Cruel Summer Season 2: Plot, Cast, And Everything Else We Know

Spoiler Warning: Cruel Summer Season One

Cruel Summer has lived up to its name by being cruel to all of its characters, and that’s something we loved watching. Now, get ready to return to a world filled with nostalgia, brooding, and mystery because Cruel Summer has officially renewed for its second season and is returning to Freeform. After the show debuted in the summer of 2021, it became an instant hit for the network. This Freeform sensation began racking up viewers quickly with its insanely crazy stories of mysteries in the '90s.

It’s been over a year since the first season dropped, and we were taken to a place where we left wildly speculating and second-guessing everything, but now that we are certain that the second season is coming soon, we couldn’t be more excited.

However, first, we have some perhaps bad news for fans. For all those viewers who fell in love with the cast and storyline of the first season, the second season won’t be seeing any of it. The upcoming season will have an entirely different story, all new faces, a whole new town, and a new timeline. While not everything about the second season has been revealed yet, there are some details out already, and we’ve got it all to share with you.

So, here is everything we know so far about the Cruel Summer season 2.

Cruel Summer Season 2: What to Expect

What’s interesting about Cruel Summer season 2 is that it won’t be delving into the previous storyline. This is pretty confusing, considering season 1 ended on a cliffhanger when it was revealed that Jeanette broke into Martin Harris’ home on another occasion which she failed to mention. While she did not see Kate, she did hear her screaming for help from the basement. Given such a cliffhanger, we’d expect the showrunners to give us closure and tell us how deep Jeannette’s status-obsessed sociopathy can go, but clearly, that’s not going to happen.

When Deadline reported back in June 2021 that the show would be renewed, there were talks about the show turning into an anthology series. During that time, there were reports that Tara Duncan, Freeform president, was awaiting the ideas from the showrunners for season 2 but "admitted that it could feature a new story with the same cast or, in anthology form, use the device of two points of view using multiple timelines with a new group."

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Since last year, there have been no updates or news surrounding the upcoming season. It was only last month in April when The Hollywood Reporter finally came out with an update that the series would officially be an anthology. While going forward, the story may be entirely different and new, but it will still contain some of those elements that made season 1 so addictive. Based on the same report, we can expect a similar nostalgic drama set back in the day and told from different perspectives.

Gen-Z’ers were obsessed with the show's Y2K fashion, and by the looks, we can expect to see more of this fashion era. The storyline is likely to occur in "an idyllic waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest," where we'll see "the rise and fall of an intense teenage friendship," as reported by the THR. "The season twists and turns as it tracks the early friendship between Megan, Isabella and Megan’s best friend Luke, the love triangle that blossomed, and the mystery that would impact all of their lives going forward."

Cruel Summer Season 2: Cast

Freeform

Now that Cruel Summer will be an anthology series, we can expect to see new faces. Thankfully, we have an idea of who we’ll be seeing in the upcoming season. We have Sadie Stanley of Kim Hushable fame among the leads, who will star as a computer coder and A+ student named Megan Landry. She comes from a working-class family and learns to become more free-spirited once she meets another girl named Isabella, who will be played by Lexi Underwood of Little Fires Everywhere fame. Isabella is a fun-loving and charming girl and daughter of foreign diplomats who comes as an exchange student and stays with Megan Landry’s family. Isabella is said to have a secret about her past, and that’s “the real reason she came to live with the Landrys.”

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Griffin Gluck of Locke & Key fame will be playing Luke Chambers and is the guy who may or may not come in between these two girls. Luke and Megan have been best friends for years, but he struggles to keep up with the expectations of his super-rich family and father, who Paul Adelstein of Scandal fame will portray.

Release Date

Freeform

Jessica Biel, the show’s EP, confirmed last year that we’ll see Cruel Summer’s new episodes in 2022. However, there’s no official announcement about the exact date. That said, we can expect the new season to drop very soon.