There’s something undeniably magical about the opening of a television show. The way it draws you in. The way you find yourself searching for answers. How it can overwhelm you one moment, and suddenly make sense of things that seemed impossible to understand.
In We Were Liars, every moment feels weighty. Every scene hints that everything is changing—yet, strangely, everything stays the same. But isn’t that what summer is like? A season where everything shifts, even when it feels like nothing has.
When we left off in episode one, it seemed like everyone had found their footing—or at least pretended to. But now we’re faced with the aftermath. With choices made. With a change that can’t be undone. For Cadence, Summer 16 feels like a lifetime ago. And now, in Summer 17, nothing is the same.
Whatever happened—we don’t know. Not yet. But what we do know, after watching this episode, is that something about Summer 16 is hauntingly important. It lingers, it transforms, and it stays with you.
WHAT HAPPENED?
What happened to Cadence? The truth is, we still don’t know. All we know—and all the show lets us know—is that she doesn’t remember. She remembers her perfect kiss with Gat in June, and then… nothing. She woke up in August, with that kiss as her last memory.
She’s living in the dark, surrounded by people who won’t —or can’t— give her answers. The secrets of Summer 16 are buried on that island. The secrets of what happened to Cadence – why is it so important that they be kept secret? Who are they protecting?
Cadence knows she has to go back.
Her life is migraines and missing pieces. She’s been trying to piece things together, but the silence that she is being greeted with at every turn, from everyone that she knows, is loud. Returning to the island is the only chance she has to remember everything.
Familiar places. Unfamiliar secrets!
As Cadence navigates this storm of memory and mystery, it’s impossible not to be moved. Emily Alyn Lind is electric in the role. She commands the screen with a quiet intensity that makes you believe every fractured thought, every pained silence, every change and motion. She makes it so you are incapable of turning away.
She was born to do this.
And while she’s proven her talent before, this role lets her explore deeper, work harder, and give us all a lesson in believing in someone.
. She’s not just the girl from Gossip Girl. She’s a star in her own right.
The episode flows between Summer 17 and flashbacks to Summer 16. I’ll admit, I’m grateful they changed Cadence’s hair color—otherwise, it’d be easy to lose track of the timelines.
THE MORNING AFTER THE KISS
It’s Summer 16. Cadence is glowing. It’s the morning after the kiss—the one that felt like a turning point. She knew things would change, but she couldn’t have imagined just how much.
Gat, though, is acting strange. Distant. Like he’s afraid to be alone with her, as if even looking at her is suddenly too much. For Cadence, that kiss was clarity: she was in love with him. She is in love with him.
For Gat, it makes him even more of a mystery and even more different than the Sinclairs.
Mirren tries to give them space, to push them together. Maybe it’s her way of avoiding her own pain and the lies that her mother has forced her to keep. Bess may not have instructed Mirren to lie, but the lie of omission that she is left with is still there. Maybe helping someone else feels easier than facing the truth about her mother.
Especially when her father shows up.
Secrets are the currency of the Sinclair family. Bess wants a life filled with love and understanding, but she rarely receives it. When her husband appears, we meet a man who seems to embody everything empty about the world they come from.
Mirren’s father is a classic finance bro—complete with a Patagonia vest and an ego inflated by money and status. His value is measured in wealth and image, not in love, family, or empathy.
And it’s not just him. The men in this family are… strange. Detached. Shaped more by status than by love for his family.
SHUT UP
There’s something about the way Gat looks at Cadence that makes me both love him and hate him. Shubham Maheshwari brings a complexity to Gat that’s hard to ignore — he’s strong, magnetic, and, at times, incredibly frustrating. But no matter how conflicted we feel about Gat, there’s always something about him that draws the viewer in and makes you want to see more of him. We can’t help but sympathize with Gat.
And Cadence.
Gat doesn’t love that Cadence told him to “shut up,” just like the other liars did. It’s as if he wants to guilt her for being like them—as if she’s somehow betrayed him. And maybe, in his eyes, she has. Her truth is that she’s just trying to be normal. To act as though everything is normal.
The liars feel that Gat has changed. From what, we don’t know yet. But the Liars keep saying it: he’s not the same. One has to wonder, though, didn’t they all change, too?
Even so, change doesn’t mean superiority, and it also doesn’t mean judgment. And Gat, lately, seems to look down on the others, as if he’s separate from them. One has to wonder why? Is it their privilege? Their money? I have to admit, I believe it is bits of both.
And that is justified.
There’s a part of me that wants him to explain, to be honest about why he’s different and why he looks at the liars differently. But Gat doesn’t offer clarity. Instead, he turns her words back on her, as if to start to gaslight her. When Cadence tells him they only tell him to shut up because they love him, he tells her to shut up.
