group's new concierge service — where the company fronts the money for renovation and staging, and the seller pays it back after the sale is closed. The owners of this property need to sell fast because they're already in escrow on their new house. Heather isn't thrilled to team up with Amanza, but since they're both professionals, they don't complain too much (except in their confessional interviews).

Manufactured Event: The Oppenheim Group's fifth annual Friendsgiving saw the brothers cater a 40-person dinner for their colleagues in the office. It was a great opportunity to share some major news: That the company had closed its biggest sale ever — the $45 million (£34.5 million) house in the hills, which ultimately went for around $35 million (£26.8 million) to an undisclosed buyer.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: Per Jason's instagram, the 2019 event took place on Nov. 17 — just four days before Chrishell's divorce news broke.

Christine's Shenanigans: Interestingly, the juiciest conversations during this episode did not take place at the big event. Instead, Maya and Christine and Heather had a big conversation over lunch where they complained that Jason gave Mary so many listings, and Christine asked Maya if she was considering leaving the Oppenheim Group — of course, the scene cut off before she could answer.

Other Drama: Amanza and Heather's concierge listing had a major snafu: Water damage to the floors meant an extra $5,000 (£3,800) and one week to repair. And Amanza had a court date that caused her to miss an appointment with the homeowner to pick out art for the staging, so Heather had to do it herself. It didn't go according to plan, unless the plan was for Heather to claim to love literally every painting in the entire gallery.

Most Egregious Foreshadowing: It might not qualify as foreshadowing, exactly, but it is setting the scene: Christine and her fiance Christian have their first (on-camera) meeting with their party planner to discuss their wedding. Christine's vision includes a "gothic winter wonderland" in a cathedral with snow, lots of pasta and truffles, and a white cake with strawberries "bleeding down" when cut into. There will be no bridal party, "no bitches, no buffet, no speeches," and by the way, she wants it all done in two months.

Notable New Real Estate: Mary and Romain are thinking about buying a property in the Valley to flip, so Chrishell shows them a promising $1.7 million (£1.3 million) listing that they could finish themselves.

Manufactured Event: Chrishell's charity auction open house was the biggest event of the episode, and included a brief tiff between Mary and Romain. She was mad that he lied about Brett and Jason bringing girls back up to their suite at his bachelor party, even though he wasn't the one who interacted with them. They seemed to make up although Mary felt betrayed. It's also where Maya discusses getting her broker's license in Florida and potentially opening a new Oppenheim Group office, and where Christine and Amanza fight but don't really come to any conclusion other than they definitely don't like each other.

Other Drama: Uh, it's a big one. Finally, the series has gotten to the part that many of us were waiting for: Chrishell's shocking divorce bombshell, which drops at the end of the episode (and the cast members do their very best to pretend they learned about the news on camera at the office in full glam).

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: As clarified in the Buzzfeed News article, the charity event actually took place on Nov. 21 and the Botox & Burgers event was on Nov. 22. Hartley filed the divorce papers on Friday, Nov. 22, and producers gathered the cast to shoot their reaction to the news after it actually broke.

Christine's Shenanigans: Christine had a fitting at Beverly Hills wedding dress boutique Galia Lahav to commission her dream custom black wedding gown. That seems like pretty short notice considering the wedding's a month away and even the richest of the rich can't buy the time needed to create a custom gown complete with ostrich feathers and a Maleficent vibe (though money probably helped). But the most realistic explanation is that the dress has been in the works for a while. Elsewhere, Christine finally sat down and apologised to Mary, vaguely taking responsibility for some of her actions. Mary seemed to accept the apology, and they parted on a good note.

Most Fabulous Look: Christine's furry rainbow coat, massive sunglasses, and floppy black hat were quite a combination for a conversation with Mary that was the equivalent of asking forgiveness with her tail between her legs, but she really pulled it off.

Notable New Real Estate: Maya shows her clients a four bedroom, six bathroom $4.2 million (£3.2 million) house on S. Willaman Drive in Beverly Hills, which she charmingly refers to as "nineteen-two-one-oh."

Manufactured Event: Breaking from the typical format, this episode spent plenty of time with Chrishell in a room at the Four Seasons as she told Mary about her side of the divorce story — the normally composed Chrishell couldn't even get through the conversation without crying as she described a fight that she and Justin had over the phone on the morning of the filing, but she hadn't seen him since. Before they had a chance to discuss the fight, he filed for divorce and texted her to let her know. "People want answers, and I fucking want answers," Chrishell said.

Later, Amanza headed to Chrishell's new house in the hills, dodging the paparazzi outside, to commiserate about the trauma of divorce. Chrishell revealed that she'd never even considered a Plan B since she was still in love with Justin, and that she was upset he didn't want to handle it privately. "I feel like outer elements have reared their ugly head and inserted themselves in our relationship," Chrishell said — specifically referring to the fact that he got wildly more famous and richer after their marriage.

At the end of the episode, Chrishell headed to St. Louis to spend some time with her family.

Christine's Shenanigans: Davina and Christine discussed Chrishell's divorce news by speculating about Justin's side of the story, and then complaining that Chrishell is too guarded. They suspect that the marriage had ongoing problems.

Other Drama: Mary and Romain fought about the bachelor party situation, but seemed to smooth things over. And in happier news, Amanza and Heather worked well together setting up their concierge listing.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: On Dec. 2, Chrishell posted a quote on her instagram that read, "It's hard to watch people change right in front of you. But it's even harder remembering who they used to be." So yeah, these conversations with her castmates definitely took place while she was going through it.

