‘Cruel Summer’ Season 2 Episode 9 Recap: “The Miseducation of Luke Chambers”

The penultimate episode of Cruel Summer taps into a TV trend: using one episode to change the narrative’s focus, whether it be the point of view or just the character at the center of the week’s story. In “The Miseducation of Luke Chambers,” all of the Freeform show’s storytelling devices shift the focus from Meghan to Luke in the blissful fall of 1999 and just before his death in the winter of 2000, forgoing the entire third timeline in summer 2000 which takes place after his death. 

The episode’s main purpose is to shed light on Luke’s secrets and motivations, driven largely by the contentious relationships with his dad and brother, and his cherished memories of his dead mom. Luke’s dad has been portrayed as a workaholic, which has in turn generated their enormous wealth, but his parenting hasn’t really come under the microscope. But in the ninth episode of the series, we find out that he and Luke were often at odds with one another — especially as Luke blames his dad for his mom’s death in a car accident where Steve should’ve been behind the wheel. 

Things get worse when Luke’s dreams of joining the Coast Guard are shut down by his father who insists that he follow in his footsteps and attend Branson College and take over the family business one day. “That’s a hobby, not real life,” Steve says, dismissing his son’s aspirations and interests in one fell swoop. But Luke goes behind his dad’s back with the help of the Sheriff, applying to the Coast Guard Academy using the police station’s address. When he gets in, his father loses it and says he won’t pay for him to attend. 

The animosity between the two men bubbles until its boiling point: in an effort to embarrass his dad at the family’s holiday party extravaganza, he grabs the sex tape that he made of him and Meghan and hands it to the waitstaff to play in front of everyone. Luke’s motivations lie in hurting his dad; hurting Meghan was just an afterthought to him. 

Focusing on Luke’s story and point of view also shifts the perception of other characters — most notably, his interactions with Isabella. In “The Miseducation of Luke Chambers,” Luke observes  Isabella actively stirring things up in his relationship with snide comments meant to increase suspicion and jealousy. When Meghan accidentally misses a hang out with Luke in favor of going to the bar with Isabella, he perceives her as rubbing in the fact that a guy at the bar was hitting on Meghan. It underscores the animosity brewing between the former lovers and the secrets they’re all holding from one another. 

After the gunshot that ended last week’s episode on a cliffhanger, we find out in Winter 2000 that the bullet grazed Luke’s ear — and that Isabella allegedly didn’t think the gun was loaded. Fearful about someone hearing the gunshot and calling the police, Isabella suggests that she and Meghan flee the premises without Luke, leaving him at the cabin to think about what he’s done. Before leaving, Meghan drops her big news: she’s pregnant with his child. In a state of shock (and who can really blame him, given he’s been tied up and was recently shot in the ear), Luke suggests that his father will “know how to get this taken care of,” a sentiment that upsets Meghan. She declares that he’s a liar and a jerk and that she never wants to see him again, something that will undoubtedly become true when he dies later that night.

But we don’t actually see Luke die. Instead, we see him escape the ropes and saunter out to the water, the place where he feels most at peace, with a true 2000s banger “In The End” by Linkin Park scoring his journey to the docks. When he gets there, he fumbles with a pager and before long, a figure appears in the corner of the frame. 

“I didn’t think you’d come,” Luke says to the person before the episode ends. The obvious guesses are his family, but Brent and Steve are too emotionally distant to be Luke’s “in case of emergency” contacts. My guess is that it’s the Sheriff who was seen helping Luke with his Coast Guard application earlier, and is someone whom we haven’t gotten enough backstory given how prominent he is in the series. If he’s there on the docks, his involvement in the murder investigation becomes extremely thorny for the season’s final hour.  

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Vulture, Teen Vogue, Paste Magazine, and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.