'Every Year After' episode 8: Do Sam and Percy end up together and what happens to Charlie in final twist?
The Prime Video series 'Every Year After' is the latest summer-romance adaptation, leaving viewers buzzing with excitement and yearning. Based on the Canadian author Carley Fortune’s 2022 novel 'Every Summer After,' the eight-part series dropped on Wednesday. It focuses on the decades-long romance between childhood best friends, Percy Fraser and Sam Florek, which developed while they spent summers together in Barry's Bay. Sadie Soverall plays the female protagonist, Percy, while Matt Cornett stars as her childhood best friend and love interest, Sam. The series features two alternating timelines and a non-linear narrative style that weaves between their teenage romance, which ended in estrangement, and reconciliation years later in their 20s.
Sam and Percy's relationship becomes strained after the former discovers that Percy has been involved with his brother, Charlie. In the finale episode, titled 'Goodbye...,' the on-again, off-again couple spends the night together but decides to part ways in the morning as Sam struggles to get past her betrayal. "I want so much to forgive you. But I don’t think I can do this," he says. Percy returns to her life in Seattle, where she works as an obituary writer, and later receives a key to Sue's (Sam's mother) tavern, which Sue left to Percy in her will. The next summer, Percy and her frenemy Delilah Mason reopen the tavern in Barry’s Bay. Although Sam skips the opening party, he later shows up to meet Percy, and the two share an emotional gaze, leaving their fate to viewer interpretation.
If the series gets renewed for Season 2, showrunner Amy B. Harris told Deadline that she plans to explore more of Sam and Percy's relationship dynamic. "We knew from day one we were going to be ending [with] Sam and Percy not together. I very intentionally kept them standing apart, so we know, for the audience, they’re getting a version of a happy ending, but for us in our journey as storytellers, this is just the beginning for them. We have lots more stories to tell," Harris teased about the lead characters. Percy's cheating will also play a major role in a potential Season 2.
She added, "If we’re lucky enough to have a season two, they’re not settled, right? [Sam] still has feelings about what happened between them, and I think that is going to make their relationship complicated in the best way, and her guilt still should. They still have a lot of emotions and issues to work through, and I think that’s what I don’t see as much on TV that I am really interested in exploring. After you get your happy ending, it’s really just the beginning of a relationship, and relationships are not static; they’re constantly changing, and good things can happen to you, or bad things can happen to you, that are exterior from your relationship, and I really want to explore the challenges of being in a couple."
In 'Every Year After,' Sam's best friend, Jordie, falls for Chantal, Percy’s adult best friend and a high-powered lawyer. Despite being engaged to someone else, she almost kisses Jordie, a laidback motel manager at Barry's Bay. After deciding to keep things casual for a while, the duo officially starts dating in the finale. Harris shared that she would like to explore their dynamic further in the show's next chapter. Percy's affair also caused a rift between Sam and his older brother, Charlie. Sam rebuffs his older brother's pleas for forgiveness after he betrayed his trust, and the brothers stay estranged at the end of Season 1. After his mother, Sue, dies, Charlie throws himself into his work as a hedge fund manager.
Despite his wealth, he leads a lonely existence, which takes a toll on him in the final episode of 'Every Year After.' He suffers a heart attack while looking at a picture of him with Sam and Percy on their father's boat, 'The Banana Boat.' The pic was taken by his girlfriend, Alice Everly, and triggers memories of a life he has since lost. Charlie and Everly's romance is the focus of Fortune’s second book, 'One Golden Summer,' which will likely be covered in a potential second season, as Prime Video has not greenlit the show's next installment yet.
Harris also dished about Charlie's cliffhanger ending, telling the outlet, "I loved the idea [that] Charlie has buried himself in work. He has a broken heart. It’s now physically breaking down, but he’s also lost everything that matters to him. He lost his brother, he lost that community in Barry’s Bay. There’s this sadness and a heartbrokenness to where he is, and it felt so perfect that Alice’s photo would be the thing that reminded him of the world he loved and has lost." The showrunner further revealed that she wanted to tease Alice's presence in Season 1 before fully diving into her love story in the show's next chapter. "We talked a lot about ways to introduce Alice to our audience. 'Were we going to cast her and have her walk into a scene, or was somebody going to mention her?' We finally realized we had the most perfect way to bring her in without having to bring her in, which is that photograph."
