#deleteee

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Tina Cohen-Chang, Artie Abrams, and Mike Chang

I list these three New Directions alums first because, frankly, I think Brittana will have the least contact with them out of anybody. 

Brittana are never especially close with Mike or Tina—and, in fact, Brittany even has beef with Tina in later seasons—and Santana is never close with Artie, even after she no longer has reason to view him as her rival for Brittany. Brittany and Artie are friendly with each other following their breakup, but they still aren’t especially close overall and they don’t tend to hang out one-on-one.

Those dynamics being what they are, I tend to believe that outside of glee reunions, there’s not going to be a lot of communication between Brittana and Tina, Artie, and Mike going into the future.

I’m sure that Brittana probably go to see Artina’s movies, and if Mike’s ballet troupe ever comes to town, they get tickets to see him perform. If they run into one another by chance, they stop to talk for a few minutes. If Brittana have kids, Tina will “like” every single baby photo that they post online and gush about how cute they are with multiple exclamation points.

But that’s probably about the extent of their interactions.

The farther out they get from their WMHS days, the less they’ll have to talk about.  

Hummelsonberry

Brittana’s relationship with this trio will depend a lot on proximity.

Following the events of S5 when Santana realizes that she doesn’t have to keep killing herself to win Hummelberry’s approval—and particularly as, no matter what she does, she is never going to get it—Brittana start to take a very casual approach to their interactions with Hummelberry (and by extension Blaine). 

Their basic m.o. seems to be to act cordial but not bend over backwards scrambling for affection. If they have the time and wherewithal, they’ll help Hummelsonberry out where they can, but they’re not going to upend their whole lives to deal with each and every new Hummelsonberry crisis like they (and particularly Santana) used to.

They’re okay with having a superficial friendship.

It’s this attitude and pattern for behavior that will shape all future Brittana + Hummelsonberry interactions.

The truth is that Hummelsonberry are fairly self-involved, so it is easier for them to maintain friendships with people whom they see on the regular and whose social orbits intersect with their own than it is for them to maintain friendships long distance or with people who move in circles outside theirs.

If they can run into Brittana on the subway or meet up with them at a mutually convenient bistro for a quick, twenty-minute lunch, then they’ll do so. But if keeping contact with Brittana requires real effort, then they’re not going to expend it. Friends have to come to them, not the other way around. If Brittana are willing and available to attend Rachel’s productions and Klaine’s charity galas, then they’ll be very welcome to do so. But there’s not going to be a lot of reciprocity there. 

—which is why I say that these relationships are only really going to be viable if Brittana remain in NYC.

Simply framed, on both sides, this is a friendship of convenience.

In the past, Santana used to go out of her way to maintain her bonds with Kurt and Rachel, and Brittany came into contact with Hummelberry through Santana’s efforts. But now that Santana’s not making such concerted efforts and no one else is picking up the slack, there will by necessity be a drop-off in interaction. If Santana doesn’t come running every time Hummelberry call, then in the long term, they’re all going to see one another less overall.   

Once Rachel’s Broadway career takes off and especially after she marries Jesse St. James and her social circle starts merging more and more with his, she’ll have less time for “the little people” that she used to know from Lima. She’ll make time for Klaine, of course, because Kurt’s her bestie and she carried their baby for them, but I doubt she’ll see as much of the other members of the New Directions as she once did, and particularly not outside of special, prearranged meetups and gatherings. 

Klaine will likewise be off doing their own thing. 

By 2020, they already have a kid, and as anyone in their twenties and thirties can tell you, friendships between people without kids and people with them take some serious work to maintain. Both parties have to be deeply invested in the endeavor in order to achieve success.

Since Brittana’s relationship with Klaine over the years has been tumultous at best, I somehow doubt that either party is going to log the effort to regularly socialize if Klaine have a kid and Brittana don’t. 

If Brittana do have children during their twenties, then maybe they’ll be able to arrange playdates between their kid and Klaine’s and bond with Klaine over their similar experiences in young parenthood.

But even if that scenario is the case, on a whole, I still don’t see Brittana and Klaine being particularly close.

