(Photo: Freeform/Justine Yeung)
Freeform has made other plans for next summer. The cable channel has cancelled the Cruel Summer anthology series, so viewers shouldn’t bother looking for a third season.
A teen thriller series, the Cruel Summer TV show stars Sadie Stanley, Lexi Underwood, Griffin Gluck, KaDee Strickland, Lisa Yamada, and Sean Blakemore, with Paul Adelstein recurring. Season two is set in an idyllic waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest and follows the rise and fall of an intense teenage friendship. Approaching the story from three different timelines in the 1990s leading up to Y2K, the story twists and turns as it tracks the early friendship between computer genius Megan (Stanley), mysterious foreign exchange student Isabella (Underwood), and Luke (Gluck), Megan’s best friend. A popular teen goes missing, and a seemingly unrelated girl transforms from a sweet and awkward outlier to the most popular girl in town.
Airing on Monday nights for ten episodes, the second season of Cruel Summer averaged a 0.05 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 131,000 viewers. Compared to season one, that’s down by 59% in the demo and down by 51% in viewership in the live+same day ratings (includes DVR playback through 3:00 AM).
Cruel Summer began as a limited series but became an anthology series with its second season renewal. The final original episode, revolving around a new mystery and set of characters, aired on July 31st.
The Good Trouble series has also been cancelled, and the final episodes of that show will begin airing next month.
What do you think? Have you watched the first two seasons of the Cruel Summer TV show? Are you disappointed this Freeform series wasn’t renewed for a third season?