Moving forward sometimes means confronting the past. In Every Year After, it is very confusing as to what the past is.
Because they aren’t telling us what happened in the past, sometimes actions do not make sense. When things do not make sense, it takes a strong script as well as phenomenal acting to keep the viewer invested.
This show has that. Sadie Soverall, Matt Cornett, Aurora Perrineau, Abigail Cowen, Michael Bradway, and Joseph Chiu are all giving performances that have us sat. We’re hooked on their characters, every word, action, and the circumstances that are there.
It’s gone beyond the love story.
It’s gone beyond the friendship story.
It’s a genuine interest in making sure that these characters succeed.
That they move forward.
Somehow Every Year After started as one thing and has changed to something else. It’s changed to this show that we’re finding ourselves in – the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of us are all apparent here.
There is an investment in all of the characters.
Sometimes it’s love for them.
Sometimes it is anger.
But at the end of the day, we know what we want the most. If you’re asking what that is – well, that is to understand what it is that Sue was trying to do with the things she left behind.
SAM AND HIS PANIC
Sam doesn’t wake up gently. He jolts awake like something has grabbed him by the throat.
His dream is still with him. It’s radiating out of his soul. He’s not sure what to think or how to feel.
Percy.
For a second, Percy is still there—so real it feels physical. His body hasn’t caught up with reality yet, like it still remembers her. Her touch. Her smell. Her taste.
Then the room settles in around him. He’s stuck in the past, waiting for something or someone to center him.
The silence is too quiet.
He looks as though he’s struggling. He remembers –Taylor. Right. That’s supposed to matter.
The problem isn’t just the dream—it’s how easy it felt. Loving and wanting Percy somehow feels easy.
In his dream, Sam was angry and undone at the same time, pulled between wanting to push Percy away and pull her closer. He wasn’t choosing between feelings; he was drowning in both.
The dream isn’t what scares him; it’s that it feels like memory. It’s that it feels like it could be a reality– being with her again. Something in him still belongs to her.
At the tavern later, he tries to act like he has control again. Like there’s a version of his life he can organize into something clean. Sam and Percy are the same in the sense that they think that they can run from their issues and find a solution in the chaos.
Rather than confront their feelings, they choose to build their lives on bad decisions.
HAPPY FOR ME
Sam tells Jordie he’s going to propose to Taylor.
Even as he says it, he knows something is wrong with the idea. It feels like panic disguised as certainty. It feels like panic that he believes will stabilize his world. Like, if he can lock something in, he won’t have to face what’s shifting under him.
Jordie is careful with him, offering truths disguised as support. Sam doesn’t really hear anything that doesn’t support his choice. Sam doesn’t want to hear what is in his mind. He can’t stay still long enough to understand what anyone is actually saying.
Because Percy is back.
Charlie shows up with alcohol and old history between them all, and suddenly everything feels heavier. Not new—just unresolved because secrets have been kept
Charlie jokes, but Sam hears something else underneath it. Possession. Memory. A life that never properly closed.
And Jordie is watching both of them like he finally understands the truth: Percy didn’t do anything.
She just came back.
And now Sam seems conflicted. Sam doesn’t know which version of himself is real—or which one he actually wants to be.
NYE 2014
It’s New Year’s Eve, 2014.
Percy doesn’t tell anyone she’s coming back to Barry’s Bay.
That’s the first mistake—if it even counts as one. The second mistake is bringing Mason.
The tavern is already loud when they arrive. Too warm, too full, too alive. Delilah is there. Charlie is there.
The room is filled with memories that haunt her and make her feel suffocated. Memories that make her feel anxious. Percy remembers without meaning to.
And then Sam is there.
It’s when he walks in that the night tilts on its axis and the world feels like it’s punching both Sam and Percy in the chest.
Unable to breathe.
Their world changes when they are in the same room.
Charlie clocks Sam immediately, already waiting for something to break. For his brother to break.
Sam stops the moment he sees her. Just for a second. Like he didn’t expect her to exist in this exact version of reality. Like he had let her go and that meant she wasn’t supposed to be back until he was ready to have her back. Like she was supposed to stay somewhere else in time.
Something in him shifts—quiet, immediate, sharp.
Sam doesn’t look at Percy first. He looks at Mason. Not curiosity. Not friendliness.
Something closer to possession. To history refusing to behave. To try to remind Percy that he is in charge. Sam wants to remind her that he knows her better.
That they were meant to be.
