‘Cruel Summer’ showrunner breaks down the twist-filled season finale – including that big reveal in the final seconds and the kiss that made fans very happy

• Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the season finale of "Cruel Summer," which aired Tuesday.
• "Hostile Witness" saw Kate and Jeanette facing off in court, and the truth finally being revealed.
• Insider spoke with showrunner Tia Napolitano, who talked about all those twists and big moments.
• Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

If you've found this article while trying to mentally recover from the game-changing last two minutes of the "Cruel Summer" season one finale – don't worry, you're in the right place.

Insider talked to showrunner Tia Napolitano on Monday ahead of the finale airing on Freeform and had one burning question – why?

By Tuesday's season-ender, Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia), Kate (Olivia Holt), and "Cruel Summer" fans have been through this 10-episode journey and finally reach the somewhat-peaceful conclusion we find in 1995, where Kate retracts her accusations against Jeanette and everyone seems set to move on with their lives.

So, why leave us hanging on such a major reveal? Why tack on that brief, final scene letting the audience know that Jeanette did, in fact, hear a captive Kate identify herself and say that she's been kidnapped in 1994?

It's a wild last-minute twist. And for the record, Napolitano knows it.

"This was not the plan from the beginning," she told Insider in a phone interview. "When the idea first came up, we thought, 'Oh that's crazy, we can't do that.' And then the more we thought about it, crazy felt like the right fit for our fans, to give us that one final twist."

Napolitano is clear that even though "Cruel Summer" fans might feel like the last two minutes of "Hostile Witness" left us dangling from a very steep rock with a whole new sea of questions below, the writers didn't necessarily mean to leave us hanging. In fact, she thinks of it more as the last puzzle piece to complete the story.

"I wouldn't describe it as a cliffhanger," the showrunner said. "I would describe it as the final piece of information to complete the big picture of the truth, the elusive truth that we've been chasing through all of season one."

Knowing now that, despite her dogged insistence to the contrary all season long and the resolution of 1995, Jeanette did know Kate had been kidnapped and did nothing to help her, the next logical thought might be to label Jeanette a villain after all. But Napolitano suggests reframing that notion.

"I think if there's anything to take away from 'Cruel Summer' it's that we want to give people these labels of villain and victim, or heroes, and it's just not that black and white," she explained. "I don't think Jeanette is a supervillain. I think she's a very complicated human, and we've seen the very worst thing that she's done."

Kate and Mallory's kiss was a finale highlight, and the timing of it in the closing moments was no accident

Of course, the plot twists weren't all dark. One sweet moment features best friends Kate and Mallory reach a turning point in their relationship, after quickly overcoming the finale's reveal that it was actually Mallory, not Jeanette, who Kate thought saw her face in Martin's window before she was confined to the basement.

In 1995, while Jeanette is basking in the spotlight of "The Marsha Bailey Show" as Skylin's newest victim (and very creepily offering her unprompted forgiveness to "the girl who named me"), Kate and Mallory (Harley Quinn Smith) ditch the broadcast to take a drive, then share a kiss in front of Mallory's car while dancing to Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" on full blast.

While some viewers may have been surprised by this development, fans of this friendship (affectionately nicknamed "Kallory") turned romance already picked up that there might be something more between them, getting similar vibes from the pair's 1995 interaction during the roller-rink scene several episodes back, on "Happy Birthday, Kate Wallis." Napolitano said that was by design.

Napolitano explained that she and Smith agreed early on that Mallory is queer and that, while the two characters were not originally meant to be love interests, the showrunner could not ignore the natural chemistry between Holt and Smith when she would watch dailys. But what fun would it be to watch former enemies-turned-besties kiss too soon? The writers opted for a slow-burn instead.

"I like to leave the audience in that space of 'just kiss her already,'' Napolitano told Insider. "I think that's a fun way to watch TV."

Plus, we need to factor in that Kate has spent all of her friendship with Mallory healing from months-long grooming, kidnapping, and sexual assault. A great day roller skating and a Ring Pop doesn't necessarily mean Kate is ready to kiss someone again. Mallory knows that and gives Kate space to heal, genuinely being there for her as a friend first.

"It's not until Kate has this moment of real joy in the end, that's where they kiss. It's happy....it's Kate's happy ending," said Napolitano.

