Sex Lives of College Girls Showrunner Justin Noble Has No Plans for 'Any Big Time Jumps' Despite Delays in Show's Release (Exclusive)

The great minds behind The Sex Lives of College Girls are in no hurry to get Essex College's fabulous foursome into graduation caps.

Ahead of the long-awaited premiere of season 3 of the Max comedy series, which stars Reneé Rapp, Pauline Chalamet, Alyah Chanelle Scott and Amrit Kaur, showrunner Justin Noble tells PEOPLE that they're "slow-playing it for a reason."

"I don't want to commit to a four-year show. Yeah, this is a hit, we got to keep it going," Noble says.

Still, though, he knows that the two-year wait between seasons 2 and 3, which premieres on Nov. 21, was less than ideal. "It has been in the making for so long," he says, due to the four-month writers' strike.

"Once the strike was over, it was of course like, 'It's been too long. Go, go, go, go, go,' and we had to kind of sprint. So we've kind of been in a sprint since the end of the writers' strike to get it all done."

Despite the unexpected delays, which were out of their control, Noble, who created the show alongside Mindy Kaling, says their plan going forward is still to make the show "at the pace that feels creatively appropriate."

"I don't want to make any big time jumps, because I think, at this stage in their lives, their lives change so quickly that a time jump would feel fake," he says, referring to the fact that the core four are just beginning their sophomore year when season 3 picks up. "And so, I'm kind of inclined to just let it play out."

"If it ends up being 35 seasons of television before they graduate, I'm fine with it," Noble jokes.

As for what fans can expect from this upcoming season, the Brooklyn Nine-Nine writer says the girls "really start to figure out li -

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ttle itty bitty things that are about who they're going to be as people."

"A lot of those realizations come towards the end of the season," Noble continues, before teasing what's to come for each character, starting with Scott's soccer star Whitney, who he says will "start to draw some firmer boundaries."

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Chalamet's character Kimberly "knew exactly what she wanted out of life by the time she was 16, and I think we start to tell a story of maybe it's smart to reinvestigate that," Noble says.

Kaur's scene-stealer and comedy hopeful Bela "made a series of mistakes for two straight seasons and was starting to feel the ramifications, of that," Noble says. "So we knew that we wanted to start telling a Bela redemption arc, where she at least tries — as best as Bela Malhotra can try to do anything — to do something for someone else's benefit."

Season 3 also sees Rapp, 24, exit the show, which was confirmed last summer. As for how her fate is explained, Noble keeps tight-lipped but says he and Kaling, 45, "knew" what they were going to have Leighton's future look like very quickly, though he does tease that her exit was "deeply emotional" both onscreen and off.

Noble adds of how Rapp's character's story ends, "I'm really glad about the way it came across on the show."

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Season 3 of The Sex Lives of College Girls premiered Thursday, Nov. 21 on Max.

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