Mason starts to look confused in a way that makes Percy want to disappear into the floorboards.
Finally, Percy leans in.
“Can I talk to you?” she asks Sam. They step away—just far enough to pretend it’s private. Far enough away that they feel safe to be brutally honest.
Percy tells him he doesn’t get to do this. Not after breaking up with her. Not now, not like this. It doesn’t matter that he’s jealous. It doesn’t matter that he understands what she’s doing.
She reminds him that he broke up with her. He ran scared when he should have trusted her.
Sam doesn’t answer in a way that fixes anything.
Percy turns away before she can soften. For a second, everything disappears in her anger.
Or at least, it tries to.
DELILAH
Percy and Chantal are talking when the tavern comes up.
The question — it is the one Percy keeps circling but never answering.
Has she decided The Tavern? Chantal asks, already knows the answer, but is waiting anyway. That’s what best friends do.
Percy exhales, staring out like the answer might be written somewhere she can’t find. She doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Chantal doesn’t respond right away, and that silence is worse. Percy needs and wants guidance, but she seems unsure of what to want. It’s as if all of the years of anger and indecision are bubbling to the surface.
And suddenly, someone is really caring about what it is that she wants.
That stops Percy. Because that’s the real question. Not Sam. Not timing. Not history.
Chantal is the friend who reminds Percy that it isn’t selfish to want something. It isn’t selfish to follow her own heart. But Percy doesn’t know if that’s true. Won’t it make everything messier? Won’t it make things worse if she keeps it?
The truth feels inconvenient.
They walk outside and spot Jordie. He clocks Chantal immediately and stiffens, like he’s already been caught in something.
Chantal is a human lie detector — all her years of being a lawyer — she can see a person’s tells. Jordie is the kind of honest that collapses under pressure. Within seconds, Chantal has it out of him anyway.
Taylor. Sam. A proposal. The words land in pieces, like he’s trying to make them smaller.
But Percy feels the full weight immediately—not just the news, but what it means.
Chantal names it for what it is.
Not Taylor. Not a ring.
Timing.
Sam is making the biggest decision of his life while Percy is standing right in front of him again. Sam is making decisions based on wanting control — something that he’s lost in his life recently.
His life has been interrupted. Percy is both the interruption and the reminder.
Percy’s expression stills. Not dramatic—worse. Controlled. The kind of stillness that happens when your body protects you before your emotions can catch up. Underneath everything is the fear she hasn’t said out loud: if Sam is choosing a future, then whatever they were is no longer in limbo. It’s done.
She becomes something he is moving past.
Chantal keeps talking, trying to make sense of it, but Percy isn’t really listening anymore. She’s somewhere else now—in every version of Sam that promised permanence and never quite delivered it.
Percy is panicking.
The hardest part is that she can’t fully blame Sam. Not cleanly. Because he did love her. He does love her. He just never knew how to love her without leaving space for something else.
When Percy finally speaks, it’s quiet. Controlled. She’s realizing she’s already losing him again—this time not to distance, but to choice.
And that’s what hurts.
Chantal glances at her, reading her instantly.
Percy stands there with the sick clarity she doesn’t want: It wasn’t that she lost him recently. It’s that she lost him a long time ago—and is only now being forced to understand it.
SUMMER IS HERE
It’s summer 2015.
Percy is halfway down toward the dock, phone still warm in her hand, Delilah’s voice steady on the other end. She almost doesn’t see him at first. Or maybe she does, and her body recognizes him before her mind agrees.
Sam.
And just like that, she’s moving—quick, instinctive, like muscle memory overrides logic. Like the years between them never existed and the ground hasn’t shifted beneath her.
She runs straight into him. Sam.
It lands only when she looks up: he’s real, he’s here, and worse—he saw her try to run. They talk, and she learns he isn’t alone in the way she has quietly imagined when she lets herself slip backward. There’s a girlfriend somewhere in his present. A reality that hurts.
It should feel simple. The past is the past. People move on. But Percy doesn’t feel replaced. She feels rewritten. She feels like something has been corrected without her consent. Nothing about this is neutral. Not his eyes. Not the way he looks at her like she is both familiar and changed. Not the way her name still fits in his mouth like it never left.
The worst part settles in quietly: she didn’t just lose him today. She lost him long before she ever walked into him again.
She steps back into motion before she fully decides to and calls Delilah immediately, like distance might restore balance.
Her voice comes out too fast.
She doesn’t say I saw him.
