Welcome to your new summer obsession set in Barry’s Bay, Ontario, with your hosts Percy Fraser and Sam Florek. Prime Video’s Every Year After brings Carley Fortune's novel Every Summer After to life in an eight-episode story. A love story spanning from teens to adulthood takes center stage, breaking our hearts with each new detail.
Whether younger Percy and Sam are leading the story or their older counterparts, the story has the same emotional impact. With an amazing cast and soundtrack, Every Year After has already become a new favorite.
Present Day Percy
Throughout this story, we’ll meet many versions of Percy. For now, let’s focus on the aftermath of meeting Sam, falling in love, and the massive mistake. Percy fled Barry’s Bay and her mistakes after many summers calling the lake her summer home. Ten years later, she’s giving a speech on love at her best friend’s party in Seattle.
As she reads her well-prepared speech to Chantal (Aurora Perrineau) and Drew (Karl Walcott), we get glimpses of Percy’s summer memories. We’ll come to learn it’s the time she spent with Sam (Matt Cornett) and his family in Berry’s Bay before everything went sideways. They look happy and in love. When the camera pans back to present-day Percy (Sadie Soverall), she’s tearing up because she lost her love while her best friend is holding on to hers. It’s a heartbreaking scene from start to finish, but it’s not over yet.
Jake (William Wilder), Drew’s half-brother, walks her home, expecting them to hook up, but Percy gets an unexpected phone call from Berry’s Bay. Thinking it’s Sam, she takes it behind a closed door and finds Charlie (Michael Bradway), Sam’s brother, on the other end, telling her their mom, Sue, passed away a few days ago. She would be pissed if he didn’t reach out to Percy even though it has been ten years since they’ve talked. Sue was like a second mom to Percy, and now she’s gone. Without a second thought, she says yes. This split decision causes her to have her first panic attack in years. Thanks to Jake, who overhears her panicking, he calls Chantal. Props to him for knowing Percy wasn’t okay and needed her best friend.
The next morning, Percy and Drew convince Chantal to go to Barry’s Bay with Percy. She needs moral support if she’s going to pay her respects to Sue and the boys she messed things up with all those years ago. Barry’s Bay used to be her home; now it’s full of memories and mistakes and people who don’t want to see her. Yet, Charlie invited her, so maybe there’s hope for them.
Summer 2011
Percy and Chantal’s arrival in Berry’s Bay brings back memories of her first summer. We leave the present and travel back to Summer 2011. Percy (Juliette Habicht) and her parents arrive at their lake house for the first time. A young Percy immediately changes into her swimsuit and heads down to the lake, where she meets Sam and Charlie. Little did she know they’d share so much history.
While she’s telling her parents about the boys not inviting her to swim with them, they come over to the house to invite her to hang out with Sam. In a crazy turn of events, due to Charlie’s very active lifestyle, Percy and Sam (Blue Clarke) become friends.
In her room, Sam looks through Percy’s movie collection while they get to know each other. Her parents are professors, while his mom owns the tavern in town. Sam makes a deal with Percy that if she makes him a friendship bracelet to match hers, he’ll have his mom make her some pierogies. With that deal in place, a bond formed, leading her to show him her favorite horror movies. Sometimes they’d be in the basement watching movies, while other times they were jumping in the lake with Charlie.
Return to Barry’s Bay
Chantal leaves to jump on a Zoom for work and wait for the motel room to be ready. Meanwhile, Percy runs into memories of her and Sue (Elisha Cuthbert) as she takes a walk to clear her head. They used to sit by the lake and clear their thoughts together away from the boys. Her memory lane leads us to our first view of present-day Sam standing on the dock talking on the phone. He catches a glimpse of someone running away from the lake (he doesn’t know it’s Percy yet).
After discovering she didn’t pack the essentials and buying kid underwear, Percy runs into Deliah (Abigail Cowen). In 2011, Delilah was introduced through a photo and a mean girl drama backstory. As we’ll find out, they sort of patched things up, and Percy invited her to Barry’s Bay. When she fell out with the boys, she also lost touch with Deliah. During the last ten years, Delilah bought a house in Barry’s Bay, got married, and remained very protective of Charlie and Sam. They may have been Percy’s friends first, but Deliah didn’t hurt them and then leave for 10 years.
Thankfully, after Charlie joins their awkward reunion, Chantal saves Percy from any more embarrassment. Hauling her away to check into their motel. Jordie (Joseph Chiu) pretends not to remember Percy as he resolves their check-in situation, which was two rooms but is now one. Things get worse when, while on a run, Percy hides from Sam and ends up at her old house, where old memories hit her like a freight train.
Charlie saves her from her panic attack in the lake. They have a heart-to-heart about the past and present. She can’t outrun what she did, even though she tried for so long, and she worries Sam hates her.
Present-Day Sam and Charlie
Charlie comes into the house dripping from swimming in the lake. Sam immediately notes that he needs a towel, but he declines and starts looking for food. They fight over Sam having no time to swim in the lake due to taking care of their mom until she passed. Charlie counters that with “not everyone can take a six-month break from their residency as you can.”
That sends Sam into a rage of bitterness towards his brother for not being there. Even though Sam knows being a doctor made him the best son to take care of her. Yet, he’s still bitter that he had to do it alone. He storms off towards the lake.
After the awkward run-in with Percy, Jordie meets up with Sam at the Tavern. He lightly touches on wanting to be there for him. Sam tells Jodie about who’s coming to the memorial, and he tries to get him to bring up Percy. Sam talks about how he’s been thinking of her and looking at old photos. Then, he thinks he’s crazy because he thought he saw her today at the lake. That one detail changes the conversation. Finally, Jordie tells Sam that Percy is staying at the motel.
Sam runs to the docks and yells at Charlie for inviting Percy behind his back. He pushes them into the lake, hurting Charlie in the process. But this splinter leads them to a brotherly heart-to-heart about why Percy should be here. She was family. Sue loved her so much, and Percy loved Sue. He may be upset, but he also knows it was the right thing to do. The memorial is about Sue, after all.
Following all the memories piling up, Percy walks into the Tavern. She faces Sam for the first time in ten years and tries to fall back into their younger selves. She helps him with the dishes because he is the worst at them. As they are getting cozy, Sam’s new girlfriend, Taylor, walks into the kitchen. Getting closure with Sam just got ten times harder for Percy.
Stream all episodes of Every Year After season 1 on Prime Video now.
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