Note: This story contains spoilers from “Every Year After” Season 1, Episode 8.
After a season full of stop and starts for Sadie Soverall’s Percy and Matt Cornett’s Sam in “Every Year After,” the Prime Video YA series sees the hint of resolution for the friends-to-lovers upon Sam’s return to Barry’s Bay in the final moments of the season.
With Sam already having handed over the keys to the tavern to Percy, showrunner Amy B. Harris hopes fans see his return as “a happy ending for Sam and Percy, or the possibility of a happy ending.” But that doesn’t mean their story is over, with Harris noting “happy endings are just the beginning — they have a lot of work to do to be a couple.”
“Time has passed — they’re not the same people that they were when they were 18, and even though they’re in love with each other, they have to learn a lot about each other now and who they are as adults,” Harris told TheWrap. “In the writers’ room, I always would say, ‘It’s not a matter of will-they-won’t-they now; it’s how will they?’” It’s why Harris left off with the couple standing apart from one another, explaining “I don’t think it’s fully resolved yet although I think they want it to work.”
The finale leaves off with a bigger question mark for Michael Bradway’s Charlie, who has a heart attack after seeing a photo of himself, Sam and Percy in their boat on his boss’ wall — an Easter egg for fans of Carley Fortune’s book series, which sees Charlie meet his romantic interest Alice, who took the photo, in “One Golden Summer,” which Harris plans to tackle should the Prime Video series receive a Season 2 renewal.
“Charlie is suffering from a broken heart, and then his heart is giving out on him,” Harris said, noting Season 2 would see Charlie’s struggle out of this tough spot. “Sam is the most important person in his life now, with both his parents having passed …. so his betrayal, I think, has haunted him for a long time and has put a lot of pressure on him … I’m excited to explore both how he and Sam can potentially come back together, but also where Charlie goes from here.”
With “One Golden Summer” slated to give Charlie his own happy ending next, Harris revealed the plan to keep expanding Fortune’s Barry’s Bay universe on screen with a blending of Fortune’s books and the expanded supporting characters, recalling that both she and Amazon executives “agreed [the show] could be multiple seasons right away.”
Harris breaks down those plans and what’s next for the central characters below.
TheWrap: What initial conversations did you have with Amazon about how far the series could go, and how did you approach having this trove in Carley’s books?
Harris: We all agreed it could be multiple seasons right away. Beyond the fact that Carley has a phenomenal book that takes place in Barry’s Bay, I think once we started talking about the ensemble being such a big piece of it, it became clear we could build out the stories for many seasons to come … Amazon’s very supportive. If the show does well, I think we’ll be lucky enough to get that second season, and hopefully the third season, and as far as long as the audience will have us, I think we have stories to tell, based on “One Golden Summer,” [and] we’ll have some new characters coming to Barry’s Bay as well.
Is there still more to explore with Delilah and Charlie as well?
Yes, I think there’s a possibility that they can come back into each other’s lives in a different way, but I think for the moment Delilah is pining for somebody who has maybe fallen for someone else.
We also leave off with this love triangle between Delilah, Chantal and Jordie. What do you want to explore more of those in those characters?
We always knew that Jordie would have like an unrequited love for her from high school … that was very interesting to sort of play Sam and Percy are sort of fully realized as lovers … as boyfriend and girlfriend as teenagers, but that Jordie is sort of on the outside looking in at this beautiful girl who is only looking at Charlie, so that was a bit of a love triangle in the past that was bubbling for them, and so I liked the idea that Jordie moves on right as Delilah in the present is starting to realize this friend who she’s always counted on as maybe the person. The scene when Delilah in the past is crying by the car and admits to him what’s going on — if you don’t fall in love with Jordie, that teenage Jordie, then I don’t know, you’re not human.
After “One Golden Summer,” you have plans for additional seasons for the Barry’s Bay universe, and how many seasons are you ideally hoping for?
I’ll take as many seasons as the fans want us to be on. I think the ensemble that we’ve built, and then the characters that are coming from “One Golden Summer” — there will be additional people who show up in our world. I think there’s a real opportunity to have many seasons, because I think I realized, as I’ve been working on this show, what I loved so much about Carley’s book was, like, these people are coming of age in two timelines — in their past as teenagers, and then in their late 20s, which I think is another really important time of coming of age, where you’re like, “What do I want my life to look like?” and actually, the spoiler alert is, you don’t have to know, and that’s a good thing. We have people who are like on the precipice of things … for Percy, it’s finding her voice again, and wanting to write again, and falling in love with Sam again, and I think there’s a lot of precipices we can put these characters on for seasons to come.
The other two books in the Barry Bay universe include different characters that we haven’t even met. Will you want to introduce those characters, or would additional seasons be focused on the characters that we’ve already met?
In my mind, it’s a combination. It’ll be a combo of the ensemble we already have and the characters we’re going to be introducing.
I’d love to hear about bringing some of those iconic moments to life, including that anatomy textbook scene?
There were definitely scenes that were so iconic we knew they had to be in the show, and I think “you came home,” we knew was going to be the end of the first episode. In the writer’s room, we ended up calling it truck sex, just to sort of shorten that, but that scene where he says, “I loved you, you broke my heart.” We knew that had to be there, and then the anatomy text scene, we knew was a middle post that could not not be in the show.
I felt a level of pressure on those scenes, in particular … those scenes I would reread the passages in the book, I would talk with the director — that anatomy scene held a lot of tension in my back until we had filmed it and I saw how good it was because I knew how much that scene meant to the book fans and really, I do not take lightly what this book means to people, and it was really important to me that we deliver on that scene. Carley has been so spectacular in that she has really always said to me, “a book adaptation cannot be the book” … there are scenes in the show that are some of my favorite, and they’re not in the book, and sort of the last beat at the end, with the mirroring of “you came home,” she was like, “Damn, I wish I thought of [that].” She’s excited by the things we’re exploring, which has been I think really fun and great.
What made Sadie and Matt the right Percy and Sam?
The anatomy scene was the one that told us Sadie and Matt were our Percy and Sam, and they did it over Zoom — their chemistry read, and … I’m going to be honest, I was very early on saying, “We’re going to need to find the budget to fly these people to be together, there’s no way we’re going to be able to tell these chemistry reads from a Zoom.” Sadie’s in London. Matt was on a film in North Carolina … it was complicated figuring out how we were going to get everybody together, but we knew we would get everybody together, because I was definitely assuming the Zoom wasn’t going to work.
We gave them like 10 or 15 minutes without us in the Zoom room to get to know each other a little bit, and then they came on, and oh, I was like embarrassed a little bit — I felt like I was watching some really explosive chemistry happening in front of me that I was not supposed to be participating — I think we were all like sort of blushing at the end, and then when they got off, we were like, “Okay, I guess we do not need to see them in person. That is unbelievable.” Their chemistry just literally popped off the Zoom screen, so I was like, “What will this look like when we actually get them in front of cameras?” I think their chemistry is off the charts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
“Every Year After” Season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.
