that one girl who reviews

Coming to an explosive close on Monday night, the second season of Freeform’s Cruel Summer brought forth an intriguing mystery with an even more intriguing answer but it wasn’t enough to satisfy the painstakingly torturous season the audience had to sit through to get there. 

In the classic “whodunit” style, showrunner Elle Triedman had her sights set on a certain killer from the very beginning. However, intentionality is much different from a tired copy of the first season. 

Season one and two both follow the same formula. You meet a few characters who are the primary suspects in the mystery. Then, right at the end, you realize that it was someone else and you think to yourself “Well, duh, it would’ve been too obvious if it were the main suspect.” But then, in a “pull the rug out from underneath you moment,” the final minutes of the show reveal that, yeah, it was the main suspect. 

In season one, this worked flawlessly. Jeanette Turner was just unlikable enough that you secretly hoped she did it because it just made sense for her character and when it was revealed that she didn’t, you’re genuinely surprised, just to find out that she did hear Kate in the basement and you were right for not liking her in the first place. 

Season two was a cheap remake of this technique, trying to pull the same unexpected twist at the end as they did in season one. But, how unexpected can it be if it’s already been done before? 

Murder mysteries should be unexpected, but solvable. However, creating a mystery and basically spoon-feeding it to your audience from the very first episode is not fun nor enticing. It’s just boring. 

Spanning over a year and following three different timelines (summer 1999, winter 1999 and summer 2000), the ten episode sophomore season led the audience through the tumultuous relationship of Isabella, played by Lexi Underwood, and Megan, played by Sadie Stanley. 

The girls form an unbreakable bond, deeming each other “sisters” within the first couple months of knowing each other. If that’s not the first red flag of a terribly toxic relationship, then I don’t know what is. 

In addition to this, Luke, played by Griffin Gluck, is Megan’s best friend-turned-boyfriend and Isabella’s brief summer fling-turned-rival because obviously there needs to be a man to insert himself into a growing female friendship. 

With all of these aspects, Luke’s murder unsolved and some extremely harrowing filters to help distinguish what timeline you’re in, it seems like there’s a solid story here. 

But there’s not. 

Eight out of the ten episodes of the season consist of the same thing: Megan and Isabella becoming friends in summer 1999, Luke and Megan’s relationship along with Isabella’s jealousy in winter 1999 and the icy tension between the girls in summer 2000 as the cops come closer and closer to solving Luke’s murder. 

Maybe the show’s weekly release hurt the overall quality of it because it genuinely felt like it took forever to even reach some sort of clue for who could’ve killed Luke (someone other than Megan and Isabella). 

If the show truly wanted to create a riveting mystery, perhaps they should’ve focused more on Isabella’s shady past and her intense feelings for Megan. We learn all about her travel tendencies and her connection to ex-best-friend’s death, but we never learn about anything past surface level details. 

Nonetheless the show is over and the audience can rest easy knowing that Luke is still dead, someone is behind bars and their sad little town will be much better without any of those characters in it.