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Spoilers for the Season 1 finale of Every Year After are ahead! You can stream the entire season with an Amazon Prime subscription.
In the final moments of Every Year After’s first season, we got quite the setup for what could potentially happen in Season 2. Specifically, we need to talk about that photo Charlie was looking at. Yes, what happened to him after that, as well as Percy and Sam’s last interaction, are important. However, that image is vital because it directly sets up a book-to-screen adaptation of One Golden Summer, which is Carley Fortune’s follow-up to Every Summer After (which is the novel Season 1 is based on).
So, with all that in mind, let’s chat about that photo Michael Bradway’s character was looking at, who took it and why it’s so crucial that you remember it.
Why The Photo Charlie Saw Is So Important In Every Year After
In the final episode of this highly anticipated romance adaptation on the 2026 TV schedule, Charlie sees a photo in his colleague's office of himself, Percy and Sam in the banana boat.
When Charlie wonders who took the photo, his co-worker says he’s not sure and notes that his “wife bought it at a gallery when we were out in BC a few years back.” Now, while these guys don’t know who captured that image, readers of One Golden Summer do.
The photographer's name is Alice Everly, and she’s Charlie’s love interest. Carley Fortune’s book One Golden Summer tells their love story, and a major part of it centers around this image Alice caught of Charlie, his brother and Percy. Therefore, Bradway’s character seeing this photo totally sets up his big romance.
How Every Summer After And One Golden Summer’s Author Reacted To The Photo
Obviously, readers will probably freak out over the reveal of the image (I know I did). So, I had to ask Carley Fortune about it when I interviewed her. In response to a question about how she reacted the first time she saw the iconic photo of the banana boat and its owners, the author of Every Summer After and One Golden Summer told me:
I was like so thrilled. I mean, I had read it, I knew it was coming. I think they did a really good job with it, because I even writing about that photo, I'm like, ‘What does it actually like?’ Sometimes it's hard to picture what you write, so it was very, very, very cool to see it.
Along with it being cool to see such a vital part of her stories literally come to life, Fortune also noted how it makes her very excited to see what happens next in Every Year After. Sharing her excitement for a potential Season 2, the writer explained:
I am like, I need a second season, like I need to know what happens. And I think I was approached, like, in person so many times, like people demanding a happy ending for Charlie, and constantly, constantly asked for it. And I think what the show makes you want that too, which is so exciting.
So, while Season 1 of the show ends with Charlie collapsing by the photo (which is scary), it also alludes to his happily ever after. In One Golden Summer, Charlie does deal with his health in a big way, and Alice plays a vital part in it. Therefore, this introduction felt fitting, and it was both a dramatic cliffhanger to end the season and a lovely nod to the love story that Sam’s older brother should get.
Many changes were made in this adaptation of Every Summer After, and the introduction of Charlie’s story was one of them. As a fan of One Golden Summer, it was one of my favorite additions to Every Year After too, because it let us know that Alice was in and will come back to Barry’s Bay.
