SPOILER ALERT: This post contains spoilers from “Every Year After,” now streaming on Prime Video.
Showunner Amy B. Harris had three specific plot points in mind when she set out to adapt Carley Fortune’s YA romance novel “Every Summer After” for Amazon Prime Video, now titled “Every Year After.”“The pilot ending with ‘You came home,’ the anatomy textbook scene, and the truck sex, where he says, ‘You broke my heart’ had to be in there,” Harris tells Variety. (In a separate conversation with Variety’s Jennifer Maas, Fortune echoed the importance of “You came home,” the textbook scene, and friendship bracelets.) “I thought, ‘These are non-negotiables, and then everything else we’ll figure out where it fits or doesn’t.’”“Home” in this situation refers to the lake town of Barry’s Bay, located in rural Ontario, Canada. The idyllic location serves as the backdrop for the slowburn romance of best-friends-turned-lovers Persephone Fraser (Sadie Soverall) and Sam Florek (Matt Cornett). The pair meet as young teenagers when Percy – as she is referred to – becomes an annual summer visitor after her parents purchase a property in town. Over the course of the next few summers, the two grow closer over horror films and swims in the lake, frequently accompanied by Sam’s older brother Charlie (Michael Bradway), Percy’s best friend Delilah (Abigail Cowen), and Jordie (Joseph Chiu), a fellow local and Sam’s best friend.After years of will they/won’t they, Sam and Percy begin dating, but break up the summer before college when Sam says he needs to focus on school and ends their long-distance relationship. After, Percy sleeps with Charlie – a move that they both feel immense guilt over, and prevents Percy from getting back together with Sam. A decade later, Percy, now an adult living in Seattle, gets a call from Charlie telling her their mom, Sue Florek (Elisha Cuthbert), has died. A grieving Percy heads back to Barry’s Bay after years of no communication, and finds old feelings stirring up as her and Sam grow close once again. She’s accompanied by her best friend Chantal (Aurora Perrineau), a workaholic lawyer engaged to a manchild.
In the book, that’s all that happens. But Harris’ version takes the audience deeper into their lives, weaving in characters with their own plots in the present day and subtly changing the ways in which Sam, Charlie, and Percy’s story plays out.
The most glaring difference is the reveal that the novel’s Sam already knows about the ill-fated one-night stand thanks to Charlie, but the TV version finds out on screen. Well, sort of — Percy admits the truth in between the closing credits of Episode 5 and the opening of Episode 6.There were conversations about moving up the reveal in the show, according to Fortune. “I didn’t want that,” she says. “I also felt you need to have an understanding of the characters before you learn that. You need to be able to see how we got there. And I think you have to spend that time with them before the reveal.”“One of our first big conversations in the [writers’] room was who reveals it and when,” says Harris. “In a series where we’re exploring everybody’s perspectives, you realize all these relationships had been so fractured by what had happened to them.” In a later epsiode, Charlie admits to staying away from home due to his guilt and losing out on time with his brother and dying mom.