Even beyond their responsibilities as new fathers, Klaine are also going to be busy with whatever careers they have. Like Rachel, their social circles will be based more in their current activities and work than in an old club from high school. Unless Brittana are in a similar line of work as they are, more relational slippage will occur. It will be easier for Klaine to socialize with others in their fields rather than with Brittana.

We know very little from canon about what Brittana will be up to in 2020, but I think it’s fairly telling that they’re not present for the NYC Tony Awards viewing party depicted in episode 6x13.

Either they’re in NYC but choose for whatever reason not to attend OR they’re not in NYC and so can’t attend. The dearth of canon information makes it difficult to know what exactly is going on.

Last we hear in episode 6x03, Brittana intend to live in NYC together and perhaps start attending school again. But we don’t really know where they go or what they do after their wedding—and especially not what becomes of them five years down the road.

If Brittana do remain in NYC in the long term, then they’ll probably see this Hummelsonberry a few times a year, usually in a group setting.

Still, despite having some interaction, the friendships here will never be intimate ones. Everything will be about shared activities and a common past, not emotional disclosure or deep personal trust. Just due to Hummelsonberry’s personalities, the focus of conversation and social energy will always be about seventy percent on them and their lives and only thirty percent on Brittana.

Of course, if Brittana move away from NYC—which eventually they may do, depending on where their career paths and family life takes them—then I think their level of interaction with Hummelsonberry will greatly decrease and will probably only take place at reunions, on special occasions, and through Facebook. 

They’ll exchange “likes” on good news posts and Christmas and Hanukkah cards each December, but they’re not going to be all up in one another’s business anymore, and there definitely won’t be any long, heartfelt phone calls or flights across the country for the sole purpose of seeing one another.

In any case, in the long run, I think Brittana will find that they like Hummelsonberry better from a distance and that having a catchup session once every year or two is preferable to being caught up in the vortex of their constant drama. Brittany will be able to handle Rachel better if she only has to interact with her on special occasions, and having some physical removal from Hummelberry will help Santana maintain perspective on them and preserve healthy social boundaries.

Quinn Fabray

I think that the future of the Unholy Trinity is pretty much up to Quinn.

Like I discuss in this post, Brittana have never really “needed” Quinn, per se. They’ve always been each other’s best friends, and she has been a third wheel. Over the years, there have been many times when Brittana have either purposefully separated themselves from Quinn or she from them, and whenever those instances of separation have occurred, Brittana have generally been fine, though Quinn has suffered for the isolation. 

Still, even though Brittana may not “need” Quinn, they do—despite their convoluted history with her—seem to want her, as we see when they seek her out throughout S2 and S3 especially.

Brittany’s S2 Heart Locker speech pretty much perfectly encapsulates how Brittana approach Quinn in the later seasons: they know that, in the past, they have fought with Quinn and stolen her boyfriends and threatened to quit their trio like every other week, and there’s been lots of weird stuff between them, but ultimately they realize that Quinn is their family, and they love and accept Quinn no matter what.

One of the main ways in which Brittana show their loving acceptance for Quinn is by allowing her to be the one to dictate the way the Unholy Trinity friendship functions. When Quinn isolates herself, they’ll seek her out and ask her nicely to return, but if she denies them, they’ll just let her be, trusting that eventually she’ll come back when she’s ready. They’re not going to push or get all up in her face. They know better than most people that everyone has to go at their own pace and that you shouldn’t force anyone to change their lives before they’re prepared to.

Honestly, I think Brittana’s “give her space” approach to Quinn explains why she doesn’t attend their wedding.

It’s not that Brittana don’t invite her.

I mean, they’re obviously fine with Quinn, even after the events of episode 4x14, given that they interact with her on friendly terms throughout S5 and early S6.  

It’s that she chooses not to come—and if I had to guess why, I’d say it’s probably because she feels awkward knowing that the last time she and Santana attended the same wedding, they ended up sleeping together. 

She knows she and Brittana are good under normal circumstances, but she can’t help but worry that it will be a little bit strange for her to be at their wedding, given that she and Santana have slept with each other. She feels uncomfortable, so she doesn’t show. She probably makes some excuse, saying she is busy with school or her job or traveling elsewhere.

