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Cruel Summer

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Will There Be Season 3 Of ‘Cruel Summer’?

We’re inching closer to finally finding out what exactly happened between Jeanette and Kate on that fateful 1994 day in Martin Harris’ house, and the Cruel Summer twists keep piling up. But what to make of the latest reveal? Kate did run away from home and voluntarily visit Martin after her disastrous 16th birthday, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the night she went missing. The flashback at the end of Episode 2 shows Kate pounding on the door to Martin’s basement in a fancy red dress we haven’t seen yet, suggesting that she was ultimately imprisoned later in the summer or even early fall. Perhaps she stayed with Martin for days or even weeks before he finally imprisoned her — we never saw what exactly Kate admitted to Ashley in that chatroom, and probably won’t know the full details of her capture until the big finale. Either way, Jeanette now has significant leverage over Kate simply by discovering she lied to the police about her familiarity with Martin.

But enough about Jeanette — Episode 7 is called “Happy Birthday, Kate Wallis,” after all. While the twist ending is the first major plot propulsion Cruel Summer has had for a few episodes now, this installment neatly ties up some lingering threads in Kate’s backstory leading into Season 1’s final stretch, especially because her thorny family relationships have finally reached a crossroads. Birthdays are convenient narrative devices for examining how a person’s perspective on their life has evolved, but they often feel like monumental days especially as a teenager, so I’m fine with getting two birthday episodes.

In ‘93, it’s Kate’s Sweet Sixteen, and she’s coming undone. Her mother’s affair has quickly upended Kate’s narrow, trusting view of the world, so accepting a cheap promise ring and looking after an inebriated Jamie after Joy has repeatedly gaslit her about her infidelity doesn’t exactly make it a great day to remember. When Jamie’s drunkenness makes them ridiculously late for the birthday dinner Joy has organized more for her secret lover than anyone else, Kate turns to the only person she thinks has truly seen her all summer: Martin. He convinces her to finally confront her family about the secret that’s been eating her alive, and of course, it’s a nightmare. When Kate’s attempt to tell Rod about the affair escalates to the point of Joy slapping her, she shrieks at Rod that she will discipline her daughter as she sees fit. Joy’s remarks that Kate is the exact same “naive, simple, boring” teenager she was years ago feel a touch too on-the-nose after Cruel Summer has made mothers’ projections onto their daughters into a central theme, but digging deeper into the tensions between a blended family – particularly an interracial one — make Kate’s world and the people in it feel that much more textured.

By the time Kate’s 17th birthday has rolled around, she’s not exactly in the mood for birthday cake. As she explains to Ashley in their chatroom, after Martin used food to manipulate her, refusing to eat feels like a simple way to reclaim her agency. In a flashback to Kate’s captivity, the show lays another seed for her and Jeanette’s rivalry when Martin sneers that in her absence, Jamie has already moved on with Jeanette.

But by August ‘94, Kate isn’t thinking about Jamie at all — she’s more perturbed by her mother’s urging that she go on the Oprah-esque Marsha Bailey Show to tell her story, even if all she wants is to move on from her ordeal. So Kate takes matters into her own hands, inviting Mallory over to her house for the first time. Mallory convinces Kate to fix her appetite problem by getting high, and they even rope Ashley into renting a movie from the video store with them… before Kate has a PTSD-induced flashback when the film’s heroine flees from her male pursuer. She eventually agrees to go on the Martha Bailey Show after a girl from Widow Falls (Annabelle?) alleges Martin made advances toward her years earlier, solidifying her resentment toward her mother’s ill-fated TV plan and her crucial bonds with Ashley and Mallory.

Speaking of Mallory, her relationship with Kate drives most of Kate’s 18th birthday. The whole day is a nice inversion of her Sweet Sixteen — Instead of Kate’s day being driven by Joy’s concern for public appearances, Mallory forbids Joy from tainting her friend’s special day with any lawyer talk or general unpleasantness, and the two celebrate by enjoying the roller rink all by themselves, where they exchange ring pops that suit Kate infinitely more than Jamie’s promise ring ever did. I can’t tell if the show wants us to read Mallory and Kate’s relationship as sapphic or merely another rejection of Joy’s rigid expectations for womanhood. But there’s a potential there, and since Vince and Ben’s place in the big mystery still hasn’t been revealed yet, I hope they take advantage of that chemistry.

But this is Cruel Summer, so of course Kate’s ‘95 birthday doesn’t stay worry-free. When she offers Mallory her family’s “back-up” printer, they discover a copy of the “Liar” note that was left on the Wallis doorstep back in Episode 4. Their ensuing confrontation mostly reiterates what we already knew: Kate resents Joy for placing lofty expectations on her but failing to protect her from Martin’s grooming, present-day Joy just wants to protect Kate from the trial and is jealous that Kate and Rod have the close relationship they used to, et cetera. The note twist strains Cruel Summer‘s usual balance between sudsy drama and character-driven pathos, but I’m glad the Wallis family’s bad blood feels somewhat resolved ahead of Season 1’s final act.

As Kate and Joy hash it out, Ashley and Derek have just had sex for the first time. She leaves to shower and makes the fatal mistake of leaving her sister’s enemy’s brother alone to stumble across her computer… which just so happens to be open to Ashley and Kate’s chat. So a desperate Derek brings a printed copy of their conversation to Jeanette, who’s reading The Talented Mr. Ripley — which is fittingly about a con artist, but is also the book Kate mentioned Rod buying for her back in ‘93. Is it an Easter egg, or did she pick it up in Martin’s basement after Kate brought it with her when she ran away? This trial is about to be brutal.