Freeform’s Cruel Summer wraps up the latest mystery on July 31 in the 2023 TV schedule with the Season 2 finale, fittingly called “Endgame.” The second season turned the hit show into an anthology series, with Sadie Stanley and Lexi Underwood taking the lead as two young women with a big secret to hide in the late ‘90s to early 2000s. Unfortunately for fans, Season 2 ends without news of a renewal for Season 3. Still, there are some clues about whether the show could have a future beyond “Endgame,” so let’s take a look!
What The Executive Producers Say
It’s not entirely unusual for a show to end a season without news about whether or not it has a future, but that doesn’t make it any easier on fans crossing their fingers for more! It’s likely that Megan and Isabella’s stories will be over with the events of “Endgame” given how Season 2 moved on so entirely from the events of Season 1. Executive producers Michelle Purple and Jessica Biel spoke with E! News ahead of the Season 2 premiere about a potential Season 3, with Purple saying:
A lot has to do sort of with what time period, if we’re going back into the early ‘90s or later into the 2000s, because we do like the show to speak to what was happening at that time. So it’s hard to say, but we’re hoping for a Season 3. If people show up for Season 2, Freeform will have no choice but to give us a Season 3. [laughs]
Season 1 of Cruel Summer was set between 1993-1995, while Season 2 has a narrower time frame of 1999-2000. It seems that fans shouldn’t expect a third season to get too close to present time, if Freeform does renew the show. Jessica Biel chimed in with a message for fans that (hopefully) enough people listened to! The EP said:
Come on, people! Show up!
Although the emphasis from the executive producers was on needing people to watch the second season, it’s hard to gauge at this point just how successful the show has been in attracting viewers over the summer. That said, there are some pieces of evidence worth looking at!
How Cruel Summer Season 2 Performs In The Ratings
The ratings and viewership numbers aren’t released as regularly for Cruel Summer as for shows that air on broadcast networks, and it’s possible that a healthy amount of the fandom watches via a Hulu subscription rather than live on Freeform. In fact, the one instance of Freeform officially announcing viewership numbers for Season 2 suggests that Cruel Summer’s success comes largely from nontraditional methods of viewing.
While TV Series Finale reports that the first and second episodes of Season 2 (which aired back-to-back on June 5) didn’t even hit a 0.1 rating or more than 0.23 million viewers in Live+Same day totals, Freeform announced that the second season premiere earned an audience of 2.6 million viewers in Live+7 totals across linear and digital platforms.
And that's not all! The premiere was the network’s top telecast since the Season 1 finale back in June 2021, and the 2.6 million total is a surge of over 1000% from Live+Same day. At that point in the season, Cruel Summer remained Freeform’s top series on Hulu and those first two were in fact the two-most watched scripted TV episodes on Hulu that week.
That data was calculated via internal multiplatform ratings, so we unfortunately don’t have similar numbers for every episode of Season 2. Still, it seems safe to speculate that Cruel Summer is a hit for Freeform across platforms beyond just the first day’s live broadcast, which could bode well for the show’s future.
What's Happening At Freeform
While Cruel Summer Season 2 started out strong for Freeform in Live+7 totals as a scripted show, the network hasn’t been particularly kind to other scripted shows lately. Grown-ish’s renewal for Season 6 back in January came along with the news that the sixth would be the last. The network gave the axe to Single Drunk Female and The Watchful Eye back in late June, and Everything’s Trash was cancelled in November 2022 before being removed from Hulu and Disney+ this year.
Cruel Summer at least hasn’t been cancelled, but Freeform’s cancellations of scripted series aren’t too encouraging, at least for me. Plus, the network renewed the show in 2021 on the same date that the Season 1 finale aired, and that isn't the case in 2023.
More optimistically, it’s also possible that Freeform axing other shows is a sign that the network is invested in Cruel Summer as its scripted flagship, and the anthology format allowing for recastings every season could simplify the process of getting a third season off the ground, in light of recent events. And that brings us to…
Why Cruel Summer Isn’t Being Heavily Promoted
Shows that are on the verge of airing dramatic season finales often get a big promotional push from networks, executive producers, and stars, but that hasn’t been the case for Season 2. This isn’t necessarily because Freeform has given up on the series, however, as the current WGA writers strike and SAG-AFTRA actors strike has meant that writers and stars can’t promote their projects. Although we can only speculate, the lack of interviews for the Season 2 finale is likely a byproduct of the strikes, not because the network has stopped caring about Cruel Summer.
Unfortunately, those same strikes make the future very uncertain for just about every scripted show that wasn’t already renewed for the 2023-2024 TV season. Most of the large network shows (with exceptions for series like The Rookie: Feds) were renewed or cancelled before the beginning of the writers strike; that wasn’t the case for Cruel Summer, so fans may be stuck waiting for some time if good news is to come.
A lot may depend on how well Season 2 continued to perform after the two-episode season premiere back in June. Freeform hasn’t officially released ratings numbers for multiplatform totals since those first two episodes, so it's unclear at this time whether the mystery and secrets within Megan and Isabella’s story were enough to keep viewers as hooked as they were in Season 1.
For now, you can always revisit the first two seasons of Cruel Summer streaming on Hulu. Shows with as many mysteries, secrets, and even misdirects across timelines can be worth a rewatch after finales air, so perhaps fans can even get more out of the series by going back to earlier episodes… and giving the show some extra streaming views in the process.
