Every Year After Episode 8 Review: "Goodbye..." — Sue's Memorial, Percy's Last Dance, and the Tavern's Second Summer

By Mira Vance · Editor & Lead Reviewer

Every Year After* closes this chapter by turning Sue's memorial into the thing she actually would have wanted: breakfast for dinner, dancing, awkward honesty, and her boys standing beside each other even when they can barely stand upright. "Goodbye..." is built around departures, but it is warmer than a breakup hour usually gets, because the episode keeps asking what kind of love remains after the fantasy version is gone. Percy and Sam do not get an easy repair. They get one honest night by the lake, one year of living with it, and one return that feels less like a promise than a breath held at the waterline.

Charlie finds Sam hiding from the airport run, and the brothers almost turn grief into a fight

The episode opens with Sam frozen in the place where everyone else needs him to move. Charlie has called him ten times because Sue’s family needs to be picked up from the airport, and Sam answers with pure refusal: he does not have to do anything, and Charlie cannot make him. It is childish in the exact way fresh grief can be childish, all panic looking for a target.

Charlie gives him one. The brothers shove their old dynamic back into the room, with Charlie mocking Sam and Sam refusing to fight because he loves him. That line does not fix anything. It just leaves the truth sitting there while Sam walks away from the responsibility in front of him.

Percy finds Delilah in bed, then chooses Sue’s memorial over disappearing again

Percy’s morning starts with Delilah crying in bed, surrounded by ketchup chips and the ruins of the life she thought she was building. Delilah admits that she cares too much about things like tablecloths and image, and Percy answers with an old apology: she is sorry for ghosting Delilah years ago. She had been buried in shame and guilt then, unable to believe she deserved anything good, even friendship.

The exchange lets Percy do something small and grown-up. She cannot fix Delilah’s heartbreak. She can get up, go to The Tavern, and give Sue the memorial Sue deserves. The timing is awful; the emotional math is worse. Percy still chooses the work.

Sam hears a stranger’s Sue story, then finds Percy making breakfast for dinner at The Tavern

Before Sam reaches The Tavern, the hour lets him hear Sue through someone else’s memory. A woman who knows Percy tells Sam about Sue buying spray paint so the boys could cover a doomed barn before it was torn down, leaving Sam with the image of blue paint in his hair for weeks. It is not a grand revelation. It is better than that: a messy, specific proof that his mother existed outside his own grief.

Then Sam finds Percy where he did not expect her, dressed in ridiculous memorial clothes and making waffles, bacon, and eggs. Percy has not chosen pierogi because she knows Sue’s secret. Sue loved making pierogi for other people, but her own favorite comfort was breakfast for dinner. That is why Percy is there. Not to perform mourning correctly, but to honor Sue accurately.

Sue’s tutu-and-tiara memory gives Percy the memorial Sue actually wanted

The flashback around that breakfast is one of the episode’s softest pieces. Sue, in a tutu and tiara, teaches Percy that scrambled eggs need to go “low and slow.” She jokes about the responsibility of wearing the tiara, admits that she hates pierogi, and turns dinner into a small rebellion against the version of herself everyone thinks they know.

The second Sue memory cuts deeper. Percy is about to leave at the end of the week, and Sue talks about loneliness, grief, and what happened to Charlie after Chris died. Sue says she fell apart and could not be there for the person who needed her most. Then she gives Percy the choice the whole episode keeps circling: stop fighting and go under, or dig for the surface. When she says she danced, as if nobody was watching because nobody was, the memorial’s disco-ball logic suddenly has roots.

Sam breaks during his speech, and Charlie turns the room toward fighting for the family

At the memorial, Sam starts with a speech about Sue believing in true love. He talks about his parents meeting in high school, about best friends becoming the loves of their lives, about being wise enough not to let go. He cannot finish. The sentence catches on everything he has lost and everything he has just destroyed, and Charlie steps in with a hand, a shoulder, and a quiet, brotherly rescue.

Charlie’s speech is rougher and more useful. He remembers the yelling first, because Sue and Chris knew how to fight, and because Sue’s passion was not a decorative trait. She loved deeply. She would have wanted her sons to stay and fight for the family, even when it was hard. By the time he raises the room to “To Sue,” the memorial has become what Percy meant it to be: not a polished goodbye, but a roomful of people trying to tell the truth about the woman they loved.

