'Cruel Summer' Season 2 Finally Gets Release Date

Viewers will be taking a trip to an idyllic waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest when Cruel Summer Season 2 returns to Freeform's roster later this year. The network announced Tuesday that the breakout anthology series, the highest rated show in the network's history, will return with its second season in the summer of 2023. Freeform also released the first photo of Season 2's all-new cast.

While Season 1 was set over the course of three summers in the '90s and followed Kate Wallis, a popular girl who went missing, and Jeanette Turner, the nerdy wannabe who is accused of being connected to Kate's disappearance, Season 2 will approach a new story from three different timelines surrounding Y2K. Set in an idyllic waterfront town in the Pacific Northwest, Cruel Summer Season 2 will chronicle the friendship "between Megan, Isabella and Megan's best friend Luke, the love triangle that blossomed, and the mystery that would impact all of their lives going forward," per the network.

The upcoming season will star Sadie Stanley as Megan Landry, a computer coder and honor student from a blue-collar family who begins to live in the moment and embrace her true self when she meets Isabella, portrayed by Eloise Payet, the daughter of foreign diplomats, who is spending a year as an exchange student with the Landry family. Griffin Gluck stars as Luke Chambers, Megan's lifelong best friend from a prominent family. Rounding out the cast is KaDee Strickland Megan's hardworking single mom Debbie, Lisa Yamada as popular musician Parker, Sean Blakemore as old-fashioned law-and-order type Sheriff Myer, and Paul Adelstein as Luke's high-profile dad Steve Chambers.

Debuting on Freeform back in April 2021, 3.81 million people tuned in to watch Cruel Summer's two-hour premiere in the seven days after its release. It ranked as the number one new cable drama of the year among women aged 18-34. Becoming Freeform's highest-rated series to date, it came as little surprise when the network renewed the series in June 2021, later confirming that Cruel Summer would shift into an anthology.

Cruel Summer is from studio Entertainment One (eOne) and was created by Bert V. Royal. Elle Triedman serves as showrunner, with Triedman, Bill Purple, Tia Napolitano and Iron Ocean Productions' Jessica Biel and Michelle Purple executive producing.