EXCLUSIVE: Cruel Summer has made a splashy return to Freeform, with the Season 2 premiere marking the network’s top telecast in two years — since the Season 1 finale of the hit series in June 2021.
06.06.2023 - 17:21 / usmagazine.com
At the center of the mystery. Lexi Underwood is making waves as Isabella LaRue in season 2 of Freeform’s anthology series Cruel Summer.
The show became a fan favorite when it debuted in April 2021 due to its unexpected plot twists and unique narrative structure. Following a show shakeup, Cruel Summer turned into an anthology series, while still using different timelines to explore a mystery at the center of the story.
Season 1 followed Kate Wallis (Olivia Holt), who was kidnapped and later rescued, and Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia), who was accused of knowing the whereabouts of the missing girl throughout the ’90s. Meanwhile, Season 2 explores the ups and downs of a friendship between Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley) and newcomer Isabella (Underwood) with Y2K as a backdrop.
Ahead of the show’s season 2 premiere, Underwood opened up how Cruel Summer was able to stick to what made it a network hit in the first place.
“Number one, what I love about season 2 is that tonally, it’s the same, we follow the same format but new characters, new mystery, and it’s, of course, set in Y2K. So I think that it’s just a complete — you can’t even compare it to season 1,” the actress told Nerds of Color in June 2023 about Isabella, who ends up in a love triangle with Megan and Luke (Griffin Gluck). “Something that’s so beautiful about this season specifically is that we’re really exploring the female friendships.”
The Maryland native continued: “In season 1, the girls, their characters, they were kind of like two worlds apart, but in this season, the girls, they’re together constantly, they’re going through all these hardships together. And so, being able to really navigate and talk about female friendships and the importance of them and what it
EXCLUSIVE: Cruel Summer has made a splashy return to Freeform, with the Season 2 premiere marking the network’s top telecast in two years — since the Season 1 finale of the hit series in June 2021.
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A scene-stealing performance. Sadie Stanley is leaving a lasting impression as one of the leads of Freeform’s Cruel Summer following a series shake-up.
Note: the following contains mild spoilers for “Cruel Summer” Season 2 Episode 1In Freeform’s “Cruel Summer,” Lexi Underwood stars as Isabella, a wealthy and well-traveled exchange student eager to kickstart the typical American high school experience when she arrives to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 1999 to stay with the Landry family. While Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley) is initially hesitant to let the outsider into her tight knit community, their relationship intensifies throughout the coming months — until a sinister discovery threatens to tear it all apart.
SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the first two episodes of Freeform’s Cruel Summer Season 2.
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