Maxton Hall Keeps the Prep School Romance Alive

“Maxton Hall College is not just a school. It is the school.”

James (Damian Hardung) and Ruby’s (Harriet Herbig-Matten) electric romance may be the primary focus of Maxton Hall — The World Between Us, but the school itself is just as important of a character. Based on the novel Save Me by Mona Kasten, Prime Video’s new German YA drama series utilizes its prep school setting to lay the groundwork for its central enemies-to-lovers romance. 

Fancy preparatory schools like Maxton Hall College have always featured prominently in TV and films. Looking at just the last couple of decades, the original Gossip Girl, which ran on The CW from 2007 to 2012, offered a window into the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s uber-privileged Upper East Side teenagers as they attended Constance Billard School for Girls and St. Jude's School for Boys. Recent Netflix hits Elite and Young Royals introduced viewers to the exclusive Spanish private school Las Encinas and Swedish boarding school Hillerska, respectively. Alexander Payne’s 2023 film The Holdovers delved into the harsher side of life at an all-male boarding school. 

Maxton Hall’s prep school setting serves as both a sexy, stylish backdrop and a vehicle for exploring more serious issues like income inequality and tumultuous family dynamics. Classmates James and Ruby are a classic enemies-to-lovers ship, but their initial mutual animosity for each other is really about class disparity. Ruby, who hails from a working class family, works part-time on top of her studies to make ends meet, and wants nothing more than to go to Oxford College, sees James as “everything that’s wrong with the wealthy.” In her eyes, he not only takes the immense privileges that come with being the son of a powerful millionaire for granted, but also weaponizes his status to keep students like her in their place. “People like you can’t touch us,” he warns her.

When Ruby walks in on his sister Lydia (Sonja Weißer) locking lips with their teacher, James offers her a wad of cash to keep quiet, which she promptly scoffs at. Despite their hatred for each other, the scene is incredibly sexually charged as Ruby throws the bills back in his face and declares that he’s “an even bigger assh*le than [she] thought.” Refusing James’ money puts the ball back in her court — he may be a rich jerk, but now she’s got a secret to hold over his head. It’s as though they’re playing a twisted game, one filled with power plays, simmering tension, and surprise moves. 

Of course, viewers soon learn that there’s more to James than meets the eye. His father isn’t just controlling, he’s full-on abusive. Maxton Hall is hardly the first teen drama to present a rich kid with an awful parent; Miles’ abusive dad in Degrassi fits the bill, and Guzmán’s father in Elite is hardly winning any dad-of-the-year awards from his prison cell. But this revelation gives James necessary depth, adds context to his initial jerky behavior, and eventually serves as another obstacle for his relationship with Ruby. Meanwhile, her close-knit family may not have as much money as his, but they’re rich in love, and that’s something he’s never known. 

This is the stuff that great enemies-to-lovers ships are made of, and it’s thanks to the show’s prep school setting that the dynamic works so seamlessly. While James and Ruby theoretically could cross paths in another environment, attending the same school (especially one that requires money to attend) is convenient and makes their stark differences apparent from the get-go. It puts them on the same playing field, albeit one that’s more uneven for Ruby.

Maxton Hall also presents plenty of opportunities for good old teenage shenanigans. For whatever reason, the students at these fictionalized preps schools always seem to have minimal adult supervision on and off-campus, making it easy to party, hook up, and make bad decisions. In fact, it’s this blatant lack of proper supervision that leads to Ruby and James interacting in the first place; if she hadn’t walked in on his sister with their teacher kissing in the classroom (this guy really needs to be fired yesterday), it wouldn’t have set off the whole chain of events. 

Some of the most pivotal moments in James and Ruby’s relationship, like their long-awaited first kiss, take place at wild parties and packed clubs, the scenes electrifying and full of youth. The first time they have sex, it happens during a class trip to Oxford. While the dormitory is quiet and relatively private, hooking up where they could easily get caught is still risky and adds a “forbidden romance” element into the mix, making the scene even spicier. 

High schoolers who hail from vastly different worlds yet can’t help but fall for each other when their paths cross is a ship dynamic even older than the teen drama itself, and settings like Maxton Hall College provide the perfect launchpad for such relationships to blossom. Just like the stylish (and not remotely appropriate for class) school uniforms in Gossip Girl, fiery prep school romances like James and Ruby’s never seem to go out of style.

Maxton Hall — The World Between Us is streaming on Prime Video.

Kelly Martinez is a TV Reporter based in Los Angeles. Her previous work can be found at BuzzFeed and People Magazine, among other outlets. She enjoys reading, spending time with her cat, and explaining the plot of Riverdale to people.