Meet the Stolen-Summer Scene-Stealer: Carson MacCormac Is Young Charlie in ‘Every Year After’

Prime Video has had no shortage of romantic drama adaptations in recent years, and its latest arrival is already generating serious conversation online. ‘Every Year After’, the long-anticipated adaptation of Carley Fortune’s bestselling novel ‘Every Summer After’, had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 8, 2026, and landed on Prime Video on June 10.

The eight-episode series brings to life a love story that spans almost two decades, balancing a present-day second-chance romance with emotionally rich flashbacks to a sun-soaked Barry’s Bay summer.

At the heart of those flashbacks is a trio of younger actors tasked with making audiences fall hard before the grown-up drama even begins. Through those childhood sequences, viewers meet young Percy (Juliette Hawk), Sam (Blue Clarke), and Charlie (Carson MacCormac). These performances carry a great deal of weight, and early critical reception suggests they largely deliver.

Of the three, Carson MacCormac as Young Charlie has caught the eye of fans digging into the full cast breakdown. MacCormac is a Canadian actor born on October 21, 1999, in Oakville, Ontario, who has been professionally active since 2017. Though he may read as a fresh face to some viewers, he has been quietly building an impressive portfolio for nearly a decade. Audiences who follow teen and young adult content may recognize him from ‘My Life With the Walter Boys’, where he plays Zach, and from ‘Shazam! Fury of the Gods’, where he played Brett Breyer.

His film credits go deeper than those highlights suggest. MacCormac is also known for roles in ‘Giant Little Ones’ (2018), ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’ (2022), and the horror film ‘Clown in a Cornfield’ (2025). His range across indie drama, franchise blockbusters, and now prestige streaming romance positions him as one of the more versatile young actors working in Canadian television and film today.

The flashback sequences in ‘Every Year After’ are not mere filler. The show flashes back to 2011 and moves toward 2016, depicting Percy’s formative summers at the lake, where she first met Charlie and his younger brother Sam, bonfires with her friend Delilah, working at Sue’s restaurant The Tavern, and stolen kisses that would come to define the next decade of her life. That texture makes the younger performers crucial to the emotional architecture of the whole series.

Critics have been notably warmer toward the flashback portions of the show than the present-day storyline. Writing for RogerEbert.com, the reviewer noted that young actors Juliette Hawk and Carson MacCormac are “adorably awkward in a way that makes it almost impossible not to root for their romance,” adding that the earlier episodes work hard to make the youthful connection feel realistic. That kind of critical attention for a supporting role in a flashback structure is not something that comes around every day.

Screen Rant similarly highlighted the younger performers, noting that young Percy and Sam buoy the series with “the kind of earnest bubbliness only possible in early teenhood.” The consensus forming among reviewers is that the nostalgic, summer-drenched sequences land with genuine warmth, even when the adult storyline draws more mixed opinions.

It is worth noting the broader ensemble MacCormac steps into. Author Carley Fortune reacted to the full cast announcement in a July 2025 statement, saying the auditions made her “laugh, swoon, and cry,” and expressing her confidence that fans of the original novel would fall in love with their favorite characters all over again. That kind of author enthusiasm signals how much care went into assembling every layer of the cast, young performers included.

The series is frequently compared to ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’, as both are romantic dramas based on bestselling novels centered on first love, coming-of-age experiences, and emotional relationships, though ‘Every Year After’ carries a stronger emphasis on second-chance romance. For viewers looking for their next binge-worthy summer obsession, the young cast’s warmth and authenticity may be the very thing that hooks them in earliest.

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