“I wanted to see Sam’s response, I wanted to feel the heartbreak,” says Harris. “The reason we decided to make that more of a silent musical moment is that the audience sort of knew what was coming by then – and this is a weird way to say it – but whatever her excuse is, and what she’s explaining to him isn’t going to make it better.”The lack of awareness on Sam’s behalf also poses a question that the book didn’t: Why didn’t he ever reach out to Percy? After their teenage breakup, what did he tell himself happened?“We talked about whether or not to show this, but I actually imagined Sam probably did reach out a few times, trying to reconnect with her, and she refused,” says Harris, who ultimately decided against it. “At some point he went off the rails, and that’s what’s so upsetting about relationships ending: Things go horribly awry, and sometimes don’t get answers as to why it all went so badly, and you’re left to pick up your own pieces.”It was important to Harris not to set Percy up to take all the blame despite her mistake: “Sam was culpable for how badly their relationship went in their teenage years. He was hot and cold. Anytime things got tough for him, he shut down and made her feel like she wasn’t valued.”The years of adolescent build-up also remove an important factor: Charlie. Percy both has her first kiss and loses her virginity with him in the book, something Harris was deliberate in changing.The former is set up the same way, with Sam refusing to kiss Percy during a game of truth or dare, only for Charlie to swoop in — and ultimately back out in the show. The not-kiss was due to a combination of factors: the primary one being that Juliette Hawk, the actress for young Percy, was 17-years-old, while Carson MacCormac, who plays Charlie in the flashbacks, was 25.“We could bring in a stunt double and have them kiss, and then it’ll be OK,” says Harris, explaining the original thought process. “But then it brought up a conversation about what the kiss did or didn’t do for the characters. I think Charlie was jealous that Sam and Percy had found each other as people, but I did not want to play into any version of longing from Charlie to Percy. Sam knowing that Percy leaned in was as potent as if the kiss had happened.”It’s not a love triangle by any definition, if you ask Harris. Charlie has his own story – one that unfolds in the book’s sequel, “One Golden Summer,” and presumably in the show’s second season, which has yet to be greenlit.
“I did not want Percy’s first time to be with Charlie. I felt it was very important that Sam be her first, and that they had that intimacy that was theirs first before she moved on to other people,” says Harris. “I also think that ‘a first’ is a compelling person who looms large.”Percy and Sam’s first time was purposefully written to be a sweet, natural moment after their planned to-the-minute first attempt at sex is interrupted by the revelation that Delilah’s pregnant, something Percy didn’t pick up on, too wrapped up in her romance.“It is a terrifying thing that happens to teenage girls,” says Harris. “Even though Percy did the right thing at the end, I think she always felt really guilty about that and how she handled herself. I do think this really happens for a lot of young people: You fall in love with someone, get very wrapped up in that, and you hurt friends. It’s a bit of a cautionary tale.”Delilah’s off-screen abortion isn’t brought up in the present day storyline, but does add complexity to the web of secondary characters in the show, highlighting her closeness to Jordie, who finds himself drawing closer to Chantal, with the pair dating by the last episode of the season.Harris knew “right away” she wanted to increase the roles the three have, finding it essential to flesh out both Percy and the world of Barry’s Bay. Take Chantal, for example, who never makes the trip with Percy in the book. Harris wanted to figure out who she was, asking: “Why is Chantal in Percy’s life? What does she have to teach Percy, and what does Percy have to teach her? How will the lake affect Chantal when she shows up there?”Chantal, Delilah and Percy form a trio over the course of the season, with the former two coming together to help Percy when Sue leaves her the family restaurant in her will. It’s a sore spot for Sam, Charlie and Sam’s briefly onscreen now ex-girlfriend, who’s afraid that this may be a beyond-the-grave message from mother to son, trying to get them back together.“I definitely think Sue felt there was a lot of unfinished business between her kids and Percy, and that bringing her back to Barry’s Bay was essential for all of them to move on in their lives,” Harris says, saying Sue understood that the Tavern and Barry’s Bay were “was inspiring and powerful for Percy in a way that it wasn’t for her boys.” “I don’t know if she necessarily had a plan to get these crazy kids together, but I do think she understood that these three children who she loved so much — who were becoming adults — were kind of stunted and could never move on until they worked through their issues together.”Chantal and Delilah individually have enough on their plates too. Over the course of the season, Chantal grows frustrated with her needy fiancé and begins falling for Jordie, who has harbored feelings for Delilah for years, but seemingly moves on and reciprocates Chantal’s affections. Delilah, who goes through a mainly off-screen divorce during the show, is shown to have feelings for Jordie in the season’s last episode, but spends a significant amount of screentime engaged in a secret affair with Charlie, who she has had a crush on since she was a teenager.
