'Cruel Summer' Season 1 Recap Ahead of Season 2: Kate and Jeanette's Story

Publish date: 2024-08-24

Prime Video’s Cruel Summerreturns for a second season on June 5. Created by Bert V. Royal and executive produced by Jessica Biel, the anthology series will take on a new mystery for its sophomore entry. Season 1 dealt with the disappearance and later reappearance of popular girl Kate Wallis (Olivia Holt), and how underdog Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia) idolized her and then took her place while she was gone.

The twist in Cruel Summer’s first season is the storytelling takes place in three different years: 1993, 1994, and 1995. Since the time jumps are only a year apart, it relies on filters to visibly distinguish each one. Scenes in 1993 are bright, colorful, and hopeful. 1994 reflects a cool, smooth coloring, giving a more mature vibe on how the teenagers have grown. 1995 is dark, almost colorless, with everyone’s lives looking bleaker. Since Season 1 was released two years ago, here’s a refresher of what went down.

'Cruel Summer': 1993

Jeanette is a happy and dorky girl with braces and glasses who spends summer going through a list of dares with her two friends, Mallory (Harley Quinn Smith) and Vince (Allius Barnes). She’s close with her father Greg (Michael Landes), her mother Cindy (Sarah Drew), and her brother Derek (Barrett Carnahan). Kate is the queen bee of Skylin High School and girlfriend of jock Jamie (Froy Gutiérrez). She has a difficult relationship with her mother Joy (Andrea Anders), who pressures her to pursue perfection, while she finds her stepfather Rod (Ben Cain) more easygoing and empathic with her. The two girls never really got along, Jeanette only idolized Kate as someone who she wanted to be or at least hang out with, while Kate saw her as a free spirit.

Martin Harris (Blake Lee) is introduced as the new assistant principal in Kate and Jeanette’s high school. Since he first lays eyes on Kate at the annual Skylin Garden Club party, he takes a liking to her. That same night they have a chance encounter when Kate runs away from one of her mother’s tantrums, and then again at Joy’s traditional hunting trip. Martin’s predatory ways are clear when he tells her she looks older and seems more mature than girls her age. At the town carnival, they talk again, and he gives her a bear.

Throughout the summer, Jeanette, Mallory, and Vince continue their dares, but in the last one, Jeanette gets distracted, and Ben ditches them after meeting Ben (Nathaniel Ashton), Jamie’s best friend. As a result, Mallory blames them for getting detention, and a fed-up Jeanette tells her they shouldn’t be friends anymore. Jeanette then starts bonding with Jamie, who makes her feel visible. On Kate’s side, her straining relationship with her mother explodes after she reveals to her stepfather that Joy is having an affair. Kate runs away, seeking solace in Martin’s house, not knowing he’d never let her leave again. He manipulated her into staying because getting out would lead to him being imprisoned. After she sneaks out on Christmas Eve to see her family, in his anger, Martin lures her into the basement and locks her up.

'Cruel Summer': 1994

A year after the series’ beginning, Jeanette has now transformed, physically and emotionally, into the new queen bee. She doesn’t wear braces or glasses anymore, she’s now Jamie’s girlfriend and is friends with Reneé (Aaliyah Muhammad) and Tenille (Shelby Surdam), Kate’s former girl group. Shortly after the police rescue Kate from Martin’s house, Jeanette faces an accusation from Kate which makes her new life crumble as easily as it was built up. Her family starts being shunned from society, resulting in her father losing his job as a real estate agent, her brother being uninvited from parties, and her mom, unable to handle the pressure, leaving them all.

Kate’s return is not smooth, as she deals with the trauma and feels everyone moved on without her. Afterward, she starts telling everyone that Jeanette knew she was being held captive, starting a wave of hatred toward the Turners. She eventually connects with Mallory, for they go to the same therapist. They start hanging out and become very close, up to the point where Mallory is the only one who can make her happy on her birthday, taking her roller skating. Her therapist helps her come to terms with the fact that Martin groomed her.