—and headcanon says Brittana know that the excuse is bogus, but they don’t hold it against her.

For as much as they might like to have Quinn at the wedding, she clearly isn’t ready to be there, so they give her a pass. That’s just kind of their m.o. with Quinn. They’ll give her as much attention as she’ll allow but no more. 

That’s why I say that the future of the Unholy Trinity is ultimately on Quinn.

If she seeks Brittana out and shows that she is receptive to their overtures, then I can see them having a fairly warm relationship going forward. But if she continues to remain aloof, then Brittana will let her be.

Of course, I’d like to imagine that as Quinn matures and undergoes more treatment for her trauma and mental health issues, she becomes increasingly more comfortable with herself and is better equipped to maintain friendships. Though in her teens and twenties, she routinely ghosted whenever she couldn’t deal, now she actually reaches out to people—including Brittana.

Sure, their relationship is never exactly as close as they perhaps once wished it could be, but there’s still genuine affection there. 

So to the actual headcanons:

In their twenties, sometimes they’ll go months without any contact, but then out of the blue Brittana will get a postcard from Quinn who’s doing grad school work in Europe or attending some kind of nonprofit fundraiser on the West Coast. The postcard never says much, just, “Miss you girls. ❤ Q.” Just knowing that Quinn is out in the world and doing okay makes Brittana smile. The postcards go up on the refrigerator, stuck on with Brittany’s most colorful magnets. 

On the rare occasions when they’re in the same city, they go out for coffee and drinks. Brittana tease Quinn about her abysmal choices in men, and she tells them to fuck off because back when they were in high school and still dating boys, they didn’t fare much better. Later in the night, once they’re sufficiently drunk, they talk about how surreal it is that they’ve all slept with both Puck and Sam and that Brittany and Quinn have both slept with Santana, and Santana groans and says she needs another cosmo if they’re going to continue with this conversation. They all agree that they’re so glad things are different now. 

Occasionally, Quinntana fight on Twitter over political stuff. They’re mostly on the same side of the fence, but they do come from very different backgrounds, and there have been a few times when Santana has called Quinn out for spouting white feminist bullshit and Quinn has told Santana that she’s being unrealistic and needs to pull her head out of her ass. Brittany usually tries to make some joking comment to diffuse the situation, but in one instance things get so bad that Quinntana end up blocking each other and not talking—on Twitter or otherwise—for several months. The radio silence between them lasts a long time, but then one day something happens with Rachel, whom they both mutually follow, and they end up replying to the tweet almost simultaneously. A brief conversation ensues, and the next thing you know, they’re both following each other again. They eventually talk through their old issue and move on. Brittany posts a #tbt unholy trinity photo on Instagram to commemorate their make-up.

Over the holidays, when Brittana are in Lima visiting their folks and they run into Judy at the grocery store, they text Quinn “saw ur mom today xoxoxo.” Two seconds later, they send her a selfie they took with Judy by the freezer waffles. They’re all pulling duck faces. Quinn responds with an eye-roll emoji, but Brittana know she secretly loves it. 

Someday in the future, an obituary for one Sue Sylvester, Esq. starts circulating online. Brittana call Quinn and talk through the weird tangle of feelings that they know only she can really understand, stunned that the larger-than-life cheerleading coach who was in so many ways a monster to them is finally gone. 

If Quinn ever marries, you can bet that Brittana get her the most embarrassing sex toy ever for her bridal shower but the most thoughtful gift ever for the wedding—something not on the registery but that she ends up loving anyway.

Once they get into their thirties, they don’t see one another or talk very often, but when they do, it’s good. They’re living in different places, and their lives have taken very different turns, but they still enjoy one another’s company when they can have it. Quinn laughs more now than she ever did in high school, and she’s much more easygoing. There’s no slapping or one-upping. They all have this unspoken sense that they survived something together, and while it’s not the straightforward kind of friendship most people would recognize, for them it works. It’s what the Unholy Trinity is all about. 