When asked about the possibility of fans growing attached to Charlie and Delilah as a couple, Harris hints that their story isn’t over yet – despite the Easter egg in the season finale implying that Charlie’s love interest from the books will be making an appearance soon.“There is a book out there where Charlie has a different endgame that I think fans are very excited by, but I don’t know when we’ll tell that story,” Harris says diplomatically, referring to the series’ Alice Everly, a photographer who falls for Charlie decades after taking a photo of him, Sam and Percy on a boat from a distance. “There’s a long journey where Charlie and Delilah are still very much in each other’s lives. The Chantal-Jordie-Delilah love triangle is going to be a big thing in Season 2 — which might become a quadrangle when Charlie shows back up in Barry’s Bay.”With Charlie positioned to serve as the Season 2 lead, Fortune is aware of the split opinions concerning his character. “There are fans who loved Charlie the best in ‘Every Summer After.’ The reason why I knew that I had to write ‘One Golden Summer’ is because fans wanted a love story and a happy ending for Charlie. The majority of fans, I’ve found, love him already. If you’re a Charlie hater, you get a new perspective on him in ‘One Golden Summer.’ But with the show because we’re seeing the brothers and their relationship, I think we already have empathy for them in a different way. So if you are left off with a bitter taste in your mouth about Charlie — first of all, I don’t relate to you, and also, how fun? I love hating characters. Who doesn’t want to pick a brother?”Harris and Fortune agree they both have empathy for their characters, with Harris saying: “He made a big mistake that changed his life forever. He ran away from home and spent a lot less time there. His relationship with his brother — which I do think was the most important relationship for him from day one — is why he kept the secret for so long, because he couldn’t bear the idea of not having Sam love him and look up to him.”“I hope people can be empathetic towards him. I certainly am,” Harris continues, adding that he begins to grow and start figuring himself out this season. She confims the photograph Charlie comes across in the finale and stares at as he has a heart attack is Alice’s. “He doesn’t know it yet, but the audience who loves ‘One Golden Summer’ will know that there’s this woman out there that we’re touching very lightly in this season.”“He has a broken heart, and now his heart is actually giving out, because he doesn’t have a place to call home anymore. At the very end of the episode, Sam comes home and is welcomed by Percy. Charlie doesn’t have anywhere to be but his office,” Harris adds.While the book ends with a clear cut reunion of Sam and Percy getting back together, the show leaves the status of their relationship a lot more open-ended — having had sex in Sam’s truck after his mother’s wake and him arriving at the Tavern on Percy’s opening night — allowing the two to continue to figure out their issues as the show progresses, alongside Charlie and the rest of the crew. Fortune, for her part, hopes to see an “amalgamation” of storylines old and new: “I want to see these characters from the first season who we now have — these new fresh storylines for that world in the book — I want to see those expand and grow and carry over to the second season, while bringing in Alice, her grandmother, and having this new season with Charlie. I want both.”“One of the things I’m so excited by, with Sam and Percy, is that the will they/won’t they of this season is like, how will they? One of the reasons why I thought it was so important that he find out about the betrayal in this season is that it’s still very raw for him,” explains Harris, who confirms their story isn’t over yet. “Going into Season 2, they’re going to try to make this work, but they haven’t been together in over a decade. They’ve both changed. You don’t just get a happy ending; that’s the beginning of whatever comes next.”It’s been a busy few years for Prime Video, especially in the YA romance adaptation space. The show will likely draw comparisons to “The Summer I Turned Pretty” for all it’s similarities and differences, and the hockey series “Off Campus” catapulted to fame in May with the release of Season 1 and Season 2 already in production. “Every Year After” will too, no doubt, bring a whole new level of attention to the characters, actors, and the existing books.“I don’t think there’s a way to prepare for it,” says Fortune about the new wave of eyes on Barry’s Bay. “I was talking to Sadie about this. You hold your relationship with the work close to your heart. We do this thing that means a lot to us, we put it out into the world for the audience, and we have to let it go. And doing that protects our own relationship with it. That’s sometimes more challenging than other times. But it’s happening. The train has left the station.”