This Every Year After Character Has the Perfect, Feminist Redemption Arc
Move over, Off-Campus; there’s a new romance series to obsess over.
Every Year After, which is based on the novel Every Summer After by Carly Fortune, dropped on June 10, and since then, it seems like people can’t get enough of the Barry’s Bay crew.
The show switches between past summers and the present day in the lakeside town, giving us a front-row seat to Percy’s (Sadie Soverall) and Sam’s (Matt Cornett) burgeoning relationship and its ultimate dissolution.
While Percy and Sam’s relationship is indisputably at the heart of the show, Every Year After has a strong supporting cast including Sam’s brother Charlie (Michael Bradway), Percy’s best friend Chantal (Aurora Perrineau), Sam’s best friend Jordy (Joseph Chiu), and Percy’s frenemy, Delilah (Abigail Cowen).
Out of all the characters in Every Year After, the one that surprised and intrigued me the most was Delilah. In my opinion, her journey is totally underrated and speaks to the series' unexpected feminist messaging.
Why Delilah Is Underestimated
Our introduction to Delilah isn’t on-screen. Instead, we learn about her second-hand from the then-preteen Percy. It isn’t exactly a glowing review, with Delilah immediately being established as a ‘mean girl’ before we’ve even met the character ourselves. Still, when we meet Delilah as an adult, she seems to be living up to her childhood reputation. She’s passive-aggressive, smug, and having a secret affair with Charlie despite still being married to her husband. In short, she fills that type of villain role you see in Hallmark movies very well. But then, Every Year After does something different.
It becomes apparent that Delilah, despite her mistakes, is a lot more layered than Percy perceives her to be. She has her own feelings and problems that help humanise her, not just to the audience but to other characters, too. Through the course of the series, the adult Delilah and Percy learn to trust each other and rekindle their friendship. In a way, it feels as if the way she was initially established by young Percy gave the audience preconceived notions about her. The fact that Every Year After goes out of its way to prove that Delilah isn’t all that bad makes me feel like there’s a lesson there about judging a book by its cover.
Delilah is determined, sharp, and definitely a bit of a diva, but these qualities become endearing as she gradually opens up to Percy and Chantal, eventually becoming an established part of their friendship group. Meanwhile, once we meet her in the flashbacks, she definitely doesn’t seem as bad as Percy initially described her. While she holds those qualities mentioned above, they don’t really warrant the label of ‘mean girl’ or ‘frenemy.’ To an extent, it feels like she’s misunderstood and misjudged as being a certain way just because of how she outwardly presents herself. If anything, her frostiness is just armour, and it feels like all she really needed all along was a friend.
Delilah & Percy Are Flawed Female Characters - and Every Year After Is Better For It
In addition to this, it’s worth noting that Percy is no angel either. Not only did she sleep with Charlie and lie about it for a decade — she was also a pretty rubbish friend to Delilah. One specific example of this is when she was a teenager. She was so consumed by her relationship with Sam that she completely overlooked Delilah, who was struggling with an unexpected pregnancy. While she ultimately apologised and went with her to the abortion clinic, I get the sense that Delilah never quite recovered from that, which gives a more nuanced reason to her frostiness than typical mean girl vibes.
Usually, these types of shows tend to pit women against one another. So, the fact that Every Year After actively broke down this trope by humanising Delilah and demonstrating all the ways that women can actually support one another sends a pretty powerful message. And I, for one, am eager to see where Delilah’s story in Season 2 goes next.