Sam Evans and Noah Puckerman

When it comes to these boys, Brittana’s future relationships with them really depend on their future relationships with Brittana’s female friends.

Simply put: If in the long term Sam ends up with Mercedes and Puck ends up with Quinn, then Brittana are going to keep in contact with Sam and Puck by association. But if those romantic relationships don’t pan out, then I think Brittana will seldom if ever see or talk to Sam and Puck again except at glee reunions.

In real life, very few people actually marry their high school sweethearts, but in the Gleeverse, pretty much the exact opposite statistic holds true. 

That being the case, methinks that chances are Brittana will end up seeing their ex-boyfriends with some frequency over the years.

—and, frankly, while that’s probably not something they would have chosen to do if their friendships with their best girls didn’t necessitate it, I think that with things as they are, they probably actually take everything pretty in stride, and they’re able to foster a good group dynamic that works out well in the end.

Since they’re closer with Mercedes than they are with Quinn, they see Sam more often than they do Puck. 

Now that she is not in direct competition with him for Brittany, Santana reverts to her S3 dynamics with Sam, meaning that she treats him like a dorky younger brother, teasing him about his lips (and now probably also his relationship with Mercedes). He takes her snark in stride and they actually develop a fairly good rapport. It’s not like they disclose a lot to each other or they ever hang out together in the absence of Mercedes, but they can keep a friendly conversation going at family BBQs, and there’s a lot less tension between them nowadays than there was during S4, for sure.

Brittany goes back to mostly ignoring Sam, much as she did throughout S2, S5, and S6. It’s not that she’s cold to him, but they don’t really have a lot of one-on-one conversations with each other. They do fine in a group setting, and Sam’s impressions still make Brittany laugh pretty hard, but the personal bond they used to have has essentially dissolved. They dated, and thank god it didn’t work out, because now they’re both married to other people—the right people—and they wouldn’t have things any other way.

I tend to think that if Samcedes get married, they’ll almost certainly have kids someday, and if Brittana also have kids someday, then I can see playdates as a real bonding experience for Brittana and Sam. Sam is great with kids, and Brittana would be the kind of moms who would love anyone who loved their children, so watching Sam run around with Sugar their toddler on his shoulders at the same time that his and Mercedes’s baby sits cooing at them from a nearby bouncy swing would definitely be something that they would find endearing.

As for Puck, Brittana don’t have a ton to say to him, and, honestly, Quinn tends to for the most part leave him behind when she and Brittana have meetups (“He says we should have fun doing our ‘girlie stuff.’ He’s going out with some of his old squadron buddies. He’ll swing by around midnight to pick me up”).

Still, on the rare occasions when they are with him, they get along okay. Pretty early on, he figures out that Brittany is a wizard at calculating flight trajectories off the top of her head, so he quizzes her on the physics like it’s a party trick, and he and Santana mostly just talk shit to each other, not in a mean way like they used to but just because they’re both hotheads who like to run their mouths.

Of course, Puck is always a little bit weird about the fact that both he and Brittana are attracted to women, not in the sense that he says lewd things—he grew out of that after high school, thank god—but in the sense that he is clearly fascinated and keeps trying to figure out if Brittana have “types.” 

Brittana and Quick will be out having drinks, and Quinn will excuse herself to go use the restroom, and as soon as she’s out of earshot, Puck will point up at whatever actress or model is on the TV over the bar and make a comment like, “Hot blonde, right? Great legs,” trying to see if Santana and Brittany will agree with him.  

Hint: They mostly just roll their eyes.

All in all, Brittana are never very personally close with either Sam or Puck, but they learn to get along with them pretty well in the way one does with in-laws.

Mercedes Jones

Saved the happiest one for last.

Since Mercedes is the friend Brittana have the best relationship with to close out the show, I think she is the one they remain emotionally closest to as the years march on. When she took them on as her background dancers, that made her their family, and they’re always going to feel warmly towards her and want to spend time with her when they can. 

Of course, that said, Mercedes is a busy person with a recording career and active touring schedule, so maintaining a relationship with her requires some serious work on the parts of both parties. 

