ABC Family's Twisted is heading to choppy waters.
The summer finale, "Out With the In-Crowd," sees Lacey (Kylie Bunbury) uncovering a secret that could exonerate the recently-expelled Danny (Avan Jogia), forcing Lacey to choose between doing the right thing and keeping with the "popular" crowd, and Jo (Maddie Hasson) dealing with the aftermath of seeing Danny and Lacey's past romantic hookups on-camera. All while a murder looms over their heads, of course.
When Twisted returns, viewers are in for a ride. For one thing, Jo's reaction to the video "will be very apparent" right off the bat. "She is not thrilled," Hasson tells The Hollywood Reporter. "You'll see at the start of the episode, she says, 'I'm done with you guys. I'm out.' She goes back to the way we saw her in the first episode, how drawn within herself she was — except in a more extreme fashion."
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Lacey, meanwhile, is forced to deal with the fallout from the video going viral at the high school. "[The video] shakes the school a bit," Bunbury tells THR. "Lacey does get backlash and she is now a pariah in this school as she's walking through. You're going to see the reactions. It's mean, it's cruel and it's sad but it's something she's going to have to go through."
Not to mention, navigating her fractured friendship with Danny. "External matters have affected the bond that they have and the attraction that they have to each other. They definitely have feelings for each other but other circumstances have created a void and have made them fall apart," Bunbury says. "Lacey definitely took that into her own hands. Danny consistently has been lying to them, and although she has these feelings for him, you can't base a relationship on lies."
Adds Bunbury: "They tried [to have a relationship] in secret, which I don't think you can ever do. It was doomed from the start."
With Danny expelled from school, Jogia calls the development a "great challenge." "That changes the dynamic of the show and you have to figure where that leaves him," he tells THR. "It gets even more harrowing in the summer finale. You're definitely in a different place with Danny."
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If anything, the action ramps up even more dramatically. "It literally goes from zero to 100," Jogia says of the summer closer. "This is not the bottom. Him being expelled from school is not the bottom. There's further down he's gotta go."
By the end of Tuesday's episode, except dramatic shifts for the main players Jo, Lacey and Danny.
"[Jo] ends up very, very messed up because she makes two very rash decisions. She makes a big confession and then based on that, she makes a decision that changes her drastically," Hasson says. Adds a cryptic Bunbury: "Jo has some very interesting encounters with some men."
Bunbury warns that the final moments of the finale are not to be missed: "The final few seconds of the finale is a shocker, and it shocked me when I read it." She hints that a character makes a complete 180: "It's a new side of someone that you were not expecting — and not necessarily a good side."
How close is the murder mystery to being solved? "There's definitely things that become revealed," Jogia says. "We answer a few questions at the end of but the answers give you more questions."
The actor also characterizes the finale as a "reset." "He's at his lowest point," Jogia says of Danny. "All the work that he's done — all the friendships, the rehabilitation — doesn't mean anything."
"Where we leave off with Danny ... it's very, very surprising," Hasson teases.
Twisted's summer finale airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on ABC Family.
E-mail: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
Twitter: @insidethetube
