Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 8 Review: Confess Your Sins

This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 8, “Confess Your Sins,” finally answers season-long questions and maintains enough suspense to propel the characters into the final two episodes. Namely, the season’s final stretch can now dig deeper into the nuances of a straightforward mystery — or deliver a thrilling twist no one sees coming.

Written by Heather Thomason and Diana Glogau and directed by Ben Hernandez Bray, “Confess Your Sins” utilizes time folding in on itself to take Megan, Luke, and Isabella to long-awaited and suspenseful places. Even when some twists are logical continuations, the engaging angle comes from their impact on the characters.

Lies snowball into a jaw-dropping cliffhanger Cruel Summer knows will keep audiences abuzz until the penultimate episode.

Beyond those bombshells, “Confess Your Sins” also provides much-needed clarity for some of the dynamics Cruel Summer alludes to all season long.

More specifically, this episode begins to give Isabella and Parker’s dynamic the foundation it needs in August 1999 for the turn on Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 6, “The Plunge,” in July 2000 to land as an act of betrayal, especially considering the amount of importance Isabella puts on loyalty in her friendships.

Their budding friendship is great because there’s so much unexplored potential with Parker, and it’s exciting to see Lisa Yamada have more to do.

With Parker being more prominent on “Confess Your Sins,” Cruel Summer creates a stark juxtaposition between Parker/Isabella and Isabella/Megan.

Where everything with Megan and Isabella’s ride-or-die friendship is often high-stress and high-tension, which Megan notes during the episode, casual and slow-paced forces move Isabella and Parker from 1999 to 2000.

Various short interactions underscore that Parker is one of the only people whom Isabella connects with in Chatham that isn’t Megan or Luke.

It’s almost jarring to hear Parker ask Isabella how she’s handling Megan and Luke getting together because Cruel Summer makes it apparent that Isabella holds back many of her thoughts and feelings because of how much she values Megan’s happiness.

That gesture opens Isabella up in a way that she doesn’t with Megan — not really. It also makes Isabella turning to Jeff all the more revealing because it comes on the heels of Parker’s good-faith interest. It’s a chance for these characters to interact — to check in with one another — without any ulterior motive.

Though, it is an unfortunate context that the girls’ interactions often arise from Parker taking up for Isabella — and herself — in reaction to Brent’s sexism as early as Cruel Summer Season 2 Episodes 1 and 2, “Welcome to Chatham / Ride or Die,” and Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 3, “Bloody Knuckles.”

“Confess Your Sins” does not ease up on Brent’s casual cruelty. In fact, it doubles down on his overt and obscene behavior, making Isabella’s comparison of Luke to his brother all the more damning in January 2000.

It’s an uncomfortable watch to hear Brent boast about the Pam and Tommy tape (another criminal example of a breach of privacy) before publicly slut-shaming Isabella and condemning her for how she chooses to dress. It’s all the more brutal that Steve swoops in to support his son’s behavior as some edgy way of life.

Excusing Brent’s inexcusable actions and words as “harmless” means to “push the envelope” because “boys will be boys” secures Steve’s spot as a complicit villain — even if he didn’t kill Luke.

No one is perfect on Cruel Summer, but the mental gymnastics the Chambers men use to justify their actions is especially abhorrent. 

“Confess Your Sins” plays with that double-edged sword best with the juxtaposition of Megan and Isabella’s actions and Luke admitting to lying about the Plunge — and many, many other things over the last few months.

Isabella and Megan cross criminal and severe lines — perhaps ones that result in his death — to get Luke to confess his sins. 

Their actions are wrong simultaneously as Luke’s seismic lies, causing irreparable damage to Megan and Isabella’s futures and reputations — and their friendship. As “Confess Your Sins” addresses some of the season’s biggest questions, it acknowledges that multiple things can be true and wrong at once.

Nothing that happens at the cabin is entirely comparable — only that it’s all awful. Every character does and says things they shouldn’t.

Every time it seems the action can’t go any further or get any darker, the episode raises the stakes by adding another moving apart — whether it be a weapon or a lie wielded as one.

Consequently, Cruel Summer mines chilling and moving performances from Sadie Stanley, Lexi Underwood, and Griffin Gluck.

“Confess Your Sins” takes Megan, Luke, and Isabella to their breaking points. Whether that cliffhanger is the one that kills Luke or not, there is no coming back from what happens in that cabin, which makes the fact that there are two episodes left in Cruel Summer‘s season all the more intriguing.

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Cruel Summer airs Mondays at 10/9c on Freeform.

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Cruel Summer: Griffin Gluck Discusses Luke’s Relationship with Isabella and Megan [Interview]