When Mercedes rolls into town, Brittana know that they are basically “on call” to meet up with her whenever she can spare a moment between her radio gigs and photo shoots and recording sessions and nightly concerts. 

Sometimes they’ve reunited with her in the strangest places and under the most hectic circumstances—for twenty minutes in the parking lot at the airport while she is on a layover coming back to the States from the UK, backstage at Studio 8-H while she’s filming promos for an SNL episode on which she’s the musical guest, and at three in the morning on a double-decker bus outside MSG after she rocks a sold-out show and takes three successive encores.

They don’t necessarily get to talk to her very often, but they do text with her every few weeks, and on the rare occasions when they can “steal her” for an hour or two, they make up for lost time laughing and singing and smiling their full heads off.

—and for as busy as Mercedes is, she does go the extra mile to make time for Brittana, too, flying them out to LA to lay down some background vocals on a charity track she’s doing for hurricane relief; throwing them a baby shower the same day she has a morning interview with Kelly Ripa; making sure that they know ten months in advance that they will be bridesmaids at her wedding so they had better clear their calendars (“Santana, you are allowed three mouth jokes about my groom during the reception, so you’d better use them wisely—and not during your toast”).

Once Mercedes and Sam start having kids of their own, Mercedes’s schedule clears out somewhat—not because her career is failing but because she makes a personal decision to spend as much time as she can with her family—and once it does, she and Brittana are able to socialize more regularly.

I headcanon Mercedes as Brittana’s child(ren)’s godmother, and I think that Brittana are probably godmothers to at least one of her kids, too.

Sometimes Mercedes still has no idea what Brittany’s talking about when she rambles, and Sancedes still rib each other on occasion, but at the end of the day, they’re three friends who support and love each other no matter what.

Because both sides continually put in the effort to keep the friendship alive and growing, Brittanacedes actually get closer as the years go on, developing a truly intimate friendship of the kind that earns Brittana mentions in Mercedes’s “Greatest Hits” album liner notes and which makes Brittana feel, perhaps for the first time outside of the relationship they have with each other, that they’ve got someone who really has their backs and will put in the work for them like a true friend should. 

Final Note

Though I believe that Brittana will grow apart from many members of the New Directions over time, that’s not to say that I think that they won’t have friends. 

Even as they grow apart from some members of their high school social circle, they’ll make new friends through their school, work, and other activities. There may be besties in their future that we never got to meet on the show—a neighbor who has kids the same age as theirs are, a hilarious coworker, a wlw couple they meet at Pride.

Honestly, I think that Brittana will increasingly come into their own as they get older. While they were “popular girls” in high school, the reality is that they both had a lot of hangups that made it difficult for them to make and keep friends and develop platonic intimacy even with the people they liked. As adults, they’re infinitely more comfortable with themselves and better equipped to let others in. They don’t hide. They show all of the awesomeness that they are.   

Like I talk about at the end of this post, Brittana have a lot to offer people who give them a fair shake and see them for who they are currently as opposed to who they may have been in the past. They’re hilarious, talented, generous women who have a great capacity for love. 

Particularly as Brittany starts dating Artie and Santana is left miserable and pining, she can’t just pretend that everything is okay. If Brittany were “just” her best friend, then they would be able to continue their friendship even with Brittany having a boyfriend. But they can’t. They either don’t talk at all, or they end up sleeping with each other on the side. The whole time, Santana feels awful inside. She just wants Brittany back, and she can’t deny why she does.

Everything comes to a head in episode 2x15. That’s when Santana finally stops battling with herself, giving her head full permission to explore all the thoughts and feelings that she has been pushing down for so long.

It’s not necessarily new information to her that she’s in love with Brittany. What’s new is that she is allowing herself to think about things that she has never thought about before---and especially that she is allowing herself to let go of all her old “rules” (see here) and consider what it is that she really wants, even though she is still afraid.

To me, the key word in the Hurt Locker speech isn’t “realize” but “accept.” The feelings have always been there, and some part of Santana has always known that they were. It’s just that in the past she has always fought against them. Santana hasn’t been just “blissfully ignorant” of her love for Brittany for all these years. She has been actively telling herself not to feel the way that she feels, and it has taken some extreme mental gymnastics on her part to contort and twist her way out of accepting the truth. 

