Schue - Storylines - Season 3

Season 3

At the beginning of the third season, Will and Emma are living together and sleeping in the same bed, though Emma remains a virgin. The membership of New Directions is down, and their recruitment drive proves unsuccessful. Will reluctantly rejects Sugar Motta (Vanessa Lengies) after a truly awful audition has the glee club membership demanding he do so; her father makes a huge donation to the school to fund a second glee club for her, and recruits former Vocal Adrenaline director Shelby Corcoran to run it. Will suffers further defections from the glee club when first Mercedes, and then Santana and Brittany, leave to join Shelby's rival club due to a lack of soloing opportunities in New Directions.

Sue runs for Congress on a platform of cutting all funding for school arts programs, and Will's attempt to render her a figure of ridicule by glitterbombing her backfires—the viral video instead improves her standing in the polls. She manages to eliminate the budget for the school's musical, but Burt Hummel (Mike O'Malley) arranges for funding from his fellow businessmen, and because of what the arts—and Will's glee club in particular—have done for his son Kurt, he decides to run against Sue as a write-in candidate, with Will as his campaign manager, and defeats her.

The rivalry between the two McKinley glee clubs comes to a head at Sectionals in the episode "Hold On to Sixteen". Although Rachel has been suspended from school and can't compete with them, Will's New Directions defeats Shelby's club. Shelby resigns and her club dissolves, with the original defectors, plus a greatly improved Sugar, returning to New Directions with the understanding that they will be given more solos.

Will finally gets the courage to propose to Emma in the episode "Yes/No" after she blurts out that she wants to marry him, and recruits the glee club to help him select and perform the perfect song as a part of that proposal. He asks Finn to be his best man at the wedding, and Finn agrees, but when he asks Emma's parents for their blessing, he is refused. He goes ahead anyway, and after a spectacular performance, he asks Emma to marry him, and she accepts.

After a tenure position goes up in the history department of McKinley High ("The Spanish Teacher"), Will ends up on the shortlist for the spot. At the same time, his own job as Spanish teacher is put to risk when Santana complains about his teaching style and he eventually gives it up to David Martinez (Guest star, Ricky Martin) after taking on history at an annual basis while Emma gains the tenure role, beating out Sue in the shortlist.