Cruel Summer season 2 takes place in a fictional seaside town in Chatham, Washington. Cruel Summer Season 2 was filmed in Canada.
The teen drama returned for a second season following a successful debut in April 2021. The new premiered on June 5, 2023, on Freeform, with new episodes airing every Monday.
Season 1 follows two teenage girls and the reverberations in everyone’s life after one teen disappears and the other takes her place.
The second season focuses on the rise and fall of teenage friendship between two girls in the early 2000s.
Cruel returned with a new cast, new characters, new mysteries, and lots of new theories and questions. The main cast includes Sadie Stanley, Lexi Underwood, Griffin Gluck, and Sean Blakemore.
While the debut season focused on a teenager’s disappearance, the second season ups the ante with a mysterious disappearance that culminates in a murder.
“The thing about the show is that at the end of every episode, you’re going to be surprised,” Stanley told Teen Vogue prior to the premiere.
Where Does Cruel Summer 2 Take Place?
Cruel Summer season 2 takes place in a fictional seaside town in Chatham, Washington. Season 2 follows three different timelines surrounding Y2K.
The first season was set in the 1990s, in three different time periods as it followed the story of two teenagers after one went missing.
As the season 1 finale concluded with a major twist, fans were eager for the plot to continue in another season.
While the series did get renewed, Freeform announced that the show would be an anthology series and would focus on new characters with a new set of crime-centric problems.
According to the Season 2 synopsis, the teen series will focus on three different timelines to tell the new story, much like fans saw in Season 1.
As Kate (Olivia Holt) and Jeannette (Chiara Aurelia) shared their distinct perspective on what occurred in the first season, the show jumped from 1993 to 1994 and 1995.
The first two episodes of the series, which landed on the premiere date, gave hints about events from all three timelines.
In the summer of 1999, Megan is excited about her family hosting a new exchange student, Isabella. She agrees to show Isabella around town and giver her permission to pursue Luke Chambers.
They have become best friends in the winter of 1999. Megan receives her college scholarship and is now dating Luke.
During a Christmas party at the Chambers’ household, a tape showing Luke and Isabella having a physical relationship is projected in front of the guests.
In the summer of 2000, Megan hears that a body has been found in the lake. Later, Luke’s father, Steve, confirms the deceased as Luke.
Cruel Summer Season 2 Filming Locations
Cruel Summer season 2 was filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Season 2 began filming on April 21, 2022, and ended on September 7, 2022.
The first season was filmed in Dallas, Texas, for over six months. For Season 2, the show moved to the ‘idyllic waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest,’ per the official synopsis.
However, Griffin Gluck, who portrays Luke Chambers, a boy who finds himself in a love triangle with Megan and Isabella, said the cast shot the second season in Vancouver, Canada.
Gluck shared that filming in Canada had its challenges, particularly when the weather in the script conflicted with the actual conditions at the filming location.
“I feel like the first couple of episodes is very summer-heavy,” the actor said. He further said that as they progressed, the filming became more winter-heavy.
He shared that the summer scenes were shot during the coldest days of the year. “Not of the year but for our shooting, it is the coldest days of the show, as we were right at the end of wintertime,” he added.
The weather conditions became more harsh in summer. Griffin recalled shooting the holiday scenes on a sunny day, adding extra layers to make the locations look more like winter.
He and his fellow cast members wore pants, T-shirts with a sweater and jacket over them, and big socks and boots. “And we’re just dying of heat,” said the actor.
Griffin revealed that the summer heat and the lakeside locations, where many scenes were shot, led to some unexpected troubles in the crew.
The team had a tough time struggling with the forests and mosquitoes. The production even had to invest in mosquito-sucking machines.
Is Chatham in Washington A Real Place?
No, Chatham Washington is not a real place. It is a fictional town of Cruel Summer Season 2. Chatham is a Pacific Northwest town in Vancouver.
Neither seasons take place in real locations, instead leaning on areas like the first season’s fictional Skylin, Texas.
Skylin, Texas, is a fully fictional city, but all those Dallas backdrops were the real deal.
Season 2 lead character, Megan Landry, is a Chatham native hoping to leave town after receiving a computer science scholarship at the University of Washington.
She lives with her mother and sister in a small town near the water where all of the businesses are owned by her best friend Luke’s father.
Isabella, another main character, is a glamorous exchange student who moves in with the Landrys for a year.
In Episode 2, we see Isabelle writing to her boarding school roommate, Lisa, about how she is enjoying the beautiful town, Chatham but is having tough time bonding with Megan.
She gets invited to a pool party at the Chambers’ house, where she finds Megan abusing medication to help with her studies. Isabella agrees to keep her secret and later kisses Luke in the pool.
In the winter of 1999, the girl in the tape is revealed to be Megan. And as she was upset about the leaked tape, Isabella promised to keep that a secret and took the fall for her.
In 2000, Isabella is preparing to leave Chatham, but Parker stops her saying that the sheriff is questioning everyone.
Chambers’ autopsy report showed that he was heavily sedated and grazed by a bullet before drowning.
The sheriff interrogates her and references her distressed past, but Isabella manages to remain silent. She then calls her mom and tells her she is in trouble.