Every Year After's Big Twist Gives the Show a Villain — It's Just the Wrong One

In my opinion, there’s no place on Earth messier than Barry’s Bay.

The characters seem addicted to not just making mistakes, but also making their lives unnecessarily difficult in the process. In real life, they would be abysmal friends or romantic partners. But as a viewer, all the drama is super entertaining to watch.

Apart from my guy Jordie, who is an unproblematic king, all the characters in Every Year After have made a truckload of mistakes. With that in mind, it can be hard to pinpoint one specific villain. But, in my opinion, the real villain of the show is a character that might surprise you. Still, be warned: there are spoilers ahead.

What Is Every Year After’s Big Twist?

The big ‘twist’ in the Every Year After ending — the true reason Percy Fraser left Barry’s Bay — is that, shortly after first love Sam Florek broke up with her, she slept with his older brother, Charlie. In the wake of this, Percy later flees Barry’s Bay for good and spends the next decade living with the guilt, having panic attacks because of it, and generally just drifting through life as an obituary writer in Seattle.

At 28 years old, she returns to Barry’s Bay in the wake of Sam and Charlie’s mother’s death. While Sam has moved on with girlfriend Taylor, it doesn’t take long for sparks to fly between the two former lovers. Sam ends up sending Taylor packing, declaring to Percy that he wants to be with her. But Percy can’t move forward without telling him the truth — and needless to say, he doesn’t take it well.

Given that this is his ex-girlfriend and older brother, many would argue that this is a horrific betrayal, and that Sam has every right to be angry at both Percy and Charlie. But, allow me to play devil’s advocate here, because if you really peel back the layers, Sam is actually kind of the worst. 

Why Sam Is Every Year After’s Villain

Let’s go through this chronologically. After they (finally) kissed and admitted their feelings for each other, Sam and Percy had a talk with Sue, his mother. Following on from this talk, Sam gets cold feet and breaks things off with Percy. His reason? He wants to focus on going to medical school one day, which, while a noble decision and profession, sounds like a little bit of a cop-out to me. 

Naturally, Percy does what anyone would do and tries to move on, but when she brings her new boyfriend to a New Year’s Eve party in Barry’s Bay, Sam acts absolutely appallingly, spending the whole time trying to prove that he knows Percy way better than her new boyfriend does, and ends up embarrassing not just himself, but her, too.

If I were Percy, that whole scenario would have been enough to give me the ick, but against all logic, she and Sam finally end up together. Then, when she arrives for what will be their final Barry’s Bay summer together before college, he reveals that he got into a summer school program. Objectively, this is good news, but him not telling her for weeks was loser behaviour. Still, the most egregious thing happened when he finally went away. After slowly ghosting and breadcrumbing her, he doesn’t just break up with her — he does it by e-mail. 

After leaving Percy heartbroken again, I feel like Sam doesn’t really have a leg to stand on in terms of who gets the moral high ground here. It’s also worth noting that, objectively, they weren’t actually together when she slept with Charlie. Based on Sam’s reaction, you’d think they were married for 25 years. And yet, he was the one who dumped her. Multiple times. He clearly doesn’t want her, so why should he care if Charlie does? What right does he have, really, to be angry at all? 

It’s clear that Charlie and Percy’s decision making in that moment wasn’t exactly ideal, but by pinning all the blame on the two of them, Sam is refusing to take accountability for the role he played in this situation. It might take two to tango, but if Sam wasn’t such a cowardly crybaby who repeatedly treated Percy like garbage, there would’ve been no tangoing in the first place. 

So, Percy and Charlie might have made a mistake, but Percy has spent the last decade paying for it, while Charlie has proven time and time again that he has Sam’s back, even when, frankly, he doesn’t deserve it. While Sam’s upset can be understandable to an extent, he needs to take this context into account. But he’d rather play the victim, to which I can only say this: womp womp.