Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘Cruel Intentions’ follows the mind games played by step-siblings Caroline and Lucien, who have a weird relationship where they are each other’s best friends and worst enemies. The story begins with Caroline’s offer, where she asks Lucien to seduce a new student, Annie Grover, and make her join Caroline’s sorority in Manchester College, whose reputation has been stained since a hazing incident the previous year. Lucien accepts the challenge in return for getting to have sex with Caroline, but the more time he spends with Annie, the more he starts to like her, which leads to further complications. In the end, both Caroline and Lucien end up doing something very twisted, while Annie gets her first glimpse into the dark ways that Caroline’s mind works. SPOILERS AHEAD
Does Annie Join Caroline’s Sorority?
The primary issue for Caroline throughout the season is Annie joining her sorority. Due to the hazing incident, Caroline knows that the college authorities might take strict actions, which might even mean the end of one or the other sororities. The only way to ensure that hers is safe from any damage is by ensuring that Annie joins them. She is the daughter of the Vice President of the country, which means that the college authorities will keep that in mind while deciding the fate of Caroline’s sorority. And whatever they do with the others, they will surely not do anything to jeopardize something that the VP’s daughter is a part of. This is why, even when Annie is not as rich as the other kids in college, she is more influential than any of them, at least for the time being.
When Caroline puts Lucien on the task, it is her way to break down Annie’s defenses. She knows that her step-brother will somehow seduce the girl, and that is what she is counting on. Despite her faith in her step-brother’s seduction abilities, Caroline doesn’t want to lose anything to chance, which is why she makes her own moves towards Annie. She extends her friendship and even shares some vulnerable stories about her childhood (though they later turn out to be false) to gain Annie’s trust. She knows that when Lucien is done with Annie, the girl will be heartbroken, which is when she’ll need a group of friends who will support her through the tough time. The sorority, at that time, can be the very thing she needs, and it will lead Annie to pledge with them.
At first, the plan goes just as expected, but then Lucien starts to have feelings for Annie, and this complicates things. First of all, it makes Caroline jealous of Annie because, despite Lucien’s many flings, Caroline thinks she has him wrapped around her finger and can make him do whatever she wants. When he tells her that he is going back on their deal and he will not help her in her manipulations anymore, Caroline is angered, but things have gotten so far now that she can easily steer the situation in her favor without needing anything from Lucien.
All Caroline needs is to isolate Annie by breaking her heart, and she does so by leaking Lucien’s sex videos, which he’d shared only with Caroline. With the videos out, Lucien’s reputation is stained forever, especially in the eyes of Annie. Caroline tells Annie that it was Lucien who leaked the videos because he doesn’t care about the girls he sleeps with. This saddens Annie, who was not only about to sleep with Lucien but was ready to let him make their video. The fact that Lucien would’ve leaked her video as well completely breaks her trust in him.
With Lucien out of the equation, Caroline has Annie all to herself. She offers the sorority’s sisterhood support and protection, which is what the vulnerable Annie wants at the time. So, in the end, she decides to join Caroline’s sorority, giving in to exactly what Caroline wanted. However, soon after the pledge, she discovers something that makes her realize the mistake she may have made by trusting Caroline, which puts a huge question mark on the whole thing about the pledge and loyalty to the sorority.
Do CeCe and Annie Find Out Who Made the Complaint Against Professor Chadwick?
When Annie is still being seduced by Caroline into joining her sorority, she is invited to a sleepover-type party. Named Heaven, it’s an annual thing where potential joiners are invited to spend some time with Caroline and other girls and get to know them. This is where Caroline works her charm but offers herself up as a vulnerable girl. Here, she tells the story of how she lost her virginity to her tennis teacher, who was hired by her mother to help her with her insecurity and boost her confidence. The audience finds out shortly after that the story belongs to CeCe. Caroline stole the story to come across someone who has opened their heart, allowing others, like Annie, to open their heart to her.
There are times when CeCe almost talks about it in front of Annie but is stopped by Caroline, who doesn’t want the truth to come out just yet because Annie has yet to join them. Once Annie has signed the pledge, Caroline doesn’t need to worry about the lies, which is why perhaps she left Annie to have an unsupervised chat with CeCe. This is when Annie discovers that the story about the tennis coach belongs to Cece. She immediately points it out, but CeCe brushes it off, believing that something similar may have happened to Caroline. Still, she knows Caroline well enough to know that all of her lies and truths are premeditated.