So, all of the above said, when it comes to the “counting smiles” line, my reading is this:

There once was a sophomore girl who sat on the back row in the choir room, counting her best friend’s smiles. When she won them, she felt elated. When she didn’t, she died inside. In the moment, her heart ruled. It wanted---no, needed---to count, so she counted. It was almost instinctual. She couldn’t help herself.

But then she’d go home after glee club, and once the moment was over and the thrill or the heartache she had felt had subsided, her brain took back the reins. Though a part of her was deeply, keenly aware that there was no “best friendly” explanation for her counting, another part, desperate and scrambling, quashed down her doubts and reassured her that there was no cause for alarm---that she shouldn’t question what she was doing, because, really, there was nothing to question. She wasn’t. She didn’t. No feelings there. End of story. She would do better tomorrow. No more counting. That’s it.

But there was always more counting and always other cues, and that’s why, one school year later, the girl found herself in a crowded hallway, standing in front of her best friend, saying, in essence, “I’ve finally let myself consciously acknowledge what I’ve subconsciously known for a long time: I am hopelessly in love with you, and trying to pretend that I’m not is killing me. I don’t want to do that anymore. I want to tell the truth.”

It’s a sentiment she’ll later more fully articulate when she comes out to her grandmother in episode 3x07:

I'vetried so hard to push this feeling away and keep it locked inside, but everyday just feels like a war. I walk around so mad at the world, but I'm reallyjust fighting with myself. I don't want to fight anymore. I'm just too tired. Ihave to just be me.

For Santana, it was one thing to have the feelings but another thing to name them and another thing to finally say that name aloud. It was only after she reached that last step that she was able to look back over the last few years and say, in retrospect, “Yeah, when I counted Brittany’s smiles, it meant something. It always did. I loved her then, just like I love her now.”

Anyway, I’m rambling.

Thanks for the question!

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When episode 2x22 “NewYork” originally aired, spoilers per Brad Falchuk suggested that Brittana would end S2 “with abang.” 

Many fans hoped that this “bang” would take the form of a first onscreenBrittana kiss and/or Santana coming out of the closet and/or the girls finally decidingthat they were officially dating.

Instead, the “bang”played out as the Heart Locker, a scene which gave us a reaffirmation ofBrittana’s best friendship, a really sweet hug and a pinky-link, and Brittany tellingSantana that, for them, “anything is possible” because they love each othermore than anything else in the world.

Initially, therelative quietness of this “bang” left many fans feeling underwhelmed. For allthe ups and downs that last six episodes of S2 had provided, Brittana had neverthelessmade very little in the way of measurable progress towards dating. No one wasexactly sure where they stood or even if TPTB at Glee were going to continue topursue a romantic storyline for them come S3.

During the summerhiatus between S2 and S3, rumors and fears abounded. Some fans worried that thewriters might introduce a new love interest for one or both of the girls comeS3. Others worried that once S3 started, Brittana would once again be relegatedto background status and all forward development for them would cease.

As the summercontinued, hopeful spoilers started to leak out, and the fandom allowed itselfto imagine some more favorable scenarios: Maybe Brittana would kiss or startdating in the season premiere. Maybe Santana would begin S3 out. Maybe she andBrittany would already be dating by the time S3 started. Maybe we would seeflashbacks to what they did with their summer vacation or at least hear aboutit in a JBI retrospective.

But, again, thingsdidn’t unfold exactly as the fandom expected.

Episode 3x01 “ThePurple Piano Project” was not the Brittana watershed we were hoping for.

The S3 premiere sawBrittana back on the Cheerios for the first time since episode 2x11 “The SueSylvester Shuffle,” with Santana being awarded dual captaincy with Becky.

In Brittana’s firstscene together, Santana got a lunch tray for her and Brittany to share andwalked with her arm-in-arm to their seats. They did talk to JBI but not abouttheir love lives, only about Santana’s plan to rock her senior year andBrittany’s efforts to assemble a functional time machine.

