‘Cruel Summer’ Episode 3 Recap: My Mirror Staring Back At Me

Seriously, what is up with all the mirrors in Cruel Summer?! Throughout the first three episodes, we repeatedly see Jeanette and Kate posed in front of their bedroom mirrors, emphasizing once again just how much they’ve changed over the course of three years.There’s the creepy wall of mirrors in Martin’s basement (from Episode 1), and in this episode, Jeanette even admits to to Vince that when she first encountered the strange room in 1993, she had an explicable feeling something bad was going to happen there. “I thought I unleashed something down here. Something bad,” she explains. The poster for Cruel Summer even features Jeanette and Kate looking through a double-sided mirror. Kate is adamant that Jeanette saw her in captivity, which Jeanette fervently denies. But what if there’s some kind of two-way mirror in that basement, and both of their accounts are true?

Fans probably won’t get answers before the end of the season, but that kind of twist would be a lifesaver for Jeanette —as she repeatedly mentions in Episode 3 (titled “Off with a Bang”), as long as her honesty is in question, a whole lot of people wish she were dead — especially Kate herself, who violently attempts to confront her at a ‘95 traffic stop. While the first two episodes focused pretty much entirely on Jeanette and Kate’s perspectives, it seems like the remaining episodes of the season will alternate between them, with more time devoted to supporting out the supporting players.

One character who we get some much-needed context about this week is Jeanette’s mom, Cindy. She appeared as a doting mom in the pilot, but was mysteriously absent from the ‘95 timeline; outside of the Turner house, we mainly saw her through the contemptuous eyes of her former classmate, Joy Wallis. But as she tells ’93 Jeanette, this wasn’t always the case — back in high school, Cindy was homecoming queen and cheerleading captain, while Joy awkwardly trailed her like a puppy. She certainly doesn’t pressure Jeanette to follow in her teenage footsteps to the same degree that Joy hounds Kate. But whether Cindy is encouraging Jeanette to wear glasses or encouraging her to “branch out” and befriend more popular girls following a fight with Mallory, it’s easy to see how she pushed her daughter to remake herself by ‘94. Of course, this all backfires when rumors about Jeanette’s role in Kate’s kidnapping began to swirl, and Cindy begins worrying more about what other people thought than standing by her own daughter. In ’95, the public scrutiny has presumably made her walk out on her family — Jeanette even refuses to take her calls. Don’t be like Cindy.

At least the Turner guys seem to have Jeanette’s back. While her father Greg is sullen, he and her brother Derek have the wherewithal to confront Jamie about punching Jeanette in ‘94, and decide to shield this information from Cindy. For his part, Jamie is ready to move past his secret kiss with Jeanette and focus on Kate. When she tries to confront him at the town’s 4th of July fireworks celebration, he hits her with a chilling question: Why did she seemingly know Kate was missing before anyone else did? After all, Jamie was her boyfriend, and even he didn’t know until Jeanette told him.

Plenty of people constantly reinvent themselves in their teenage years before settling into a more confident adult form. But Jeanette and many other teenage girls often face the most scrutiny and distrust for doing so… her case is just much more public. While Cruel Summer has refreshingly avoided its fair share of on-the-nose ‘90s nostalgia, Episode 3 takes time to imagine how Jeanette’s case would fare under the cultural weight of ‘90s bitchification. The “girl power” movement of the time signaled a massive pendulum swing toward gender parity in the United States, but the ‘90s also spurred intense media fixations on women who carried any hint of scandal, from Monica Lewinsky to Anita Hill.

As Jeanette watches TV in 1995, she sees a local reporter who’s spent the last few years covering Kate’s kidnapping go on national television and suggest that Jeanette is literally “wired differently” from normal people and naturally has no moral compass. On another channel, a late night talk show host jokes about how no one in the entire country can relate to Jeanette. Finally, she stumbles upon a crime show scene in which a young woman tearfully insists she isn’t the villain, but the victim. Jeanette begins mockingly imitating the girl in hopes of learning to be “likable,” before her eyes start to well up, too. It will be unquestionably horrifying if Kate’s claims that Jeanette was complicit in her kidnapping turn out to be true, but after Martin spent months torturing a teenager, it’s telling that the media scapegoat turned out to be another young girl instead.

Jeanette may be the most hated person in America, but she’s not entirely alone. We’ve known that she and Vince have remained in touch since the pilot, but as Episode 3 delves into more of Vince’s backstory, it’s clear the lifelong friends’ bond has been one of the only to survive all three summers. We learn that Vince is gay (obviously a way bigger deal in ‘90s Texas), and had a relationship with Ben in 1994. But their days of dancing in secret gay bars seem to be behind them in ‘95, when Ben refuses to speak to Vince. It seems like Jeanette is the only one who knows his secret, and he’s the only one who knows hers: She’s been periodically sneaking into Martin’s house since 1993, when she got addicted to the rush it gave her. Jeanette’s ties to Greg, Derek, and Vince seem strong, but in the twisty world of Cruel Summer, how long will it be before someone is pushed to their breaking point?

READ NEXT: Cruel Summer Episode 4 Recap: “You Don’t Hunt, You Don’t Eat”

Abby Monteil is a New York-based writer. Her work has also appeared in The Daily Beast, Insider, Elite Daily, Thrillist, and others.

Watch Cruel Summer Episode 3 on Freeform

Watch Cruel Summer Episode 3 on Hulu