She says things that sound practical because naming the truth would make her stop functioning. Because Sam having a girlfriend isn’t a shock.
The shock is how quickly her entire world still tilts when he appears in it.
And if Percy keeps going down this road, she’ll have to admit what she’s avoided for too long:
Sam was never just someone she loved.
He was where she kept returning, even when she knew it would hurt.
Season One Every Year After Reviews
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 1 Review: Every Summer After
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 2 Review: Young Blood
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 3 Review: Playing With Fire
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 4 Review: Anatomy of a Romance
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 5 Review: I Choose You
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 6 Review: Plan B
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 7 Review: The Boathouse
- Every Year After Season 1, Episode 8 Review: Goodbye…
THE DREW OF IT ALL
When Percy gets back to the hotel, Drew is there. Unplanned for him to be there, but he is there, nonetheless.
And he is, unfortunately, sick in the way only grown men who have never had to be sick alone can be—dramatic, half-functioning, and acting like the world has personally betrayed him. A cold feels like death.
He’s on the bed like he’s been mortally wounded by a mild fever.
Chantal takes one look at him and immediately pulls Percy into the bathroom.
Chantal doesn’t want to have to take care of someone. Which is fair. Completely fair. No notes. Chantal did not sign up for emotional nursing duties for a man who has access to basic survival skills and is simply choosing not to use them. She didn’t sign up to have to babysit a full-grown man.
And Chantal is watching her do that thing she does—where she tries to outrun feeling by organizing something else instead.
You just can’t outrun what lives inside you, Percy.
SAMS “LAKE”
In 2015, Delilah and Mason end up at the tavern. That’s where they meet Sam’s girlfriend properly for the first time.
She’s gorgeous.
Objectively. Annoyingly. Undeniably. Frustratingly.
She’s like flawlessly gorgeous. The kind of pretty that makes you pause for half a second too long even when you don’t want to.
The kind of pretty that you compare yourself to and find yourself comparing
Jordie appears like he’s been summoned by chaos itself, bouncing into the conversation with that familiar too-friendly energy. It is ike he’s recalibrating the social map in real time.
And then, quietly, he leans into the narrative – like he’s sharing confidential truth he didn’t mean to admit out loud.
“She’s not serious,” he says, nodding toward Sam’s girlfriend. It’s said like fact. Like prediction. It’s something that Percy can hold onto.
SHE’S BACK
Taylor is back.
Sam doesn’t seem to know what to do with that – except to remind her that he loves her. She’s been uptight and a little standoffish, but is pacified by that. You can see that Taylor softens instantly. Sam says it like it’s something he’s been holding in for too long.
I love you too.
Too sounds like she’s agreeing with him. For a moment, it sounds like resolution. Like clarity — an ending that knows how to behave and not cause chaos in their lives.
But Sam is still not fully out of the past he keeps insisting he’s moved on from.
Because Percy still exists in it. Even when he says she doesn’t. Taylor is trying not to be jealous, but Sam is overexplaining.
It’s almost as if he has to force himself to say it, “—that’s my past. You’re my future.”
He’s lying, but doesn’t know it. We know it, though.
Taylor wants to believe that enough for both of them. But it doesn’t land clean. Nothing between Sam and Percy or concerning Sam and Percy ever really does.
Back in 2015, when Sam had his first girlfriend outside of her, Percy got a job at the tavern.
Delilah is immediately unimpressed. She tells her that it’s horrible. It’s as if Percy puts herself in Sam’s life, hoping that he’ll just pay some attention.
Any attention.
For one, I agree with Delilah. She’s waning Percy. She is reminding her of why this is a bad idea. This is not subtle. This is not healthy. This is Percy volunteering to suffer in real time.
Percy shrugs like she doesn’t hear her. It is as if Delilah is already tired of this story. But for Percy and Sam – working together at the Tavern allows them to slip back into something familiar.
Easy conversation. Old rhythms. The kind that makes you forget, for a second, why it ever broke in the first place.
But Sam still hasn’t let go of his girlfriend.
And Percy still hasn’t stopped pretending that it doesn’t matter as much as it does.
YOU AREN’T BF MATERIAL
Charlie’s meeting with the lawyer to inquire about contesting the will does not go well.
At all.
Contesting the will is, apparently, not the dramatic legal loophole solution the brothers were hoping for. It’s messy, it’s unlikely, and it ends with the same conclusion everyone but them already seemed to know: They’re not going to win.
Delilah is already recalibrating. She knows that to own The Taven now, she has to deal with Percy – directly.