Most Fabulous Look: Amanza looked stunning in a black jumpsuit with a gold chain belt and black stilettos at the broker's open for her concierge listing with Heather.

Notable New Real Estate: Wait, they're still selling houses on this show?

Manufactured Event: While Chrishell spent time in St. Louis with her family, the rest of the office met up for a casual dinner and some more speculation about Chrishell's divorce. In particular, more shit-talking from Christine and Davina about how Justin was a gentleman when they met him (though one of the other women notes Davina actually never met Justin), and that they think Chrishell should've known there were problems in their marriage and not been so surprised by the whole situation. Mary and Amanza, thankfully, were having none of it. "There are not two sides," Mary said. "The right side is Chrishell's side because she's our friend."

Other Drama: Chrishell seemed to do a little healing while spending time with her family. Her older sister, an aesthetician, pampered her with a facial, and her teenage niece even gave her a pep talk at a charming family dinner. It was so wholesome we'll totally forgive the fact that it was very obvious the show filmed the scenes of Chrishell arriving in and leaving St. Louis on the same day. One new revelation: Upon reflecting on her final fight with Justin, Chrishell thought he'd probably already made his decision by then.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: This all tracks for what the Oppenheim staff would've been doing at the end of November and beginning of December.

Christine's Shenanigans: Beside some more shit-talking about how Chrishell was seeking attention for her divorce and playing devil's advocate for a man she met one time? Not much.

Notable New Real Estate: There was so much personal drama with Chrishell's divorce and the subsequent fallout that Amanza closing her first-ever sale, and then her second-ever sale (the Fennell listing with Heather). Mary showed the $9.45 million (£7.25 million) Alpine Drive listing she got from Jason, but her client wasn't interested.

Manufactured Event: Season 2 spent most of its time building up to Mary and Romain's wedding, documenting the constant hunt for a venue, a joint bachelorette and bachelor party for the TV cameras (and the drama that ensued following the ones held without Netflix's presence), and finally their walk down the aisle. But Christine's actual wedding was relegated to the last 15 minutes of the episode — and even then, a good portion of that was spent documenting how profoundly sad Chrishell seemed to be there and how upset she was when Davina started going in on her about hearing "both sides of the story" while they were all STILL AT CHRISTINE'S WEDDING. Heather apologised for commenting on Chrishell's divorce in an interview with Us Weekly — she explained earlier that she was flustered by the question about how she was supporting her castmate during a difficult time, and Chrishell was understanding. But as Davina continued to badger her, she couldn't take it anymore and tore off her mic and stormed out of the party.

This was definitely an expensive and stunning event made for TV. Christine's gothic winter wonderland dream was achieved, complete with guests in white, her in her sparkly black tulle gown, white swans for the ceremony, black swans for the reception, and a blizzard of foam "snow" — you know, the kind you'd find at the outdoor L.A. mall The Grove every night before Christmas. The snow was so heavy, though, that the venue almost turned into a really fancy foam party. Christine did get her "bloody" strawberry wedding cake, and Heather caught the bouquet (she and her HGTV boyfriend Tarek El Moussa announced their engagement a few days before the Selling Sunset season 3 premiere).

After Chrishell stormed out, the rest of the group headed back inside for the reception. Davina tried to insist she was right in pestering Chrishell about getting "both sides of the story," but the others did not seem to agree. Mary in particular was livid, and Romain wasn't surprised when Mary recounted the fight to him. "That girl, she's like a fucking snake," he said of Davina, who, as you'll recall, was not invited to Mary and Romain's wedding due to all the shit she talked about his engagement ring.

Chrishell's final appearance of the season wasn't storming out of the gorgeous wedding venue, though — thankfully, production followed her back to her new home in the hills and filmed her wistfully staring out over the Los Angeles skyline while sipping on a glass of white wine.

Christine's Shenanigans: Technically, the entire episode was filled with Christine's shenanigans. But there was some more drama just before the wedding when Davina and Heather stopped by to discuss the last-minute issues she'd encountered, and Christine complained that she had to get some alterations done because her dress didn't fit because her boobs were too big. Oh, and she'd been throwing up recently, but she definitely wasn't pregnant.

Other Drama: While showing off a new $2.8 million (£2.1 million) modern Sherman Oaks listing to Jason, Maya informed him of her plans to get her broker's license before she has her second baby — and officially floated her plans to potentially open an Oppenheim Group office in Miami. He couldn't commit to such a big, expensive undertaking — and admitted his first choice for a second office would be New York or Orange County — but he didn't want to lose her, so he said he would think about it.

Where The Episode Falls In The IRL Timeline: Christine and her husband tied the knot on Dec. 15, and Heather's accidental interview about Chrishell was published on Dec. 13 — all in line with the timeline set within the show.

Most Fabulous Look: Listen, it's hard to compete with black sparkly couture, and Christine obviously looked amazing on her wedding day. But Chrishell's slinky, backless, white satin gown looked pretty fantastic set against the LA skyline as she stared into the middle distance after leaving the wedding (or, more realistically, it was probably a few days later when production came to her house to film her doing that).

Notable New Real Estate: Sometimes the show remembers that it's supposedly following these women because they're selling fancy houses. (Mary did end up selling the Alpine property, BTW.) And even in an episode with so much drama to squeeze into a half hour, Christine managed to show off an absolutely gorgeous Richard Neutra-designed home to Queer Eye star Karamo Brown. It probably won't work for him because the bedroom has low beams and he's a tall 6'3" man who likes to have crazy acrobatic sex (thank you for sharing, Karamo!), but it was a gorgeous house to tour nonetheless.