There are times when Hulu’s 8-episode series “Wedding Season,” premiering on September 8th, plays like a relatively straightforward romantic comedy about two beautiful people who end up crossing paths during a crowded Scottish season of nuptials among mutual friends. However, it’s also a vicious thriller with a pretty high body count that has the tendency to explode in action sequences like it’s suddenly shifted into spy movie territory. The elevator pitch could be “Runaway Bride” meets “The Bourne Legacy” and the ability of creator Oliver Lyttleton (one of the original core writers of this website, for the record) and his writers to balance the extreme tones of “Wedding Season” is its greatest accomplishment. In an era of bloated streaming service shows that can’t stretch a feature film idea to the length of a TV season, it’s refreshing to see a program with such breakneck plotting as this one, a show that hits the ground running in its premiere and doesn’t let up from there, jumping genres and styles with remarkable confidence. In terms of sheer believable human behavior, it can get a little hard to maintain suspension of disbelief, but that’s where a remarkably likable ensemble will keep viewers engaged (pun intended). It may not be a perfect ceremony, but there’s really no such thing.
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“Wedding Season” opens with the big-hearted Stefan (Gavin Drea) partaking in a classic rom-com moment: the interruption of a marriage involving the girl he claims to love. Stefan races into a church, professing his love for the dumbstruck bride at the altar, a woman named Katie (Rosa Salazar of “Alita: Battle Angel” and “Brand New Cherry Flavor”). To say that Katie doesn’t return the sentiment, at least not in front of everyone, would be an understatement, leaving Stefan with little more than a black eye (both emotionally and physically) for his grand romantic gesture. Katie goes through with her wedding to rich kid Hugo Delaney (George Webster) as Stefan mopes away his misery, but everything changes when almost the entire Delaney family ends up dead at the head table during the reception. The cops—DCI Metts (Jade Harrison) and DI Donahue (Jamie Michie)—bring Stefan in because they suspect that Katie is behind the mass murder, and they think maybe he was involved too or at least knows where she fled to. Before you know it, Stefan and Katie are on the run, even though the wannabe groom (or the viewer) isn’t quite sure he’s not fleeing with his very own “Gone Girl.”
“Wedding Season” unfolds on two timelines, contrasting Stefan and Katie’s flight from the authorities with the tumultuous few months leading up to the deadly wedding. It turns out that Katie and Stefan didn’t exactly have a traditional romance as the two started hooking up even as Katie was celebrating her engagement to the vapid Hugo. Even though Katie openly called Stefan her “side piece,” he couldn’t give up on something more, following her down the kind of bizarre rabbit holes that someone would only do when they’re thinking with their heart instead of their head.
The writers fill in the mystery of “Wedding Season” one piece at a time, revealing not only how the relationship between its protagonists formed in its own demented way but unveiling potential motives for Katie to cut down her new husband’s entire family tree. At the same time, Stefan grows richer as a character through the eyes and interactions with a friend circle who is increasingly frustrated by his growing obsession with the unobtainable Katie. It’s a smart decision to fill out the supporting cast with equally likable personalities like Callie Cooke’s Leila and Omar Baroud’s Jackson, people who deftly convey the blend of loyal friendship and exasperation that can come with being close to someone as reckless as Stefan.
While everyone is good in “Wedding Season”—and special attention should be given to Michie and Harrison, who take characters who feel like plot devices at first and make them three-dimensional too—the show lives and dies on the talent of Drea and Salazar. The part of Stefan could have devolved into a bumbling moron, the kind of guy who stumbles through life with blinders on because he’s so obsessed with finding love. But Drea finds a way to make Stefan’s plight as organic as possible. Honestly, it’s hard to believe that anyone would put up with as much as Stefan does in this increasingly violent journey, and so a lot of the work of holding this entire story together falls in Drea’s lap, and he’s charismatic and connected enough to make it work. He’s well-balanced by Salazar, a fascinating young actress who inherently has an unpredictable energy that fits this material like a glove. She’s always great.
While Salazar and Drea are very good, “Wedding Season” is really an exercise in storytelling, jumping back and forth between two incredibly densely plotted timelines without losing its grip on its tone. The show can be remarkably dark—it has echoes of “Search Party” in that sense more than that lighter hit Hulu whodunit “Only Murders in the Building”—but it never pushes the envelope far enough to turn viewers off. It cleverly keeps the truth about Katie’s guilt or innocence spinning through the seven episodes sent for press, allowing viewers to get swept away in the story even as they question whether or not this relationship is one that Stefan should actually be pursuing or if he should be running fast in the other direction. It’s like that wedding everyone has been to between two people that maybe weren’t obviously meant for each other—the uncertainty is what makes it fun. [B]