Percy and Sam dance, remember the goodbye that broke them, and choose one more goodbye

After the speeches, Sam admits to Percy that he almost texted Sue for advice on how to fix them. Percy says she texts Sue every day. The loss opens wider from there: Sam talks about losing Chris young, about being heartbroken for himself and Charlie then, and now being heartbroken for Sue because she will never grow old or run around the dock with their kids. The simplest line is the one that does the most damage: “We’re orphans.”

Percy answers with the only medicine Sue gave her that still works. She asks Sam to dance. The two-step becomes a doorway into the messy goodbye they never got right: the younger versions of Percy and Sam saying they love each other, the older Percy naming the unforgivable thing she did, the present-day pair knowing that love has survived without being enough to save them. They kiss, they miss each other, and Sam finally says the thing the hour has been waiting to say. He loved her. She broke his heart. He wants to forgive her. He cannot do this.

Percy does not argue him into a different ending. She says she did what she came to do: say goodbye.

A year later, The Tavern reopens, Jordie asks for more, and Sam sees the lake in an office photo

The time jump is gentle but not sugary. Percy and Delilah are getting The Tavern ready for opening weekend. Percy has a publisher, a horror deadline, and a new sense that Barry’s Bay makes her less scared. Delilah is proud of what they built out of the wreckage, but she is also worried about Charlie, who has thrown himself into work while Sam still has not reached out.

The hour spreads its second chances carefully. Jordie comes by to help, and the woman who once needed everything clearly stated admits that life may not be as black-and-white as she thought. At the packed opening, Delilah toasts The Tavern, Percy, Jordie, and Sue. Jordie decides he does not want murky anymore. He wants more, but without asking anyone to become someone different.

Sam gets his own nudge far from the lake. At the office on a Saturday, Greg shows him a photograph his wife bought in B.C.: Sam, Charlie, and Percy in his dad’s boat. The image is old summer caught by someone else’s camera, and Sam recognizes the lake before he has admitted how badly he wants to go back. When he finally walks into The Tavern and Percy hears her name, the line is almost too simple: “You came home.”

Tiny details worth clocking

• Percy choosing waffles, bacon, and eggs over pierogi turns Sue’s memorial from public tradition into private knowledge.
• The tutu and tiara are silly on purpose, but they also become Sue’s inheritance to Percy: permission to be ridiculous when grief gets too heavy.
• Charlie’s “stay and fight for it” speech answers the opening scene, where Sam walks away from the airport run and Charlie almost lets anger lead.
• Delilah’s new bar rules are funny because she is building a life out of details again, only this time the details belong to her.
• The office photograph works because Sam does not find an argument. He finds evidence of one good moment, and that is harder to dismiss.

Final verdict

“Goodbye…” is at its best when it lets grief stay ordinary. People forget airport pickups, fight about old childhood wounds, overwork the table settings, and hide inside office spreadsheets. The episode’s strongest move is making Sue’s memorial less about sainting Sue than about letting every person who loved her admit they did not know all of her. She hated pierogi. She danced alone. She loved hard and failed Charlie in ways she could name. That is a fuller tribute than a clean speech could have been.

The Sam and Percy goodbye hurts because it refuses the romance shortcut. The lake, the dancing, the old promises, and the kiss all point toward reunion, but the actual choice is more adult: love can still be real after trust is broken, and it can still be insufficient. The later return risks neatness, especially with the photo arriving exactly when Sam needs it, but the episode earns the feeling by giving Percy a year of life that is not waiting. She has work, friendship, a book, and a place she helped rebuild.

That is why the final image of homecoming lands. It is not a guarantee that the old summer can be recovered. It is a door opening in a room that survived without him.

Rating: 9.1/10 — A tender, specific goodbye hour that honors Sue without sanding her down and lets Sam and Percy ache without pretending one dance can fix a decade.

More episodes from Every Year After — Second chances and old summers, episode by episode. Jump to any episode in the season:

Reviewed by Mira Vance · QuizFandom Editor & Lead Reviewer. Every rating is an honest per-watch assessment from the desk that also writes the quizzes — not a press release rehash.

← All Every Year After reviews