There was no explicitconfirmation that Brittana were dating each other—but, then again, there wasalso nothing to say that they were dating anyone else, either.

They tried to re-recruitQuinn to the New Directions and Cheerios together, but it was unclear what, ifanything, Quinn knew about their relationship.

The girls were onceagain a two-shot, appearing in almost every scene together. They danced on thetables with each other during “We Got the Beat” and sat side-by-side followingthe food fight (“Those are your nipples”).

Later on, Sue seemedto intimate that she knew the truth about Santana’s sexuality and used thatknowledge to blackmail Santana into sabotaging Will’s piano project. Santanadid not appear to be out, but she and Brittany were being awfully chummy inpublic. When Santana got kicked out the glee club, Brittany appeared noticeablydistressed, to the point that even Finn seemed to notice.

Everything was,frankly, ambiguous.

There was nothing tosay that Brittana had made progress between S2 and S3. There was also nothingto say they had regressed.

After working throughsome initial feelings of disappointment, the fandom held its collective breath,waiting to learn more. 

Some fans, myself included, wondered if Brittana werealready secretly dating and suspected that maybe a big reveal would come about at somepoint later in the season. Other fans fretted that maybe we would never see anymore mainline development for romantic Brittana at all—that this “Are they oraren’t they?” ambiguity was all we were ever going to get.

True to form, Gleestrung us along. The next two episodes of S3 tiptoed around Brittana’srelationship, with each new episode offering tantalizing clues but never delivering anything definitive.

In episode 3x02 “I AmUnicorn,” Brittany seemed bound and determined to make WMHS a safe space forLGBTQ kids, and she attempted to use Kurt’s campaign for the senior classpresidency to achieve that end. When Kurt rejected Brittany’s designs,Santana made a point to compliment her genius and encourage her to believe inherself. Everything was very sweet and seemed significant, but, again, nothingwas explicitly explained.

In episode 3x03 “AsianF,” Brittany showed up the Booty Camp, seemingly in support of Santana. Later,she performed “Run the World (Girls)” with Santana singing backup. Theperformance was definitely sexy and suggested Santana’s devotion not only toBrittany’s cause but to Brittany herself. However, it was perhaps lessintriguing, from a Brittana perspective, than Mercedes’s dream sequence performanceof “It’s All Over,” in which Mercedes clearly identified Brittana as a powercouple and talked about Santana “knocking off that piece who thinks she’sbetter than everybody running for president”—i.e., Brittany. Once again, fanswere left wondering what, if anything, was the deal with Brittana. Were theydating or what? If so, did the whole school know about it? Or was Mercedes aspecial case?

Finally, episode 3x04 “PotO’ Gold” provided some answers—though, again, not the answers fans perhapsexpected.

It turned out thatBrittany and Santana had been going on dates—eating out at BreadStix, takingromantic baths together, etc.—only Santana wasn’t sure if that meant they were actuallydating. Brittany reassured her that they were, in fact, dating if she wantedthem to be dating (“I ordered shrimp”). And Santana did want them to be dating, just with the stipulation that their relationship remain private (“under thenapkin”), at least for the time being.

This developmentfilled in some blanks for the fandom:

Santana was not yetout.

Brittana had spent the summer and early school year going on dates but notdefining their relationship.

Brittany was fine with taking things at Santana’s pace.

Santana was ready to date Brittany and be in a committed relationship with herbut not yet ready to make their relationship public.

What it didn’t tell uswas how, exactly, Brittana had spent their summer vacation or to what degreethey had discussed Santana’s coming out process to date. Did they have a planfor how they were going to proceed or were they more playing things by ear?

To this point in showhistory, we, as the audience, still had yet to meet Santana’s family on screen, soquestions remained as to how accepting or unaccepting they might beconcerning her sexuality. 

There had been some hints to suggest that Santanafeared their potential reaction to her coming out but nothing had beenexplicitly stated. 

Fans wondered to what degree the Lopez family would figure into Brittana’sstoryline going forward. 

They also wondered how much or how little Brittana’sromantic development would feature in the show throughout the rest of theseason.