Jamie tries to be there for Kate, but things have changed so much that he doesn’t know how to do it. Even though he gets physically violent with Jeanette, she still tries to seek him out, telling him that in the end, he knows who she is. Unable to handle his feelings, he develops a drinking problem, and while driving with Ben gets in a car crash that leaves Ben injured. Vince had been going out with Ben in secret since last year. Ben pushes him away after he tries to be there for him following the crash.

After much insistence from her mother and stepfather, Kate finally agrees to give an interview. In it, she tells her side of the story but gets off script by naming Jeanette as the girl who saw her and did nothing about it. When the whole town was already against Jeanette, now the whole country would see her as the enemy.

Cruel Summer: 1995

Another year later, a short-haired and toughened Jeanette is now the town pariah. She has now had to seek legal counsel after Kate’s accusation. She ends up suing Kate for defamation and tries to change to be likeable to the public’s eye. Greg still stands by her but is seemingly fed up with the whole situation. Following Cindy’s departure, he started dating a new girl in town and bar owner Angela (Brooklyn Sudano), who is honestly kind to Jeanette, as she knows that’s the thing she needs the most now.

Kate’s still dealing with things her own way, and her bond with Mallory grows stronger. She starts hearing her therapy tapes to try to cope, only to start having flashbacks about the terrible days in Martin’s basement and how he diminished her hopes of anyone ever caring to rescue her. During the last months, she had been talking to a “stranger” in an online support group. The stranger turned out to be her stepsister Ashley (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut), with whom she always had a rocky relationship. Ashley had been going out with Derek, and he eventually discovers the conversation, printing it and giving it to Jeanette as a weapon in her trial.

Cruel Summer: All At Once

During the season, the three-year gap narrative is connected through several elements that keep the three timelines’ parallelism. One of them is Tanya (Kim Jackson Davis), Tenille’s mother, who constantly flirts with Martin. When she ends up in his house one night, she discovers Jeanette hiding in one of his closets. Since Jeanette overheard her confess that Tenille’s father is not his biological father, she blackmails her to let her leave. Two years later, before the trial, Jeanette visits her to remind her of what she’ll do if she rats out.

Jeanette’s possession of the key to Martin’s house plays out in several parts of the story. She sneaks in several times to continue the list of dares. After Kate’s accusation, Cindy discovers she has the key and that’s what ends up breaking her trust in her daughter. In 1995, she uses the key to meet Vince there and eventually Kate herself, when they discuss everything that led them to that moment. Ever since being rescued, Kate repeats Jeanette saw her on Christmas Eve, and they made eye contact. True, Jeanette sneaked in once again that day to steal a snow globe and heard a noise, but never got to see Kate. Retracing step by step what happened, and Kate telling Jeanette the eye contact happened when she was outside mounting her bike, they conclude it wasn’t Jeanette, but Mallory who saw Kate. Kate also confides in Jeanette that she, not the police, was the one who shot down Martin with his own gun.

When Kate confronts Mallory about Christmas Eve, she admits it was her, but she only realized Kate was being held captive after she was rescued. Before that, she just assumed it was some other person inside Martin’s house. Kate and Mallory share a kiss as an unspoken agreement to leave everything behind and continue what they’ve been building for the last year. As everyone gets to know the truth, Jeanette is absolved from the public’s judgment, and she gives an interview saying she forgives Kate. A final twist plays out, as it’s revealed that in 1994, Jeanette entered the house once again, heard Kate’s desperate pleas for help, and willingly ignored them, while she continued taking over her life.

Cruel Summer: Season 2

Cruel Summer’s anthology nature means we won’t be seeing Kate and Jeanette anymore. The new season focuses on two friends: Megan (Sadie Stanley) and Isabella (Lexi Underwood); adding Luke (Griffin Gluck) to the mix their friendship evolves and a new mystery unfolds. It appears we’ll be seeing some time jumps as well, now focusing in the late 90s and early 2000s. Cruel Summer’s sophomore season will also see the on-screen reunion of KaDee Strickland and Paul Adelstein 10 years after Private Practice’s finale, in which both starred. Season 2 of Cruel Summer starts on Monday, June 5 with a two-episode premiere.