While breaking the season's storylines, Napolitano was sure to act on advice from marginalized communities

While many fans are understandably excited that Kallory is now canon, there is another queer couple on "Cruel Summer" we have to discuss. Vince (Allius Barnes) and Ben (Nathaniel Ashton) have one of the purest, most vulnerable romances two gay teens could have had in early 1990s Texas, and it's beautiful to watch.

The two only share one quick scene in the finale, but considering that Ben has been trying to avoid Vince's calls in 1995 all season, watching Ben walk into the video store full of apologies (after getting encouragement from Jamie) gives fans hope for their future.

The representation of marginalized communities on "Cruel Summer" feels natural and authentic in a way we rarely see on TV, and there's a reason for that. First-time showrunner Napolitano (who was previously a staff writer on "Grey's Anatomy") explained to Insider how her approach to writing for underrepresented communities on "Cruel Summer" differed from the other shows she has worked on.

"I said to all the actors and all the writers, 'My experience on this Earth is I'm 36 years old. I'm a cis straight white lady. Who's married to a man. That is not the experience of all of my characters. So please tell me about walking this earth in your shoes. Speak up if I'm doing it wrong,'" she said.

In addition to asking the cast and crew to give her feedback, Napolitano said that she and her team sent out their scripts to organizations that advise film and TV productions on how to tell stories about sensitive topics and minority communities with integrity like GLAAD, Color Of Change, Hollywood Health & Society and Respect Ability, an organization that works with Hollywood creatives to fight stigmas within the disability community. And she didn't just ask for the advice of her team and advocacy organizations - she acted on their suggestions, even when considering what stories "Cruel Summer" was not ready to tell yet.

"There were a couple of options as to how to injure Ben and [with] Nathaniel Ashton who is not a disabled person....You know, we drew a hard line, and said, '[We're] not going to disable this person,'" she said of how the writers tackled Ben's car accident storyline.

Respect Ability confirmed that "Cruel Summer" made the right choice not to have an able-bodied actor play a character with a disability, and it's an important (and unfortunately rare) one where media representation on TV is concerned.

GLAAD, which keeps track of the number of disabled characters on TV in an annual representation report for many marginalized communities, found in its 2020-2021 "Where We Are On TV" report that although representation has increased over time, characters with disabilities only represent 3.5% of characters on network television.

And very few of those already-few characters are actually portrayed by disabled actors - a separate study released by Ruderman White Paper in 2016 found that able-bodied actors played 95% of disabled characters on TV in the top 10 TV shows of the 2015-2016 television season alone, Variety reports.

"In the future, I would love to tell a [disability] story with a disabled actor," Napolitano said.

There is a reason why we still have so many questions - and they could be answered in a second season

"Hostile Witness" provides fans with the confrontation between Jeanette and Kate in 1995 that we have all been waiting for and a pretty definitive Kallory happy ending. But we still have plenty of other questions.

Why doesn't Kate confront Ashley (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) about her well-meaning chatroom deception in-person? Is Cindy so unsupportive of Jeanette that she actually wouldn't show up in court? Why is Jeanette so comfortable with Jamie after one apology for punching her in the face? And why don't we see Joy and Kate discuss what actually happened to Kate in Martin's (Blake Lee) basement that final day of captivity?

There is not enough time in a day to ask Napolitano all of the things viewers might still be wondering about, but she did address the status of Joy and Kate's relationship.

"I don't think we're sure what Joy knows yet about what exactly Kate's final hours in the basement looked like," she said. But she does think the mother and daughter are currently "on the road to mending their relationship" after their fight on Kate's birthday.

As for a more practical reason why the finale couldn't include resolutions to all of these hanging threads, Napolitano explained that COVID-19 protocols affected some actors' availability. Plus, there is a director's cut of the episode out there somewhere that runs for 56 minutes instead of the allotted 44; as with all cable shows, scenes had to be trimmed to fit the timeslot.

Thankfully, Freeform just announced that "Cruel Summer" will be back for season two, so hopefully we'll get answers to some of our most burning questions. Then again, maybe we won't - Freeform network president Tara Duncan told Deadline that "Cruel Summer" might be an anthology series, following an entirely new set of characters in its next season.

Napolitano herself didn't address whether or not the next season will track the same characters, telling Insider that season two is "a big question mark" as her team is just beginning to break the storylines.

"We're so excited that we get the opportunity to have a season 2. What it is? That work is still ahead of us," she said.