When spoilers startedto leak for Santana’s “coming out” arc, set to feature in episodes 3x06 “MashOff” and 3x07 “I Kissed a Girl,” the fandom hoped that maybe we would learnmore about the nature and history of Brittana’s relationship from the end of S2until present.

But that’s the thingabout Glee: The writers very rarely examined developments in retrospect. Thingshappened off screen, through insinuation, and in passing and were never againrevisited. No new details or developments were made, and the story clipped alongat its same heady pace, full steam ahead.

So was the case withBrittana’s relationship.

We got developmentsgoing forward in S3, but the narrative never looked back or provided any newinsight into what had happened to get Brittana from the Heart Locker in 2x22 to “Iwish you’d hold my hand” in 3x04.

That being the case,there just aren’t that many concrete answers to be had about the summer S2-S3 hiatus period in Brittana history. All we can dois make inferences and write fanfiction.

My personal inferencesabout that “lost summer” are these:

I believe that,following the Heart Locker conversation, Brittany and Santana’s relationshipachieved a state of new equilibrium.

Things weren’t thesame as they had been pre-Hurt Locker, where they were friends who slepttogether but never talked about feelings (even though feelings were obviouslythere). Things also weren’t the same as they had been throughout the Back Six ofS2, with so many stutter steps and hesitations and backslides andcomplications, each new week trading heartbreaks and triumphs.Neither one of the girls was dating anyone else, and they weren’t desperately tryingto maintain the image of heterosexuality, as they had in the past.

Instead, Brittana achieved a new normal.

They spent timetogether—probably lots of it in each other’s homes, as we can infer from thefact that they occasionally bathed together—and they gradually resumed theirphysical intimacy, only this time it was different, because the feelingsunderlying it weren’t being suppressed and secreted anymore.

Though fans hadoriginally inferred that Brittany wouldn’t be ready to date Santana untilSantana came out, the truth was that Brittany was ready to date Santana as longas they were exclusive with each other and there was no more obfuscationbetween them about the nature of their feelings.

They didn’tnecessarily have explicit conversations about the nature of their relationship,hence why Santana remained uncertain, even going into the new school year, asto whether or not Brittany was actually her girlfriend. Brittany, on the otherhand, knew that she and Santana were steady dating, but she wasn’t about toforce Santana into labeling their dynamic before she was ready, so she just playedthings cool, waiting for Santana to come to her.

In the meantime, thegirls decided—together—that they would rejoin Cheerios and attain leadershippositions in Sue’s organization.

They also decided thatthey would try to reform the Unholy Trinity and get Quinn to rejoincheerleading and glee club with them.

When the school yearbegan, they essentially hid their new and improved dynamic in plain sight.Santana didn’t come out to the school, and she and Brittany didn’t tell anyonethey’d been going on dates. However, the girls also made no efforts to hide theircloseness or to beard with boys, as per their m.o. in years past. If people sawthem together and made inferences, then so be it. They just weren’t going tomake any public announcements themselves—and especially not before they haddefined their relationship between the two of them.

There was perhaps somesense between them that they were gradually working towards “going public”—thatSantana was trying to become more comfortable with herself and that they werebuilding up the kind of social capital that would afford them the freedom to dowhat they wanted within the walls of WMHS—but I don’t think they had a stricttimeline on coming out or even a real plan as to how that process might unfold.

Things were still newbetween them, and they were still figuring out how to bridge the gap betweenwhat they had been in the past and what they were now—hence all the ambiguityduring the first few episodes of S3.

Honestly, this periodin Brittana history is one of my favorites to imagine, specifically because itis so open to interpretation, so I’ve written a lot of fic about it. If you are interested, you can find my main “summer between S2-S3″ stories here: 

AndEverything is August You

Can’tHelp but Fall Just to Land

Of course, these stories are just my take on this particular period in Brittana history, and other authors have imagined things in delightfully different ways.

As stated above, we don’t have many hard answers about how Brittana made the transition between S2 and S3. We just have the sense that things were keenly different between Brittana, starting their senior year.

In any case, I have jabbered a lot now.