Cruel Summer's Lexi Underwood and Sadie Stanley Break Down That Surprise Visit in Episode 5

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 5. Read at your own risk!]

New girl Isabella LaRue (Lexi Underwood) is keeping secrets. And in Cruel Summer Season 2 Episode 5, those secrets come dangerously close to being exposed. That's largely because someone from Isabella's past shows up in Chatham, the small town she recently moved to, without warning. And Trevor's (Olly Sholotan) visit threatens to destroy the new life that she has built.

In the short time since Isabella arrived in Chatham, she befriended Megan Landry (Sadie Stanley) and started a fling with Megan's BFF Luke Chambers (Griffin Gluck). In fact, it's the love triangle between these three characters that is at the heart of Freeform's Cruel Summer Season 2. The story is told in three timelines, and we quickly learn in Episode 1 that in the summer of 2000, Luke is found dead. Megan and Isabella are seemingly involved in his drowning, though we don't exactly know how. Both girls have plenty to hide, and in Episode 5 this becomes clearer than ever for Isabella when Trevor — her best friend Lisa's brother as well as someone she had a relationship with — suddenly appears. 

"Isabella's first reaction when she sees Trevor appear, she's very taken aback," Underwood told TV Guide. "Trevor represents everything from her past that she hasn't necessarily healed from." Though we don't know what brought Isabella to Chatham, we know that she has never stayed at one place for long. "She's very used to forming these intimate relationships with people and then having to move," Underwood continued. "So especially because she's gotten settled into this world, and she's gotten used to this new routine, it kind of takes her back to that moment that she had last year where she had to move."

Megan, who has finally welcomed Isabella into her life, did not spot her friend's discomfort at first. "She assumes he's just somebody from where she used to live, and it's great that he's visiting her and there's nothing wrong," Stanley said. "And then she kind of chips away at it. But even then Megan doesn't know the true reason that this visit is awkward and scary."

Tensions rise when Megan sees Isabella and Trevor share a kiss. "When I was like looking at the script, I thought that there were a couple different things," Underwood said of what drove her character to kiss him. "Number one, when you haven't given yourself the time to heal from something, obviously, those feelings are still very real." At this point, we don't know the events that Isabella needs to heal from. But Underwood said that Isabella still has to process her emotions from those experiences. "I also think, from a different perspective, that it is a little bit of manipulation as well," the actor explained. "Those feelings may not necessarily have been fully there. She's just kind of using it to mask and to cover up her anxiety — and to make Trevor go along with the story that she's been selling Chatham."

Stanley also shares her character's response to witnessing the kiss. "Immediately, she's thinking about Luke," Stanley said. "She knows that Luke has feelings for her and so she doesn't want her best friend to get hurt." But instead of going directly to Luke, Megan first confronts Isabella about what transpired. "At the same time, she's starting to grow closer to Isabella," Stanley said. "I think Megan wanted to give Isabella the benefit of the doubt and be like, 'Hey, what was that? Tell me so that I can not freak out.'"

And even though Isabella told Megan to not freak out about the kiss, something else shakes up Megan's world at the end of Episode 5. It's the summer of 2000, and news of Luke's drowning has been made public. Megan receives a letter from Trevor, who reveals that his sister Lisa also died in a drowning. This came as a shock to Megan, since Isabella has not mentioned anything about her former best friend's death. And only time will tell whether these two tragedies are connected through Isabella. 

Cruel Summer Season 2 is available to stream.