Cruel Summer 2 kicked off a new mystery on June 5th with two back-to-back episodes as part of the premiere.
Those who watched the first season will be familiar with the back-and-forth timelines, though this time, it’s taking place in the summer and winter of 1999 and the summer of 2000—so yes, there’s plenty of nostalgia to go around. The episodes do their best to transport you back to the late ’90s/early ’00s with music countdowns (Spice Girls!), dances to classics like Livin’ La Vida Loca captured on VHS (the original TikTok), plenty of “retro” outfits, and even the imminent threat of Y2K bringing forth the end of times. Those of us who lived through it remember just how real—and blown out of proportion—that fear truly was. Ah, the good days.
With Jessica Biel serving as the executive producer, it’s surprising that we haven’t heard any NSYNC music yet!
It’s also a brand new cast, leaning into the anthology aspect of the series, which I didn’t think I’d be a fan of initially, but after the premiere, I’m actually digging. Instead of prolonging a mystery for several seasons until it’s exhausted, they wrap it up in several neatly-packaged episodes and move onto a new, yet equally as chilling and thrilling, plot. In this case, the storyline takes place in the small and idyllic waterfront town of Chatham.
While Hallmark, Lifetime, and the lot love to glorify the beauty and intimacy of small towns, Cruel Summer is determined to underscore the dangers of a small town that uses gossip as fuel.
Season 1 focused on the mystery of Kate Wallis’ disappearance, while the second season is a full-blown murder mystery aiming to figure out who killed Luke (Griffin Gluck best known from Locke & Key).
As Parker Tanaka (Lisa Yamada) explains in one scene—none of this would have happened if she never came to town. The “she” she’s referring to is Isabella LaRue (Lexi Underwood), the daughter of diplomats who traveled around the world(or so she says) before arriving in town to live with Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley). Megan’s mom, Debbie, thinks it’s going to be great to have Isabella around, however, Megan is convinced otherwise. And from what we’ve gathered in the flashforward to the ’00s, she may have been right to be skeptical and keep her guard up.
Isabella turns out to be charming and intoxicating; she makes friends easily and everyone is naturally drawn to her and her nomadic lifestyle… everyone except for Megan, who keeps her distance initially. However, the flash-forward from summer to winter reveals that she eventually came around, considering Isabella her best friend in the entire world.
But there’s so much more than meets the eye, particularly when it comes to Isabella, and we’ve barely scratched the surface of who this girl really is. That very charm begins to wear off instantly and she can’t fool anyone anymore; she begins to show a different side, one that’s almost manipulative, and while she remains a good friend, it’s evident that she’s lying about a lot of things, including who she really is. In the final scene of the second episode, she dumps a ton of pills down the drain and calls her mom for help. It’s unclear if the pills belong to her or if they were Megan’s or Debbie’s, but there’s definitely something off with the moment.
The phone call to her mom also makes me think that she’s not telling the truth about who her parents are or her past experiences, even if her passport proved that she’s been all over. Is she on the run? Does she need money? Is it all a front? I was first expecting to get a prison message before getting connected to her mom, but I guess that’s out of the question.
There’s some evidence pointing to the possibility that she’s a troubled teen. She’s spoken vaguely about boarding school and her friend Lisa, but we never actually get more information about that friendship, nor does she communicate with the girl, which leads me to believe that maybe something bad happened to Lisa as well. The Sheriff also mentions that she’s been in three schools in three years and left midsemester, which isn’t peculiar on its own but paired with everything else we’ve picked up on, it could be a major red flag.
As for Luke, they find his body in a flash-forward scene in the year 2000, when Isabella and Megan are no longer on good terms. Again, it’s not entirely clear what happened between the two of them that led to this estrangement, but whatever it is, it had a profound impact on Megan as her whole appearance shifted from preppy to punk goth. Luke’s disappearance/murder seems to have also crumbled her college plans as she’s still living in Chatham.
Upon pulling Luke’s body out of the water, Isabella declares that they have to get their stories straight about what happened before getting questioned by the police, which means that they know more than they’re letting on about what led to their friend’s demise.
The police indicate that while Luke died of drowning, he had a graze wound that would indicate someone shot at him, and he had a lot of benzos in his system, which leads them to believe that someone wanted to make sure he didn’t have the strength to save himself.
And that, of course, is concerning, Anyone could be a suspect at this point, including Megan and Isabella, though I don’t think that either of them is capable of murder, even if there was a scene of Isabella looking rather jealous of Megan’s sweet moment with Luke during which she called him her “ride or die”—the term that the besties used for each other. It’s possible that Isabella has a personality disorder or struggles with an obsessive nature, which would explain why she needed Megan to like her, but would she go as far as murdering Luke?
The catalyst for everything seems to be the sex tape that was played at Luke’s father’s Christmas party, which launches another mystery as to who filmed it and who played it. Following the tape, everything took a much darker turn, from Isabella, Luke, and Megan’s threesome to Steve Chambers’ (Paul Adelstein) thriving developer business.
The sex tape was a pivotal moment that shifted the tone of the series as it also bound the trio in a deep secret—everyone assumed they were watching Luke cheat on Megan with her best friend Isabella, but the twist was that it was actually Megan in the video, and Isabella took the fall to protect her friend and help her chances of getting into college. It seemed like a pretty selfless thing to do, but now that we’ve seen a slightly more sinister side to Isabella, it’s made me question her motives.
What was her intention with Megan and Luke? Why did she come to stay with the Landry’s in the first place? Did she have an agenda? Why did she pursue Luke despite wanting to befriend Megan and knowing that she had a crush on him?
And if they kept that a secret, what other secrets does Megan and Isabella’s seemingly co-dependent friendship entail?
The list of suspects is long and wide as its possible Luke’s brother Brent was involved (he had a knack for filming his love interests), his father Steve (who Luke says wasn’t proud of his son since he didn’t show interest in the family businesses), and we can’t forget about that creepy neighbor who was shooting off his gun—and who shot Megan a very strange and telling look once they found Luke’s body.
For now, we know that Megan had access to pills, the man in the woods has access to the guns, and Isabella is loyal to a fault and will keep a secret if it means protecting her friend.
What do you think happened to Luke?
Did you enjoy the first two episodes of Cruel Summer Season 2?