I don’t like or hate love triangles. I want that on the record before anything else. I find them exhausting, I usually pick a side in episode two, and I spend the rest of the season annoyed at everyone who isn’t that person.
Sterling Point broke me of that within about three episodes.
Somewhere in my 11 p.m.-to-sunrise binge of all eight episodes — which, yes, I did to myself on a work night — I realized I was rooting for Ellis and Rory. Both of them. For completely different reasons. Which is a deeply inconvenient way to watch a show and an absolutely brilliant thing for a show to pull off.
So when I got Jacob Whiteduck-Lavoie (Ellis) and Daniel Quinn-Toye (Rory) on the line, I asked them to make their case. Describe your guy. Tell me why he should win.
They both, very politely, dismantled the premise of my question.
“They’re Both Good Guys”
“In this show in particular, it’s obviously established that there’s no winner or loser,” Whiteduck-Lavoie said. “The love triangle isn’t much of a good guy, bad guy kind of thing. Ellis and Rory are both good guys. They just have different lifestyles.”
He laid out the split. “Rory obviously comes from a more wealthy family, and Ellis kind of grew up on the lake with his dad and his mom, and works at a marina and repairs boats. So there’s definitely a different vibe going on between them.”
That difference shows up in how each of them exists around Annie (Ella Rubin) — and, crucially, in the pacing of it.
“Ellis is much more reserved,” Whiteduck-Lavoie said. “Rory appears to be much more confident and knows how to make Annie laugh, especially at the beginning of the show. They tend to have these funny aha moments — which are really good scenes, by the way — that Ellis and Annie certainly don’t have at the beginning. But as the show goes on, things happen, and we get to know Ellis a little more, and also Rory.”
He gives creator Megan Park the credit for refusing the easy version.
“Megan just did a good job in general to not draw this love triangle as an obvious good guy, bad guy kind of thing,” he said. “They’re both good guys. But we follow Annie on her journey of ending up picking what’s best for her.”
Rory’s Closing Argument (If He Ever Made One)
Quinn-Toye agreed with all of it — and then made his pitch anyway, which is very on-brand for Rory.
“I think Rory should win because – no, I don’t know – because he curses himself by being so understanding and so kind,” he said. “At the end of the day, he’s the one that kind of gives it over to Annie to make this choice.”
That restraint is the whole tragedy of the character, and Quinn-Toye clearly enjoys thinking about the version of Rory who doesn’t hold back.
“If I’m thinking about the logic in Rory’s head, the argument he would lay down to Annie if he was a bit more confident is that they’re both from the same place, and they both know the same things, and they both enjoy the same lifestyle — and that they could now enjoy it as adults together, and enjoy this home that they come from,” he said.
But he’s not convinced the case fully lands. “I don’t think Rory’s in touch enough with the rural attraction of Muskoka as a lifestyle. I think he still sees it as this vacation home.”
Then, with the exact energy of someone who knows what’s in episode eight and isn’t going to tell me: “Viewers will need to wait and see.”
Why This One’s Different
Sterling Point follows 17-year-old Annie Jacobson, raised in New York City with her twin brother Connor (Keen Ruffalo) and their adoptive father Steven (Jay Duplass), whose life turns over when she inherits her estranged grandfather’s island in Canada — where she finds new friends, first romances, and family secrets nobody planned on her uncovering.
Park created the series, directs it, and executive produces alongside Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage’s Fake Empire and Margot Robbie’s LuckyChap.
I’ve watched, I think, every YA show. It’s genuinely my job. This one does not feel like the others — and a big part of why is that it treats Ellis and Rory as full people instead of two options on a menu. Nobody here is a placeholder for a lesson Annie needs to learn. They both want her. They’re both worth wanting. Someone is going to get hurt and it isn’t going to feel like a punishment.
All eight episodes of Sterling Point Season 1 premiere August 5 on Prime Video. Do not start it at 11 p.m. You won’t be able to stop. Learn from me.
