Warning: The following contains spoilers for Monday’s Cruel Summer premiere. Proceed at your own risk!
Cruel Summer‘s Season 2 opener could have easily been titled “Sex, Lies and Videotape,” given what transpires during the two-hour premiere.
In July 1999, Megan (played by The Goldbergs‘ Sadie Stanley) meets Isabella (Little Fires Everywhere‘s Lexi Underwood), a diplomat’s daughter who has come to live with Megan’s family as an exchange student in their small Pacific Northwest town. Megan is cold and unwelcoming to the worldly Isabella, who hits it off with Megan’s best friend Luke (Locke & Key‘s Griffin Gluck). Megan insists that there’s nothing going on between her and her pal, so Isabella goes for it with Luke. But by December 1999, Luke and Megan are dating and in love, while Megan and Isabella are now ride-or-die BFFs. Then the trio’s world is rocked when a sex tape is played at Luke’s dad’s Christmas party, featuring the teenage boy in the throes of passion with… Isabella?
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Explaining why all the partygoers assume it’s Isabella on the footage, even though her face is never seen, Underwood tells TVLine, “They’re making the assumption just simply because she has on the pink sweater that you see in the tape. And then I think it’s just also easier to point the finger at the new girl rather than to look at any [other] possibility.”
Adds Stanley: “And they know that Isabella and Luke had a thing before Megan and Luke were together, so I think it’s just a rumor that runs wild and accidentally spreads everywhere.”
But in a surprise twist, it’s later disclosed to viewers that it’s actually Megan on the tape with her boyfriend Luke. Not wanting her friend to lose her academic scholarship, Isabella continues to take the hit for Megan, arguing that she’ll be gone at the end of the school year anyway.
“That sex tape is the catalyst for the slow destruction of Isabella and Megan’s friendship,” Stanley says, adding that the show explores “the double standards” in how Isabella is treated versus how Luke is congratulated in the aftermath of the public scandal.
“I mean, Luke goes around town and gets a pat on the back from all of his bros…for this, like, cool sexual conquest. He’s like the big man on campus, while Isabella is being criticized and judged for it and slut-shamed,” Stanley describes.
The real-life Pamela Anderson/Tommy Lee sex tape, which was stolen in 1995 and distributed shortly thereafter, “was in the zeitgeist [at] that time [when Cruel Summer Season 2 is set]. So it was definitely a motivation for layering that into this season,” Michelle Purple, who exec-produces the Freeform series alongside Jessica Biel via their Iron Ocean Productions, tells TVLine.
In drawing on real-world events, Megan and Isabella’s storylines reflect “what was happening to young women at that time in the late ’90s and how so often young people were being taken advantage of and then their whole lives were being changed,” Biel shares. “They were being labeled these things. They had not agreed to do these things. It was a tough time being a young woman.”
Luke, meanwhile, laments being labeled a cheater, but remains relatively unscathed from the tape — until the July 2000 timeline reveals that he is dead! After his body is pulled out of the water, Isabella sidles up to Megan and says they have to get their stories straight.
“It’s important with an anthology to keep some things that keep it feeling connected to Season 1, but we really wanted to try something different with Season 2. And that is a big deal, killing off one of our main characters in one of the timelines,” Biel says. “We thought it would keep the audience on their toes. They’re not showing up and going to see the same thing, just with two different characters… There’s more mystery to it.”
Gluck knew of his character’s gruesome fate “from the very beginning,” and it was even one of the reasons he signed up for the role, the actor shares.
“I like playing twists, I like playing the surprises, and playing a dead guy is great. It means one less timeline of work for me,” Gluck jokes, before adding in all seriousness, “It was incredibly intriguing for me… I get to play around a lot more with these stakes.”
Cruel Summer fans, what did you think of the season opener? Grade it below, then hit the comments with your theories!
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