Charlie tries to stop her. Like it should be simple. Like, any of this has been simple.
But Delilah is already somewhere else – moving forward with the Tavern is all she has. She wants to establish herself. She’s getting a divorce. Her marriage is over.
She says it like it’s information, not grief. Like it’s a fact she’s already processed alone.
Charlie, instead of hearing that this isn’t about him, does what Charlie does best—he makes it worse in a very specific, honest, emotionally unfiltered way.
He tells her he doesn’t want a relationship.
Delilah stares at him, and for a second, she looks like she might actually laugh. Then it turns sharp. Cruel almost.
She tells him he’s not boyfriend material. She was a means to an end.
The words land like a slap.
THE SOUP
Jordie comes out of the room Chantal’s been working from and immediately tries to slip past like he hasn’t just been caught in her orbit. Chantal doesn’t even look up from her phone, but she knows he’s there. She sees him, just as Jordie sees her.
He stops.
She’s just gotten off the phone with Drew. Drew, in classic Drew fashion, apparently still does not understand basic human self-sufficiency. Or blankets. Or being sick without turning it into a full-time production.
Jordie leans against the wall.
“Why are you out here?” he asks.
“Because my fiancé is upstairs sick,” she says flatly.
That lands differently for him, even if he tries not to show it. Jordie looks reasonably stung. The conversation shifts—because it always does around them—to Percy.
It shifts to what Percy is doing or not doing. Or what she is refusing to admit she’s doing emotionally. Chantal is going to say she’s fine. She’s the bestie who won’t let feelings show.
She’s also a lawyer.
TAKE CARE OF ME
Chantal returns to the room, where Drew is awake now. She is already annoyed at the fact that he is there — sick. His being sick is inconvenient.
“Are you done?” he asks. It’s a question that you wonder if he means with work or just in general.
“I just came to use the bathroom,” she says, like that should end the conversation.
But it doesn’t. They fall into it anyway—their usual loop. Work. Responsibility. Her caseload. His inability to do basic things.
And then it breaks, just slightly.
It’s when she brings up the point that she wants to be taken care of too.
Drew softens, trying to catch up.
“I would,” he says quickly. “You just have to tell me what you need.”
And that’s where it falls apart again. Because Chantal doesn’t want to have to explain it. If they are getting married, he should know.
Jordie finds her again. Later, she leaves to get food.
This time, he’s holding soup and Gatorade in one hand. Ice cream in the other. Mint chip.
Of course, he remembers.
“You just seemed out of sorts,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. And for a second, Chantal just looks at him.
Because this is what she meant. Not perfection. Not effort.
Recognition.
The kind of care that doesn’t require instructions. Jordie just met her, and he doesn’t require instructions. He pays attention.
BACK TO BESTIE
Percy ends up at Delilah’s house without thinking it through. The second she’s inside, she’s already apologizing.
“I should’ve called. This is weird. This is definitely weird.”
But sometimes you need the familiar. You need someone who will understand. Percy needs the familiar, and Delilah is just that.
Delilah just looks at her. Not warm, not cold—like she’s trying to place which version of Percy has walked through the door. Something is off. Percy is usually better at hiding things than this.
They start talking, and it’s like they’re both circling a conversation they don’t want to touch. And then Percy says it without meaning to fully think it through.
“You’re too forgiving.”
That lands differently than she expects. And I think that we’re all left trying to understand what it is that she’s apologizing for – because we don’t know.
“For what?” Delilah asks.
And Percy doesn’t have an answer. Or she does, but it’s tangled up in things she hasn’t admitted even to herself yet.
“Something’s going on with you.”
Percy opens her mouth. Nothing comes. Before she can force anything into words, there’s a knock at the door.
Charlie.
Drunk. Unfiltered. Already mid-breakdown.
“I get it,” he says immediately. “You think I’m a selfish man-child.”
He wants Delilah to believe in him. He wants her to hear his feelings because he doesn’t know what exactly is there. He keeps going, like he’s been holding this in too long to stop now.
It’s as if he thinks that she is the only person who will understand him.
Percy appears in the doorway and freezes. She wasn’t expecting him like this—messy, exposed, too loud with truth he doesn’t know how to contain.
Charlie doesn’t stop. It isn’t defensive anymore. It’s unraveling.
He starts listing himself like he’s on trial, trying to explain something that isn’t clear enough to explain.
