Creddie Begins Anew On 'iCarly': Miranda Cosgrove Discusses Season 3 And The Show's Growth

It's almost like this is what the revival was for

Warning: This article contains spoilers for iCarly revival season 3, episode 3, "iMake New Memories."

A long-docked ship set sail once again Thursday. On the latest episode of the iCarly revival on Paramount+, "iMake New Memories", longtime friends Carly Shay, played by Miranda Cosgrove, and Freddie Benson, played by Nathan Kress, took another shot at a romantic relationship, confessing their evolved feelings for what they've been in recent times.

The episode's plot is kicked off by what was ultimately just a scare, but Spencer builds a canopy called Memory Lane, which shorts out, and causes Carly's phone to crash and wipes out 15 years' worth of photos. The backups were used to provide the memories for the canopy, so were burned out too. So in her quest to recreate every photo, she and Freddie end up slow dancing again in what used to be the Groovy Smoothie and is now "Shay What", like at the disaster school function in "iSpeed Date". One such memory she tries to recreate is a dinner she and Freddie had in Italy when he surprised her a month after she kissed him and moved there in the series finale. She had such positive memories but didn't realize how her emphatic friendzoning when he was there to ask her to be his girlfriend (though she didn't know it) hurt him, to the point that he called it the worst day of his life. Freddie of course has been in love with Carly since he was a young admirer from more of an afar. He was having such trouble dealing he faked a family emergency text just to get away. 

While they both walk away upset, Harper, Carly's roommate who has witnessed her bubbling feelings manifest in buckled knees toward the end of Freddie's relationship with previous girlfriend Pearl, encourages her to just tell him her feelings. Freddie realized how much he needed to move past the stewed bitterness, acknowledging Carly's gesture. He goes to check on Carly to find the canopy fully functional, the hard drive restored thanks to Socko's cousin Gizmo. Remembering the birth of the webshow in the pilot, or his heroics in "iSaved Your Life", Carly admits those infatuation highs never really went away. He's her hero, and always there for her. She confesses she likes him in that way for the first time. She assures him that their friendship won't disintegrate if their romance does. Freddie asks if they're really doing this, Carly hopes so, lamenting that it's taken them long enough. They kiss, and Carly excitedly wants to do so again. Freddie can only get to four in his countdown before they're back at it.

"It's taken 15 years for them to finally get together," Cosgrove says. "I think that it makes a lot of sense for both of the characters. And if it were real life, I could see it actually taking this long because it feels like every time one of them likes the other, it's not the right moment or it's not for the right reason, and now it finally is." She also says the second kiss was completely improvised, never present in the script. "We did it in one take the very last time and we were both really unsure about it. Some of the writers came over and they were like, 'We have this idea, it might be too much, but just give it a shot for one take.' And so many times we do things and it doesn't end up on the show or we'll improvise. So you never know what's gonna end up in there. That's what makes it fun and exciting. When we were filming the scene, we were both like, we don't know if this is gonna work, but we'll try it."

The moment reinforces the more mature approach this series takes compared to the original five seasons on Nickelodeon. Cosgrove calls it a necessity for chronicling childhood friends exploring a new chapter of their lives as adults. In the series, Freddie has been married twice and has a stepdaughter named Millicent, played by Jaidyn Triplett. Cosgrove also went into how the show goes deeper emotionally, doing more serious things while still staying light-hearted, saying "Sometimes it's a little bit of a challenge just finding the perfect balance. I think because it's iCarly, heavy for us is still not very heavy."

She also acknowledges that with fifteen years of buildup, Creddie has to be done right. She even draws parallels to Lizzie and Gordo from Lizzie McGuire. "When I was little, I always wanted Gordo with Lizzie," she elaborates. "I think a part of me always hoped that Freddie and Carly would end up together just because it's so romantic, the idea of knowing somebody ever since you were young, being best friends, kind of going back and forth liking each other, but the timing always being off. I'm excited for the people that do ship them and want them together...to finally get what they've been waiting for and I hope that it lives up to their expectations." One may recall that the revival was announced a week before the attempted Lizzie McGuire revival collapsed in December 2020.

What's to come for the rest of season three? Cosgrove promises more big moments for Creddie, with a shocking finale. "The finale episode we touch on something that has kind of been a big question that people have asked throughout the whole series and has never really had an answer to," Already, fans are wondering what this could entail, believing it to be about Carly and Spencer's mother with a raised possibility of Freddie's dad. Season three of the iCarly revival will continue to release weekly on Paramount+, and with seven episodes left, the season finale is expected on July 27.

Source: Entertainment Weekly