Is it a strange way to express love and admiration? Definitely. But for Gat, that moment of confrontation becomes an opening to kiss her again. To pull her back in. To express his love for her through the confusion that he feels.
I’m not saying he doesn’t care. In fact, I believe he’d burn the world down for her. But there’s a heat to his actions that feels unstable. He’s hot and cold, and it’s obvious—he’s hiding something. Lying, truthfully. I guess that sometimes, when you love someone, you convince yourself that lying is protection.
That silence is safety.
But the truth? The truth is what he owes her. It’s what he owes himself.
And right now, Gat isn’t giving that to Cadence. He’s manipulating her, and neither of them sees it yet. Maheshwari, you are really good that you are making us both love and hate Gat.
That’s good acting.
BACK ON THE ISLAND IN SUMMER 17
Searching for answers isn’t easy. In fact, it’s terrifying. Whatever you uncover on the other side of naivety has the power to change everything. But for Cadence, it’s Summer 17—and she knows she has to go back to the island. She needs to find out what happened to her.
The Liars haven’t contacted her since last summer. Cadence has spent months believing they’re mad at her. When she finally sees them again, you can tell—they’re walking on eggshells, terrified of saying the wrong thing. But, so is she.
They all look like they’ve seen a ghost.
I have to feel for her, though, because she thinks that the liars will give her answers, and it seems that is the one gift that they won’t give her.
Each one has an excuse for why they didn’t reach out, but none of them feel good enough. Maybe their intentions were pure, but intentions mean nothing when your silence becomes a wound. Trusting them now feels like trusting someone who’s stabbed you in the back—more than once.
They won’t tell Cadence what happened. They insist she was alone when it did. But the looks on their faces say otherwise. They’re Liars, and right now, they’re living up to the name.
And then there’s Gat—still the most frustrating of them all.
When Cadence runs into him later, he tells her he’s been looking for her. But when she brings up the past, the memories, he tells her to let it go. He wants her to move forward. But Cadence can’t move forward—not without knowing the truth.
That’s HER RIGHT.
She clings to her favorite memory: that perfect kiss on the beach. Now, she wonders if it was real. If it was as perfect as she remembers—or if she’s tainted it somehow. Gat says it was real. Says it was his favorite memory, too.
But do we trust that from him?
Then he tells her: they’re not allowed to talk about summer 16 – That remembering could hurt her. She’s furious—and rightfully so. She throws his silence back at him, tells him maybe he’s the unforgivable one.
And in one of the most gut-wrenching moments, he basically asks, “Do you trust me?”
She says, “I don’t remember.”
That response is everything.
FEAST AND FATHERS
Flashback to Summer 16. Father’s Day.
The Sinclair family is… complicated. For them, Father’s Day isn’t just a holiday—it’s a competition. Each sister scrambles to be their dad’s favorite. They chase approval like a prize: the best gift, the best gesture, all in the hopes of being rewarded.
Rewarded with love, maybe. Or just a sense of worth.
Rewarded with being the favorite daughter, even though none of them are the favorites. That would be Rosemary. The sister that they lost. She will always be the favorite daughter.
We learn that Gat has been lying—he has a girlfriend back home. I screamed at the TV. Twice, he kissed Cadence, knowing he was with someone else. Suddenly, Johnny’s tension with Gat makes sense. He should’ve told her the truth.
Still, I can’t completely dismiss what Gat says when he calls out Cadence’s privilege—her obliviousness to the people around her. He tells her they’re different, and she doesn’t want to hear it. She doesn’t think it should matter.
But hearing Gat speak his truth, I was grateful. It gave us something raw, vulnerable, and something real. No, it doesn’t excuse what he did. Cadence has every right to be angry. To feel betrayed.
But suddenly, all of that feels… smaller. It feels insignificant.
Because while the mothers sit outside around the fire, the moment shifts. When they go to wake their own mother, she doesn’t respond.
She’s gone.
And that pain—that loss—might be the greatest any of them will ever feel.
Episode 2 of We Were Liars keeps the sharp, haunting energy of the show fully intact. It’s magnetic. You can’t look away. You’re constantly searching for clues—because just like Cadence, we need to know what happened too.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- What is going on with Penny’s divorce that it’s so expensive???
- What is Penny hiding? Cause it feels like she’s hiding something.
- Mom selling priceless art to help Penny — what does she know?
- Ed asking for Harris’s blessing to ask Carrie to marry him – loved it. But I was also confused by Harris’s reaction. What is it that he really wants to hear from Ed?
- Johnny trying to stand up for Cadence without giving away Gat’s secrets is amazing
- Cadence confronting her Mom about why she won’t let anyone tell her what happened – I applauded.
- Cadence sees the separation between her and the liars… I get it, and it felt heartbreaking
All eight episodes of We Were Liars are streaming now on Prime Video.
