Cruel Summer Season 2 Explores Toxic Female Friendship and Murder In a New Town

One of the most frequently asked questions in the world of television is whether lightning can ever truly strike twice. If a series is unexpectedly a hit—whether or not it was initially intended to be a completed story—you know pretty much right away that someone somewhere will immediately start asking about whether it can keep going. (See also: Big Little Lies, The Flight Attendant, The White Lotus.) So, no one should be all that surprised that Cruel Summer, Freeform’s biggest recent hit and an unexpected highlight of the 2021 television season, is back this year for another round of multiple timeline-spanning mysteries and complex teen characters.

Freeform at least had the sense to realize that the first season’s story of Jeanette Turner and Kate Wallis had reached a natural endpoint, and wisely chose to reinvent Cruel Summer as an anthology series with a different nexus of teen drama at its center. Season 2 features an entirely new setting, cast, and premise: This time the central mystery isn’t about an abduction but a murder, and rather than wrestle with the complex questions of identity and expectation that go hand in hand with teen girlhood, it delves into the often toxic nature of intense friendships between young women, which can be as obsessive and damaging as any possible romance. 

Season 2 is set in the small Pacific Northwest town of Chatham and its story is spread over three distinct timelines bookending the Y2K scare at the turn of the millennium in July 1999, December 1999, and July 2000. It follows the story of studious working-class girl Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley), an over-achieving computer science nerd determined to earn her way into a prestigious college program. Mom Debbie (Kadee Stickland), worried that her daughter is missing out on key teen experiences, offers to have the family host foreign exchange student Isabella LaRue (Lexi Underwood), who was born in the United States but has spent most of her life abroad. Isabella’s fashionable, worldly rich-girl perspective is very different from anything Megan—or Chatham—has encountered before, but she’s determined to avoid all overtures of friendship.

That resolve doesn’t last very long, as the pair are suddenly inseparable besties in the show’s December-set timeline, “ride or die” sisters who vow eternal loyalty and take huge risks for one another. But by the time the following summer rolls around, the two are no longer speaking, both have traded their fashionable outfits for drab basics (or, in Megan’s case, quasi-Goth gear), and it’s clear something dire has taken place between them. The series’ central question revolves around the trajectory of their friendship—how did their relationship become so intense so quickly, and what ultimately pushed them apart? Is it the sex tape that surfaces involving their mutual crush Luke (Griffin Gluck)? The dead body that washes up on the same shoreline where they all partied together?  Or is friendship that burns this brightly always going to be destined to flame out? 

As Cruel Summer unspools the events surrounding the rise and fall of Megan and Isabella’s bond, the story touches on complicated questions of obsession and loyalty. Unfortunately, the story’s more condensed timeline—Season 1 took place over three years rather than one—often makes things feel unnecessarily rushed, particularly when you take a moment to really think about how close all these wildly dramatic events occur to one another. The decision to distinguish between the various time periods by using multiple garish tone overlays—the stomach-churning green tint for the summer 2000 timeline is especially awful—is deeply visually unappealing, even if it does help us keep track of “when” we’re supposed to be at any given moment. Whether that’s better than counting on Megan’s hairstyle—which shifts from a tomboy ponytail to popular girl waves to greasy, slicked-back hacker chic over the course of each episode—I’m not sure. 

Because critics were only given the first seven episodes for review (out of a total of ten), it’s impossible to tell whether Season 2 will ultimately stick the landing. In fact, the episodes we were given end at a presumably deeply crucial point that will likely determine the direction of the remainder of the season. So, who knows? But while I can’t tell you whether the answer to the show’s central mystery will be a satisfying one, I can say that Season 2 is made up of a lot of interesting disparate pieces that may well turn out to be dynamite when they are finally combined. 

The season shines brightest when it’s focused on all the ways that Megan isn’t a typical heroine of a teen drama like this. She isn’t particularly popular and has few (if any) female friends. Her computer science background and interest in hacking tie in perfectly to the season’s Y2K backdrop. And the family’s blue-collar financial status gives her a unique perspective that isn’t shared by many in her social circle. She’s constantly stressed about money, embarrassed about her background, and occasionally jealous or resentful of her friends who come from wealthy families with more resources. Isabella, of course, has plenty of secrets of her own that unspool over the course of the season, as it becomes increasingly clear that she hasn’t been entirely honest about key elements of her own past. 

These reveals are all made the more impactful by the fact that Stanley and Underwood have the sort of electric chemistry that may well leave you wondering why these two girls don’t just ditch the lesser boys around them and go for each other. Their bond vacillates from dedicated to dangerously obsessive to outright toxic, and the collapse of their friendship feels simultaneously tragic and inevitable. In fact, Megan and Isabella are so clearly the central focus of this drama that its secondary characters get remarkably little development (or even identities to speak of). Even the allegedly nice guy Luke, ostensibly the third point in their mutual triangle of teen angst and drama, is a much less interesting character than either of the young women in his life and is remarkable only in that he is the least terrible member of his demonstrably terrible family. 

Is Cruel Summer’s second season as good as its first? No, but I doubt any of us truly expected it would be. Season 1 of this series was lightning in a bottle: a tight, taut mystery bolstered by the kind of thoughtful exploration of trauma, grooming, and sexual assault we rarely see get the chance on any television show, let alone a buzzy teen drama. I’m not sure that any possible second outing could have possibly lived up to that. But, although it’s not quite on its predecessor’s level, Season 2 makes for propulsive, entertaining viewing, keeping its audience unsure about who to trust, and embracing a similar go-for-broke style of storytelling that makes it very, very easy to keep watching as the twists and questions pile up. Whether the answers will be worth it, in the end, is a question only the last third of the season can tell—but however it turns out, I’m ready to enjoy the ride.

Cruel Summer Season 2 premieres Monday, June 5 on Freeform (streaming the next day on Hulu).

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB.

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