How Prime Video's Harlem gives audiences a twist on happily ever after

The allure of a storybook ending is irresistible, especially if you’re a self-described romantic like Tracy Oliver. But for Oliver, the showrunner of Prime Video’s Harlem, “happily ever after” is best served with a twist.

What a happy ending can look like has been at the forefront of Oliver’s mind since she started working on Harlem’s third and final season, which is now streaming on Prime Video. The new season is filled with plenty of unexpected moments for best friends Camille (Meagan Good), Tye (Jerrie Johnson), Quinn (Grace Byers), and Angie (Shoniqua Shandai). From motherhood to career pivots, the women face big life decisions as they look to the future, making choices that will surprise and even shock viewers as the series comes to a close.

“It works itself out, but in the most unexpected of ways,” Oliver says of wrapping up each of the characters’ stories in season three. “I think people will feel a satisfaction from seeing how we tie together things, even from season one.”

Fearlessly embracing the unexpected is nothing new for Oliver in her journey with Harlem. She wrote the show as a love letter to female friendships, with the hope of creating the kind of show that she wanted to see, but that she felt was missing on television at the time.

“I wanted to see more friendship shows,” Oliver says of debuting the show in 2021. “From Golden Girls to Sex and the City, I love female friendship shows, they’re my favorite types of shows. I missed shows like Girlfriends—there just wasn't one with Black women on the air at this time.”

This instinct to create something unique and original, is exactly what excites audiences. According to the 2024 From Ads to Zeitgeist research from HAQM Ads, 62% of consumers are looking for the creation of more original content.

Harlem concludes its third and final season during an incredible run for acclaimed shows and movies on Prime Video. In December, Prime Video debuted Beast Games, which became HAQM’s most-watched unscripted show of all-time globally on Prime Video through its first 25 days with more than 50 million viewers and growing. It capped off an outstanding year for HAQM MGM Studios, who won seven Primetime Emmys in 2024, including two each for Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Fallout. This past year also marks a first in which brands can reach millions of Prime Video viewers with Streaming TV ads in shows and movies.

And while 2025 has just started, HAQM MGM Studios kicked off the year with two Oscar nominations for the critically acclaimed RaMell Ross film, Nickel Boys. Prime Video also recently released the comedy film You’re Cordially Invited, starring Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon, which is #1 worldwide on Prime Video.

In Harlem, the friendships between the women are intimate, vulnerable, and sometimes messy—which is why Prime Video viewers connect with this show. Oliver says the intimacy of the show comes from the real-life close friendships of the cast, whose on-screen chemistry and humor owes much to their off-screen affection for one another.

“I’ve learned about sisterhood from these women,” Shandai says of her Harlem co-stars. “In sharing vulnerability with them, on and off-screen, it has truly changed the way that I love myself and also the way that I interact in all areas of love, with relationships and friendships alike.”

Good, whose character Camille serves as the show’s de facto narrator, seconded Shandai’s sentiment.

“We’re all a part of a family,” she says. “This is the best professional experience I’ve ever had and the best home I’ve ever had.”

For Johnson, whose first major role was on Harlem, the show and its production, have set a high standard for what she wants to pursue going forward.

“I was so happy to be a part of this cast, but also to be working with a production company and people who were so amazing, loving and giving,” Johnson says, noting that the experience was shaped, top-down, by Oliver’s leadership. “We’re a family, but I also feel like we’re a family in HAQM’s family—I’ll take this feeling with me on other sets.”

For Oliver, ensuring that the set was a safe space for everyone, from the cast to crew, to feel safe and valued, was of as much (if not more) importance as developing the storylines and working on the scripts.

“I wanted everybody to feel appreciated and to actually look forward to coming to work every day,” she says. “To have hundreds of people say, ‘I am sad that this is over, this is the best job I ever had’—that means more to me than story stuff, just people enjoying what they do and loving the show in that way.”

And though it’s bittersweet that Harlem is ending for the show’s cast and crew, Shandai takes comfort in knowing that the legacy of the show will go on.

“I am so grateful to Tracy because we got the opportunity to show these characters’ full humanity,” Shandai says. “What she did has greatly impacted TV and has shown that these characters deserve a full conversation, to have layers and fears and everything else.”