In case you haven’t heard, The Summer I Turned Pretty is back for Season 2, with a few brand new faces added to the cast (and a few that left after Season 1). Fans have been wondering who these new additions are, and what they will ultimately add to the new season that is finally here. One character in particular, played by Elsie Fisher, has been teased since last fall, leaving everyone wondering: Who is Skye in the new season of The Summer I Turned Pretty? Spoiler warning: Spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 2 premiere follow.
The TSITP series on Amazon Prime Video is an adaptation of Jenny Han’s Summer trilogy set. Season 1, which covered the events of the first novel, was a smashing success, drawing in great attention on TikTok and being renewed for Season 2 on Prime Video before it even premiered.
If you’re unfamiliar with the novel or Prime Video show, TSITP follows the summer story of Belly’s (Lola Tung) love triangle with her mother’s best friend’s sons, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney). When Han posted a TikTok video that teased the cast of Season 2 on Sept. 15, 2022, it was clear that there was a new addition to the series: Fisher.
In an exclusive interview with E! News, Fisher confirmed her casting to Season 2 of TSITP, in which she will be playing Skye. But, who is Skye? She’s not a character in any of the Summer books written by Han, which left her role entirely up to the show’s writers.
Fisher had briefly teased a little about her character, stating, “We get to create this whole new person. Part of what really drew me to the project is that I get to play a person that still feels very true to myself, but is different from the kind of character people have seen me play before.”
Fisher is known for her role as Kayla in Eighth Grade, her iconic role as Agnes in the Despicable Me films, and her latest Prime Video movie adaptation of My Best Friend’s Exorcism where she plays Abby.
When Fisher spoke with E!, she explained that she had “nerves stepping into a pre-established show,” but ultimately that working on TSITP has “truly better than I could have ever hoped for.”
In an Instagram post made by Fisher on Aug. 31, she affirmed her role as Skye, as well as the addition of Kyra Sedgwick to the Season 2 cast. That’s right, we’re not getting just one new character added to TSITP — we’re getting two! And with the first three episodes of Season 2 out now on Prime Video, we finally get to know a little about these two mysterious characters.
We meet Skye and their mother, Aunt Julia (Sedgwick), in “Love Sick,” the third episode to drop on Prime Video with the premiere. Turns out, Susannah’s had a half-sister this entire time, and Aunt Julia is the sole owner of the Cousins Beach house now that Susannah has passed away. (Apparently they’ve been co-owning this whole time, and nobody knew except for Susannah and the Fishers’ dad?)
Aunt Julia wants to sell the house as fast as possible, but the TSITP gang we know and love — especially Conrad, who even abandoned school at Brown to go back to Cousins — don’t want that to happen. Poor Skye is just stuck in the middle here, but I’m hoping we get more of them in future episodes. After all, how awkward is it to have cousins that you barely know and find out they have beef with your mom?
Skye and Aunt Julia essentially replace the role of Conrad and Jeremiah’s dad in It’s Not Summer Without You, since he was the one trying to sell the house that time around. This makes me think we’ll see a lot more of Skye in upcoming episodes. Adaptations of books turned to streaming series have historically always made varying tweaks to the original plot. Season 1 saw some major changes to the original story, which was written back in 2009. As a co-showrunner for the series, Han explained to E! that she wanted to approach the series by pondering, “’What if I was writing this book in 2021?’ Even though 13 years doesn’t sound like much, it’s a significant amount of time that’s passed and culture has moved in so many different ways, even from technology to diversity.”
Some of the major discrepancies between the TSITP novel and the Prime Video series included Jeremiah’s fluid sexuality, Belly’s brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) having a larger role in the plot, and the addition of the debutante ball. Without these tweaks to the initial plot line, TSITP would not be the summer romance adaptation we all know and love. I believe that the introduction of a few new characters to TSITP will keep the storyline fresh and a little bit more unpredictable, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how this house situation unfolds to find out for sure!