In news that will shock absolutely no one who has spent any part of June weeping into a throw blanket, Every Year After season 2 has officially been greenlit by Prime Video. The announcement came with all the breathless corporate enthusiasm you’d expect from a press release that used the phrase “deeply emotional and unforgettable chapter” without a single trace of irony. Remarkable, really. Remarkable and somehow very on-brand.
The show, based on the wildly popular novels of Canadian author Carley Fortune, only launched its first season on 10 June — a mere 18 days before Amazon apparently decided it had seen quite enough data to know a golden goose when it spotted one paddling about in Barry’s Bay, Ontario. That is, for the uninitiated, a real place. A small, scenic Canadian town that has now become, against all reasonable expectations, the emotional epicentre of global streaming.
What on Earth Is Barry’s Bay, and Why Should You Care?
Barry’s Bay is a small community in Renfrew County, Ontario, with a population of roughly 1,300 people and, apparently, an inexhaustible supply of emotionally complicated romantic storylines. Season 1 adapted Fortune’s debut novel, Every Summer After, a book that spent a frankly indecent amount of time on bestseller lists and made grown adults reconsider their life choices whilst sitting in Costa Coffee. Season 2, meanwhile, will adapt her follow-up, One Golden Summer, which one assumes involves similar quantities of longing looks across still water and dialogue delivered whilst wearing a linen shirt.
The cast — including Abigail Cowen, Sadie Soverall, Michael Bradway, Matt Cornett, Aurora Perrineau, and Joseph Chiu — will presumably return to stare meaningfully at horizons and have conversations that take three episodes to get anywhere. We mean that as a compliment. Mostly.
Every Year After Season 2 and the Streaming Industrial Complex
Peter Friedlander, the Head of Global Television for Amazon MGM Studios, issued a statement so earnest it practically arrived wearing a cable-knit jumper. He described the response as “truly extraordinary,” praised the “universal appeal” of the storytelling, and expressed gratitude to what he called “passionate fans who have embraced this series around the globe.” Consequently, one imagines said fans are now refreshing their Prime Video app with the focused intensity of someone awaiting biopsy results.
Furthermore, this renewal follows a wider trend of streaming platforms commissioning second seasons before the first has even finished airing — a phenomenon that speaks either to extraordinary confidence or to the fact that nobody at a major corporation is willing to admit they cancelled something prematurely ever again after that whole Good Omens debacle. The lesson, it seems, has been learned. When in doubt: renew. Immediately. Before the think pieces start.
Is This Actually Odd News? Asking for a Friend
You may be wondering why a romantic drama renewal has landed on a website dedicated to the gloriously strange. Fair point, honestly. However, consider this: a show set in a town of 1,300 people in rural Ontario has apparently generated a level of global emotional investment that executives are describing with the vocabulary usually reserved for moon landings. That is, by any reasonable measure, a bit weird. Wonderfully, warmly, inexplicably weird.
The streaming era has done many peculiar things to culture, but perhaps none more peculiar than convincing millions of people worldwide to become deeply invested in the romantic complications of fictional Canadians near a small lake. Meanwhile, actual Canadians in Barry’s Bay are presumably getting on with their Tuesday, largely unaware they’ve become the backdrop for someone in Wolverhampton’s emotional support television.
In conclusion, Every Year After season 2 is coming, it will be beautiful, someone will cry beside water, and frankly, good for all of us. We could all do with a bit of Barry’s Bay right now.
Read the original story at UPI Odd News.
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