Cruel Summer showrunner breaks down episode 5's shocking ending: 'It doesn't look good'
Warning: This article contains spoilers for Cruel Summer season 2, episode 5, "All I Want For Christmas."
One of Isabella's (Lexi Underwood) many lies has finally been exposed on Cruel Summer. But does that mean she's guilty of Luke's (Griffin Gluck) murder too?
Episode 5 ends on the shocking revelation that Isabella's best friend Lisa, whom she talks about often, has actually been dead this whole time. After hearing about Luke's death, Lisa's brother Trevor (Olly Sholotan) sends Megan (Sadie Stanley) a newspaper article detailing the truth about her death, revealing that she drowned in St. Barts and that Isabella, who has been lying about it ever since, may have had something to do with it.
"There's a lot more to come," Cruel Summer showrunner Elle Triedman tells EW. "Everyone's guilty of something."
Below, Triedman dives deep into what this means for Isabella and Megan's friendship, Isabella's potential guilt over Luke's death, and more.
Ricardo Hubbs/Freeform Sadie Stanley on 'Cruel Summer'
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Did you always have this reveal about Lisa planned from the start?
ELLE TRIEDMAN: We came to it pretty quickly. So much of what we wanted to explore was this age, and the idea of who you are, who you want to be, and reinvention. When you come to a new place, you have a fresh start and you rightly or wrongly choose the information you want to tell people about your past. All of the time she's spoken about Lisa, it's been these great memories, so that's where she was dwelling.
This obviously paints Isabella in a very bad light since Lisa's death is very similar to Luke's. Did that play into why Isabella has been keeping this a secret this whole time?
Some of that will be revealed in the next few episodes. One thing to really keep in mind is Lisa died in February and Isabella comes to Chatham in June. It's a very narrow time frame, so in terms of processing grief, she's still in the early stages of it. And I don't think you necessarily want to lead with, "Hi, my best friend died" — that's a very personal thing and you have to pick when to share it. But this is obviously a huge bombshell and there will be many discussions about it because it doesn't look good. That's the fun thing about Cruel Summer — there's always at least two sides to everything, sometimes more. Trevor came in the summer of '99 and Megan gets the letter in summer of 2000 so a lot has happened in that timespan.
Should we be suspicious about the fact that Lisa and Luke died in very similar ways?
It is not a coincidence. They both drowned, but the circumstances around their deaths will prove to be quite different.
What else are we going to learn about Lisa's death and Isabella's potential guilt about what happened?
We will learn that the sheriff is looking into it. It is already very clear that Isabella has an attorney on speed dial, a family fixer. If you look at the news article that Trevor sent with the letter, it's a drowning. People drown, but it's St. Barts and we've heard quite a bit about St. Barts from the attorney, so clearly something went down. You will hear more about it, but it certainly provides and confirms this undercurrent of distrust for Megan.
How does this reveal impact Megan and Isabella's friendship moving forward?
They're very much estranged in the third timeline. They're physically living on the same property but not really interacting. For Megan, it just means she can't trust a word that Isabella says. It makes her question everything. When something like that happens, you don't just look at the bad things that happened, you look at the good things as well and feel like you should have seen something or should have guessed. You start questioning yourself and it creates even more distance for Megan because she's very self-protective. There's so much water under the bridge that it's difficult for them to cross, and yet they're both going to come into crosshairs with the law and have to start communicating and working together.
Ricardo Hubbs/Freeform Lexi Underwood on 'Cruel Summer'
Is there any possibility that they can end the season back together as "ride or dies," or is that truly over for them after everything that's happened?
You actually will see them working in sync again. Desperate times call for desperate measures sometimes. It's always hard to recapture that first love of a friendship, but you will see. There hasn't been a straight line in their friendship, it's been a roller coaster from the beginning, and that does continue.
We also learned that Megan was pregnant at the time of Luke's death — what else are we going to learn about that bombshell moving forward?
This is a huge newsflash for everybody. It's also a way to see the impact of this on a small town where everyone talks, everyone knows everything. You will catch up in real time to the discovery of the pregnancy on Megan's end. And as you see in this episode, Megan is not the one who told Isabella so you will also see where their friendship has gotten to. Because that's usually something you tell your best friend, but at the time that she learned it, they were already fractured.
We've also seen Megan hiding a bloody sheet in the trash. How is that going to come into play moving forward?
It will be discovered. Those sheets — it's not the last we've seen of them. They're like Chekhov's gun.
Looking ahead to the final episodes, how is this season's conclusion going to compare to season 1 where we were left on a crazy shocking twist in the final moments?
It's something we talked a great deal about. I watched season 1 as a fan and they stuck the landing. That was a pretty great ending. When I came on, I wanted to not repeat anything and start fresh. I wanted to examine a super heightened friendship between these two girls and watch it fall apart, and I definitely knew I wanted a murder — what leads to it and the cover-up, because sometimes the cover-up is worse than the crime. I'm very happy with our ending as well. By the time you finish the finale, you will have every question answered, and that was something that was important to me, to not leave people hanging.
Cruel Summer airs Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Freeform.
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