In its sophomore season, Cruel Summer has set up a perfectly exciting mystery, and so far, the approach has been to offer the audience a limited amount of information. We played along because the experience was thoroughly entertaining, for the most part. And cooking up our own theories regarding the death of Luke Chambers was a lot of fun. In this week’s episode, Cruel Summer expectedly revealed a lot about what exactly happened to Luke, and a whole lot of it actually confirmed that we were right with one of our theories after all.
Spoilers Ahead
A New Beginning
With the summer officially over, all our main characters are gearing up for their senior year at High School. Isabella is particularly excited, as this is going to be her first and only shot at being a true-blue American high school kid. There is an undeniable awkwardness between Isabella and Megan now that the budding romance between Megan and Luke is on full display. That doesn’t mean Isabella isn’t happy for Luke and Megan. In fact, we shouldn’t forget that she is, in fact, the reason this happened in the first place.
We get our weekly fill of Chatham tradition, this time with an annual car wash event. While Isabella goes to attend it, Luke and Megan stay behind to have some alone time together. At the car wash, Parker approaches Isabella, and the two seem to vibe quite well. We all have seen that other than Megan, Parker has been the closest friend to Isabella in Chatham. Keeping that in mind, I would say the writers of the show have done a very convincing job at setting up this friendship.
With Megan and Luke now being a couple, Isabella is not the only one who has to deal with the aftermath. There is someone else who has gotten himself into a worse position than Isabella, and that person happens to be none other than Jeff. But when Isabella makes an attempt to comfort Jeff, he seems to be handling things quite well. Things get really, really weird for Isabella when Brent suddenly hits on her, and Steve makes an attempt to neutralize the situation by telling Isabella that it’s just a harmless male thing.
Clearly, the Chambers men are flag bearers of a toxic culture of privilege and subsequent entitlement. The major takeaway from this timeline is, however, Luke asking Isabella not to tell Megan about them getting intimate. Luke’s reasoning seems harmless at this point, which is not hurting Megan, who is under the impression that both of them have never done the deed . This proves that Luke had a habit of getting away with the help of lies, a very problematic character trait that would eventually become the reason behind his doom.
The Walls Are Closing In On Megan And Isabella
Like last week, we are going to talk about the summer 2000 timeline before shedding light on the winter timeline, which is clearly the main deal at this point. In the Summer of 2000, exactly a year after the car wash day of last year, Megan breaks into Ned’s in order to acquire the security footage of the fateful night where everything happened. Surprisingly enough, she has Isabella as her partner in crime. But the duo is caught red-handed by Sheriff Mayers and inevitably brought into the police station for another round of extensive grilling. Outside the police station, Steve and Debbie have an altercation regarding the situation. It is particularly ironic given the fact that we see the same duo in a happier, blissful place on the same episode.
Megan and Isabella, with their lawyers, Tom and Rebecca, respectively, are interrogated yet again by Mayers about the night of the New Year’s Eve party. They both lie, as you’d expect. Megan says she went with Luke, and they hung out for a bit in the cabin. Isabella says she went home from the party itself. Isabella also explicitly made it clear that the friendship between Megan and her was over by the time of the party. Mayers doesn’t buy anything that the duo says anymore because now he knows for a fact that they are lying. He pulls out the trump card, which is the video footage Jeff took at the party. With a bit of technological help, the police have managed to isolate the conversation between Megan and Isabella—yes, the one where they talk about taking revenge on Luke. In the winter timeline, we do get to see what actually went on.
What Really Happened At The Cabin?
As per the plan, Megan takes Luke to the cabin and proposes that they do something other than the usual, for a change. A drunk Luke gladly accepts the proposal of doing something adventurous which involves him getting tied up to the bed. Once Megan does that, Luke sees that Isabella is also present in the cabin, to his surprise.
The girls make it clear that they are out to get Luke for what he has done. A shocked, confused Luke keeps apologizing with no effect. Isabella spikes a drink, and the girls force Luke to drink it in order to get the truth. And the plan works like a charm. Luke confesses everything; from how he secretly enjoys being a Sigma male to his dudebros to how he has always known about the existence of Brent’s camera inside the cabin. But the biggest shocker comes when Luke reveals that it was actually him who purposefully filmed him and Megan because he thought it would be a unique experience for him and Megan to see the tape together. This upsets Megan to the extent that she can’t handle it anymore. But Luke Chambers is still not done. Now that he has confessed to everything and effectively lost his good boy facade, he clearly doesn’t care about Megan’s feelings anymore. So, he decides to tell the real truth about him and Isabella getting intimate one time, before Megan and Luke got together. But he cleverly puts the blame on Isabella in order to manipulate an already distressed Megan.
What happens after is exactly what we all predicted. Luke, still tied up, continues to create a rift between the girls. And he actually manages to pull it off as both Megan and Isabella turn on each other. This leads to Isabella taking the gun out and firing it. The screen goes black at this point, but we already know where the bullet ends up. What we still don’t know is how Luke Chambers dies after this. We have to wait another week to find out, I suppose.
