‘Cruel Summer Snow Globe’: Here’s Why It’s So Important

After watching the latest Cruel Summer episode, viewers want to know why the snow globe is so important. In Cruel Summer Episode 8, Jeanette Turner (Chiara Aurelia) begged Mallory Higgins (Harley Quinn Smith) to give her the snow globe. Why does she want it all of a sudden? Here’s everything we know.

[Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers from Cruel Summer Episode 8.]

‘Cruel Summer’ Episode 8 recap: the snow globe

In 1995, in Cruel Summer Episode 8, viewers watched Jamie Henson (Froy Gutierrez) play a strange recording repeatedly. Later (after begging Jeanette to talk to him), he apologized for punching her. While the two were talking, Jeanette noticed a cassette tape recorder. She asked Jamie why he carried it around.

Jamie explained that it is a voicemail from Christmas Eve of 1993, only a few months after Kate went missing. When he played the strange recording, Jeanette heard breathing and a song playing in the background. The voicemail shook her, and she ran out of Jamie’s garage. 

Jeanette immediately went to Mallory Higgins’ house. That’s when Cruel Summer fans found out about the snow globe that Jeanette suddenly wanted back. Mallory lied and claimed she didn’t have it anymore. Then she found the snow globe in a box under her bed and played the music box. Sure enough, it was the same melody that viewers heard in the voicemail. 

‘Cruel Summer’: Who is telling the truth?

In Cruel Summer Episode 7, fans found out that Kate was lying about how she ended up in Martin Harris’ (Blake Lee) basement. After her mother, Joy Wallis (Andrea Anders), slapped her across the face, Kate packed her bags and left. Of course, it was more profound than a small fight between mother and daughter. Kate told her stepfather, Rod Wallis (Ben Cain), that her mother was cheating on him (which was true). However, Joy denied the accusation and belittled her daughter for saying such a thing. 

Kate ran to Martin’s house because she knew her mother would find her at a friend’s house. Joy even taunted her daughter while she was packing, listing the places she knew Kate would go. So, Kate chose somewhere her mother didn’t mention. She went to Martin’s house willingly and admitted it to someone in a private online chat room. However, she didn’t know that the chat room user was her sister, Ashley Wallis (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut). When Jeanette’s brother, Derek Turner (Barrett Carnahan), noticed the discussion in his girlfriend’s dorm room, he printed it out. Now, Jeanette has proof that Kate lied in Cruel Summer.

Is the Snow Globe in ‘Cruel Summer’ proof that Jeanette lied?

In the midseason trailer for Cruel Summer, Jeanette had the snow globe in her room in 1993. She no longer has glasses or braces, so she’s on her way to becoming the “popular girl” 1994 Jeanette. Pause the video at minute 1:23 for the clip of Jeanette with the snow globe. In the Cruel Summer Episode 9 promo, Jeanette is in front of Martin’s house around Christmas time because there’s a holiday wreath on the door. One snow globe Reddit fan theory might help explain why the snow globe is so important.

“Jeanette breaks into Martin’s house on Christmas Eve, intending to steal the globe,” one fan wrote on Reddit. “While she is stealing it, it starts to sound, which wakes Kate up from a drugged state. Martin had left Kate upstairs just because it was Christmas Eve (drugging her). When the music startles her, she grabs Martin’s phone and dials but is not strong enough to speak. She, however, sees Jeanette as she’s running away through the living room window. She thinks Jeanette saw her back, but maybe she was just confused.”

Fans also theorize that Jeanette gave the snow globe to Mallory as another peace offering to reconcile their friendship. However, in this scenario, the snow globe is proof that Jeanette is lying in Cruel Summer about the number of times she went into Martin’s house. However, she still might not have seen Kate while she was there.

Cruel Summer Episode 9 returns to Freeform on June 8, 2021, at 10 p.m. EST. The Cruel Summer Season Finale airs on June 15, 2021.