Every Year After's Creators Explain That Massive Percy & Sam Change
"I desperately wanted to see Sam's reaction to that."
Most of the changes Prime Video’s romance series Every Year After makes from Carley Fortune’s 2022 novel Every Summer After are fleshed-out expansions — the main characters are aged down a bit, a new Seattle setting is introduced, and side characters are given a lot more to do. But there is also a pretty huge alteration to the book’s biggest twist. Showrunner Amy B. Harris tells Elite Daily why the new adaptation flipped the script on Percy and Sam’s most pivotal moment.
Spoiler alert: This post discusses major events from the Season 1 finale of Every Year After, and the book Every Summer After.
The series keeps Percy’s life-altering secret the same, but it drastically changes how Sam discovers it. In Fortune’s book, Percy confesses she slept with Sam’s brother Charlie during her final summer in Barry’s Bay when they reunite over a decade later — but to Percy’s surprise, Sam reveals he had known about the hookup the whole time, as Charlie let it slip to him shortly after it happened. However, the show erases that detail, so when Percy tells Sam the truth about the decade-old tryst, Sam goes nuclear. Having no clue about this betrayal prior to this moment, Sam isolates himself from Percy and tells Charlie he no longer wants anything to do with him.
The pivotal change in when and how Sam discovers the truth was essential in fully exploring his emotions on screen, according to Harris. “I desperately wanted to see Sam’s reaction to that, and how it plays out. Plus, it ups the drama so much,” Harris says.
On top of that, it sets up a lot more story for Sam and Percy down the road. “For a potentially many-seasoned show, it was very exciting for Sam to find out and adjust to her coming to his mom’s funeral in real time,” Harris says. “If Sam knew eight years ago and had already processed all that, it would be a very different relationship we'd be watching for our future seasons.”
That’s also why Harris decided on the distant final shot of Sam and Percy’s reunion at the Tavern. “I intentionally left them standing far apart at the end of the finale because I really want viewers to know they have a lot of work to do,” Harris says.
Fortune also understood why this change had to be made, even though she loves the twist of Sam secretly knowing the truth in her book. “It felt very beautiful and poetic to me that, in the book, Percy had been punishing herself for so long over something she didn’t realize Sam had always known,” Fortune says. “But for the show, it just makes sense to be with Sam when he finds out and stay with him as he grapples with it. This is what works best for the story on screen.”
