Hot girl summer is over. This year, it’s all about the ménage à trois. Yes, trios have been having a moment across the entertainment landscape this year—from film to scripted TV to reality TV—adding an extra touch of frisson to steamy stories while moving the Overton window for audiences. What is most thrilling is that these new throuples are also marked by power dynamics that may be even more subversive than the sight of three people sharing a kiss at the same time.

Historically in popular culture, threesomes have been a mostly male-dominated enterprise. Frat bro films from the early aughts like EuroTrip, Road Trip, Old School, and American Pie positioned threesomes as the pinnacle of male sexual conquest, where the man was in control and the women (it was always one man with two women, often twins) were objects to be pursued and won. Threesomes were sexy punchlines meant to stroke the male ego.

But not anymore. The most explicit threesome in this new era turns that very notion on its head. Netflix’s Bridgerton steams things up in the latter half of its third season (coincidence?!) with an outrageous and unexpected threesome subplot surrounding the second-oldest Bridgerton brother, Benedict, played by Luke Thompson. Benedict romances the adventurous widow Lady Tilley Arnold (Hannah New), only to wind up fooling around with Tilley and her male friend Paul Suarez (Lucas Aurelio), at Tilley’s request.

Before the excitement picked up on Bridgerton, the threesome trend was already in motion thanks to Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers and its central triad, tennis phenoms Art Donaldson (Mike Faist), Patrick Zweig (Josh O’Connor), and Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). The overwhelming sexual tension and ever-changing power dynamics between Art, Patrick, and Tashi set the internet ablaze with Challengers-centric throuple memes and helped Challengers, the rare R-rated film not based on any existing IP, crack into the zeitgeist.

While its protagonists never consummate their three-way relationship as explicitly as the Bridgerton crew, the film has plenty of three-way-coded moments, from hotel room hangouts to churros to sauna sessions. And while the film’s ending may have been intentionally ambiguous, Guadagnino seems pretty clear as to what happened immediately after the credits rolled. “They go back to the hotel room,” Guadagnino said to Times reporter Kyle Buchanan. We all know what happens in hotel rooms.

Naturally, Luke Thompson can see the parallels between his show and Guadagnino’s film. “Challengers I’ve seen recently, and I think that was really interesting,” the Bridgerton star says in a recent interview with VF. “It’s such an interesting relationship, and the dynamics within it are so interesting.” But he also noted that similar dynamics have been depicted in older stories, like Noel Coward’s 1932 play, Design For Living. “You’re saying [threesomes] are having a moment, but I guess what I’m saying, in terms of Coward, as well, is that they’ve always been there,” says Thompson.

That’s true—but both throuples and polyamory in general have become much more visible in mainstream culture in recent years. In April, The New York Times went long on a 20-person polycule, unpacking the trials and tribulations of maintaining a massive multiple-person relationship in a post Sam Bankman-Fried society. New York Magazine published its own polyamory-focused issue back in January, around the same time that Molly Roden Winter’s More: A Memoir of Open Marriage became a bestseller. Network comedies traditionally known for more wholesome fare have been pushing the envelope this year as well, with CBS sleeper hit sitcom Ghosts showcasing a spooky threesome of its own.

The experiment of dating multiple people at the same time has been a hallmark of reality television since the genre’s invention (see The Bachelor, for starters). But an explicit focus on trios and polyamory is relatively new. In February, Peacock debuted a reality show called Couple to Throuple that took four couples new to non-monogamy, introduced them to a host of more experienced singles, and left them with the choice to pursue a relationship as a threesome or return to monogamy. While we’ve seen almost every possible ending for two romantics looking for love on, say, The Bachelorette, we’ve never seen a Bachelorette end the show in a relationship with two of her paramours.

Searching for happiness outside the boundaries of traditional monogamy makes sense to Thompson: “There’s something about that I find really moving, actually, because it feels like there’s a real human thing of saying, ‘Let’s try and break free of this thing,’” he says. But, of course, it’s not always as simple as that: “Then you realize that, actually, although you do break free of something, other complications arise.”

Those complications take center stage on the Paramount+ show Couples Therapy. For the first time in the show’s four-season history, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Dr. Orna Guralnik opened her doors to a throuple this year, Josh, Lorena, and Aryn, who were trying to figure out how to make ethical non-monogamy work for them.

Josh and Aryn, a circus performer, have been together for eight years. Lorena was brought into the fold as another romantic partner for Josh within the past two years, in part due to the demanding nature of Aryn’s job. (Lorena and Aryn are not in a relationship together). Sitting side by side by side on Orna’s couch, the trio struggles to divest from the hierarchical power structures that tend to emerge even in polyamorous relationships, calling Aryn the “anchor partner” rather than the “primary partner” and trying to hold space for each other’s feelings.

“Doing anything that’s non-normative and against the culture is really hard,” Lorena said in one of her final sessions with Dr. Orna. “I feel like it just stays messy.”

Thompson expresses the messiness of three-way relationships in another way. “What I find moving is that, strangely, pure freedom does not exist,” he says. “It just doesn’t exist. There are other limitations and other complications that will come up, because we’re humans, and we’re complicated, and we’re scared, and we’re all of those kinds of things.” Diving into a complex and nuanced three-way relationship dynamic on Bridgerton, the actor adds, is “a really nice way of tapping into those human emotions.”

Highlighting the messy and nuanced dynamics of three-way relationships has made the overly simple, chauvinistic, male-driven threesome of the early aughts seem like a relic of a foregone era. Now, it’s Tashi Duncan who is pulling the strings and playing with Art and Patrick like Ken dolls. It’s Lady Tilley who has agency—who broaches the potential of a secret three-way rendezvous with Benedict and Paul in the first place. Even in Couples Therapy—a female, female, male relationship—true clarity and resolution only comes when the women in the relationship, Lorena and Aryn, communicate and get on the same page, as Josh learns to take a step back and simply listen.

Of course, throuples and three-way relationships are still taboo, but society seems more interested in exploring that taboo than ever before. And, at least as of late, it’s the women who seem to be taking the reins. Maybe it is still hot girl summer after all.