What really puts CeCe off is the discovery, or at least getting a hint that Caroline may have something to do with the sexual misconduct complaint filed against Professor Chadwick. Caroline is the only one CeCe told about her attraction to the professor. Caroline even encouraged her to have sex with the guy because she thought that it would get the attraction out of the system. But when Chadwick refused to have inappropriate relations with a student, Caroline decided that she needed to do away with him because she wanted CeCe all to herself. Caroline poses as a college official who keeps an eye on sororities and their conduct. She doesn’t tell Chadwick that she, too, is a student.
Eventually, they end up in bed, with Chadwick having no idea what has happened. Later, Caroline files the complaint against him, knowing full well that he has no way out of it and will be fired. Chadwick is so shocked that he comprehends who filed the complaint. At first, he thinks it’s CeCe, but she, too, is shocked to hear about it. She gets so desperate to know the truth that she tries to find out who filed the complaint, but she is told that the source’s name is kept anonymous as it is most likely another student. The nature of the complaint is so shocking that CeCe is forced to accept that the professor is not who she thought he was. Later, however, she finds a costume in Caroline’s wardrobe. This is the same dress that is worn by the women who came to the sorority to conduct an investigation. This, coupled with Annie’s revelation about Caroline stealing CeCe’s story, makes CeCe wonder if Caroline had something to do with the complaint against Chadwick.
When these concerns are shared with Annie, she has no doubt in her mind that this is yet another move made by Caroline, though she is yet to understand why she would do such a thing. To confirm her suspicions, Annie finds Beatrice, who works at the office and has access to the records. She can find the name of the person who made the complaint. Earlier, Beatrice refused to find and reveal the name to CeCe, but when Annie tells her that it might be Caroline, there is a good chance that Beatrice will be moved. She hates Caroline, and to discover that the latter might be doing something to ruin the reputation of a perfectly good professor would lead Beatrice to take some action. Still, even if the girls know what Caroline did, they have no way to help the professor yet because he did, after all, have sex with a student. While the professor might be doomed for good, the revelation of Caroline’s actions might finally be her undoing as it would give CeCe, of all people, a reason to work against her and bring about her downfall.
Lucien Beats Caroline at Her Own Game
By the end of the season, CeCe and Annie are not the only people who are shocked and hurt by the lies told by Caroline. The person that she hurts the most is Lucien, who also happens to be her biggest ally. When she leaks his sex videos and ruins his relationship with Annie, Lucien is determined to hurt Caroline as well. He had tried to back down from their deal; he had tried to step away from her and break things up by being cordial. However, she makes it clear that there are no lines that cannot be crossed, so he does the thing that he knows she will hate more than anything else in the world. Caroline is not the one to be easily intimidated by anyone, but there is one person whose approval she seeks constantly: her mother, Claudia. Caroline has never received her mother’s love or support. In fact, her mother seems to have more care for Lucien than for Caroline, which irks Caroline to no end.
Everything that Caroline does is to prove to her mother that she is worthy in the hopes that her mother will one day accept her and love her. But somehow, things always fall apart, and Caroline can never get that approval. Still, Caroline has Lucien, who supports her no matter what, or at least she does. To hit Caroline where it hurts, Lucien goes to the only person that Caroline cares about: Claudia. He knows that his stepmother is attracted to him, which she has made clear through her many gestures. This is why he knows that it wouldn’t take much to seduce a person who is already trying to seduce him. Sure enough, his plan works, and he sleeps with his step-mother. Like every other time he has sex, he makes a video and then sends it to Caroline. So far, Caroline had seen it as her power over Lucien, to know that he couldn’t have sex without making videos for her. But this time, things are different.
The video shows that whatever power she had over him is gone because he has taken the very thing and turned it around. Having sex with her mother means that he has given her mother the only thing that she thought she had to herself. Caroline treated Lucien like her property. She was her toy, to be used and manipulated to serve her ends. Not having sex with him was a power move because that way, she would remain the forbidden fruit that he would do anything to have. Now, however, he has taken things a step further by completely rewriting the lines of what is supposed to be forbidden. Above all, he has shown Caroline that she is not entirely invulnerable. If she knows how to hurt him, he knows how to hurt her worse. Having sex with her mother is his way of saying, “Game on.”
Read More: Cruel Intentions: Do Lucien and Annie End Up Together? Does Lucien Sleep With Annie?
