It’s finally the night before Y2K in Cruel Summer and no one is acting right. In the December 1999 timeline, Luke decides he’s throwing a New Year’s party come hell or high water, and the anxiety about the clock turning to 2000 is running high — especially for Ned, Meghan’s secret computer friend and the town’s outcast. When he sees Meghan wearing a playful hat in the store’s parking lot, he has a fit and all but attacks her before Luke comes to her rescue and tries to be the hero in the situation. Ned shows a healthy amount of disdain for Luke’s family, the wealthiest in the area, because of a property line dispute. Despite being slightly unhinged about what he thinks is an impending apocalypse, much of his criticism of the ultra-wealthy are in line with Meghan’s. The only difference is she has aligned herself with them instead of fighting against them.
The one throughline in Cruel Summer Season 2 is Meghan’s obsession with her future and relatedly, money. More than her relationship with Luke and her sisterhood with Isabella, Meghan’s constant worry is about getting a scholarship at University of Washington next year because she sees it as her ticket out of her lower-middle class upbringing. It’s why she’s so resentful of the two most important people in her life: Luke and Isabella never worry about money the way she does, and her inferiority about it manifests as narcissism.
In Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 7 (“It’s The End of the World”), Meghan’s world begins crumbling. She fights with Isabella about the Luke kiss, and then discovers she’s pregnant right before she overhears Luke bragging to his friends about two-timing her. In the July 2000 timeline, she’s convicted of a felony for the fake IDs she and Jeff created (Jeff admits to tipping off the police about her involvement) and U-Dub rescinds her scholarship. Everything that could go wrong, does.
Coupled with the lie about the kiss at the end of Episode 6 (“The Plunge”), this is the first time the series paints Luke as anything but an angel, which tees up the mystery around his death nicely and gives multiple people a reason to go after him. After she hears him bragging about kissing Isabella, Meghan concocts a plan to make Luke “wish he never met us”: She is extra flirtatious and steers him away from the party, likely towards the cabin where she’ll confront him about his intentions. Will the situation turn violent? Apparently yes, but the steps it takes to get there remain to be seen.
For what it’s worth, Meghan maintains her innocence in the July 2000 timeline. She asks Ned about his involvement in the death after Brent claims he was fired from his last job for assaulting his boss and stealing IP. Ned is adamant that he had nothing to do with it, saying “you can’t steal what was yours to begin with” right before Brent and his father appear at Ned’s doorstep. The situation between Ned and Luke’s family feels almost too personal, like a feud between estranged brothers, and fighting over property seems realistic. In general, I wish the details around Ned had come to light faster as his emergence as an important player only happened about midway through the season.
Even with all of the darkness in the latter two timelines, there are a few light spots in the episode in July 1999. Meghan and Luke spend more one on one time together with encouragement from Isabella, and they finally kiss. Their kiss on the dock is soundtracked by “Colorblind” by Counting Crows — notably used in the classic ‘90s film Cruel Intentions, a story about a toxic love triangle and the backstabbing amongst “friends.” (In general this show could be making much more use of the iconic 1990s and 2000s music, but I’ll accept “Colorblind” and the use of “Butterfly” by Crazy Town earlier in the episode for now.)
Isabella only pops up intermittently throughout the episode, and her role this week is mainly to play second fiddle to Meghan and ensure she ends up with the boy she’s been crushing on. We know she may not be entirely innocent, but this installment doesn’t shed much more light on her actions.
We’ve only got a few episodes remaining, meaning we’re only a few hours away from unfurling the mystery at the heart of the show. Ned’s involvement with Luke’s death feels a little too easy given his antagonistic presence and based on the way things went down at the end of season one, my guess is that our protagonists have more to do with Luke’s death than either of them are letting on. And with Meghan’s scholarship officially gone, there’s no telling how she’ll lash out.
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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.