“I mean—yeah, the sex was great, but—”
“Charlie,” Percy says sharply from the doorway, stunned. Now she knows. Not just the surface of it, but the shape of it. What’s been happening. What’s been hidden in plain sight.
And then he almost says it. Almost steps too far into the truth; none of them are supposed to touch. Percy moves fast—pulling him away from the door, away from Delilah, away from anyone else hearing.
Suddenly, Charlie is less performative, more cracked open. He’s raw as they revisit an old conversation that really hasn’t changed. The answers are all the same.
And then Percy says it.
“Sam can never know.”
Because that’s the real fracture.
Not just what happened, but what it would destroy if it’s spoken out loud. Whatever they’ve been hiding and calling stability isn’t stability at all.
It’s just silence held together long enough to pretend it’s safe.
And safety is starting to crack.
TAYLOR
Sam is at home when he opens the bottle of wine.
It’s not celebratory. It’s supposed to be, but it isn’t. Not really. It’s something steadier than that—something rehearsed. Something Sam needs in order to perform. He uncorks it, takes a breath, and heads outside where Taylor is waiting.
And at first, he tries to do what he’s supposed to do. He talks about her–bout them.
How they’ve changed each other.
He talks about the memories that are real enough to hold onto but soft enough not to hurt when he touches them.
He tells her she made him feel safe. That even when things weren’t perfect, she was the one person who always showed up in the ways that mattered.
His hand drifts into his pocket without thinking. It’s almost instinctual. The ring is there. He feels it before he fully acknowledges it. Almost as if he knows that he can’t run from what is happening and that he needs to fully evaluate his life.
For a moment, everything in him moves toward the decision he thought he had already made.
Then he keeps talking.
About the week he’s had.
About how wrong everything has felt without really being able to name why.
And that’s when it happens.
He’s supposed to be concentrating on a proposal and making a case for why they work. But their memories aren’t what he is finding. What he is recalling isn’t a memory he chooses—but one that chooses him.
Percy.
Her face. The way she used to smile without realizing she was doing it. The way she looked at him like he was already known. The way he used to brush her hair out of her face without thinking it meant anything at all.
The way that he felt alive with her.
And suddenly Taylor isn’t the center of anything anymore.
She’s just… there.
“I think,” he says carefully, “there’s something we need to talk about.”
I CHOOSE YOU
Sam heads to Percy’s spot, and this time he isn’t performing certainty or control. She’s there – just like he knew she would be. He’s just talking—like something in him has finally cracked open and won’t close again.
It starts with 2015.
He goes back to the ultimatum, his girlfriend at the time, the pressure, and the moment he says he made a choice. He frames it like clarity, like inevitability—like it was simple to choose Percy.
For him, there was no other choice.
But it isn’t clean when it comes out. What he’s really admitting is that even when he thought he was choosing her, he was still losing her in a hundred smaller ways. Every step toward her came with distance he didn’t know how to stop.
Then he moves to now.
He’s explaining the night and how it went.
The ring. The weight of it in his hand. The decision he didn’t complete. Taylor gone. Every attempt at a life that doesn’t include Percy still circling back to her anyway, like something he can’t outrun.
And that’s when it shifts.
It stops sounding like a confession and starts sounding like panic. What he’s really asking isn’t do you love me.
It’s worse.
He’s thinking — what if I choose you … and I still lose you?
Percy listens like she’s holding two versions of him at once—the boy who chose her but never held onto her – taking her for granted, and the man in front of her now saying everything she once wanted, just years too late and with too much damage between them.
Then Sam says it plainly.
“I want an authentic life. I want to be with you. I love you.”
It lands heavily—not because it’s new, but because it’s final. There’s no escape route in it. No version where it can be unsaid or softened.
And then he pushes further, like he can feel the ground shifting.
What if this is the second chance?
What if this time it works?
Percy holds still through all of it, like she’s past the point of simply receiving. Love isn’t something that happens to her anymore—it’s something she has to respond to.
And then she breaks.
She looks at him and says:
“Sam… there’s something I have to tell you.”
And everything changes in the space between those words. Suddenly, it isn’t about whether he chose her.
It’s about the secrets that they keep.
It’s about the reasons they keep them.
It’s about what it cost to finally get here.
OTHER THOUGHTS
- The fact that Percy can’t have and doesn’t want to have sex with Jake shows how she’s grown
- Charlie wanting to try a relationship with Demilah is comical
- Delilah’s gardening is also comical
- Charlie’s cruelty towards Percy – sir, you’re involved too.
- Go away Jake
