Weddings, by nature, are inherently chaotic. The amount of moving parts that go into making such a massive, celebratory day work — the flowers, the dress, the venue, not to mention the people — are difficult to control, and everyone’s got at least one nuptial horror story under their belt by the time they’re thirty. But can anyone say they’ve attended the wedding where the entire bridal party, save the bride, winds up dead at the reception?
That’s the premise of Hulu’s Wedding Season, a new romantic-comedy thriller series that puts a spin on the idea of “‘til death do us part”. Starring Rosa Salazar as a bride who becomes the prime suspect when her new husband and all his family members wind up dead on her wedding day, the new series reinvents tropes across genres as it questions how far we’re willing to go for love, and what love even means at all, leaning into every bit of camp and chaos it possibly can for one hell of a time.
Initially starting off on a bit of a grating note — do you really expect us to root for a guy who objects at someone else’s wedding? — it doesn’t take long before the series coaxes its audience into falling in love with its protagonists, two star-crossed lovers believed to be killers when really, they’re just everyday people. (Or are they?) Katie (Salazar) and Stefan (Gavin Drea) are the charismatic heart of the series, which plummets on a rollercoaster ride into chaos when they decide that the best course of action to take is to escape police custody and attempt to solve the murder themselves. The results are…well, as expected.
Salazar is without a doubt the standout as Katie, taking the traditional frenetic energy of a rom-com heroine and ramping it up to eleven. She never sits still, never lets her guard down — why would you, when you’re being suspected of mass murder — and what initially feels like it might be annoying in the show’s pilot is transformed into a captivating performance by the end of episode one, leaving fans craving answers about who the hell she is and why her life has intersected with Stefan’s.
The energy of the entire series matches Katie’s frantic struggle to prove her innocence, stuffing ten times as much into thirty minutes of television as some shows struggle to fit into an hour. Katie and Stefan never stay in one place for very long, jetting across the world from Edinburgh to Las Vegas to somewhere in middle-of-nowhere Texas, all with the lavish style of Edith Head and the charm and humor of a Nora Ephron film. Series creator Oliver Lyttelton nearly gives you whiplash with the speed at which the show pings between Katie’s past, the present, and the lead-up of weddings that land Katie and Stefan in trouble, while also never revealing too much about the show’s mystery at one time.
While the show leans much more heavily into murder-mystery than it does into romantic comedy, Stefan and Katie are maybe the best rom-com couple I’ve seen in the last handful of years, when Hollywood has been so focused on the punchline aspect of the genre that they forget that the appeal comes from watching two people with infectious chemistry fall in love. In the spaces between its excellently-executed mystery plot, Wedding Season finds time to create real, believable love between two people whose lives have been thrown completely out of whack, and despite a rocky start, you find yourself drawn to their relationship, in no small part because of the leads’ stellar performances.
Drea has all the awkwardness I love in a romantic hero, the kind that seems grounded and down to earth, while not cutting into his charm or chemistry with his co-star. (See also: Glen Powell’s turn in 2018’s Set It Up.) Even through the chaos of following Katie around the world, he is head over heels dedicated to her, and you’re rooting for their love as much as you are invested in solving the mystery of the whole shebang. The zaniness of the script plays well to Drea’s comedic strengths, and combined with the show’s quieter, more intimate moments, I can easily make a similar argument for Drea that I have been for Powell for the last four years: Hollywood, if you’re still looking for the next generation of leading man to lead a string of successful rom-coms à la Hugh Grant, he is right there.
(I mean, come on. When someone says, “something about you makes me feel at home” with the most sincere face you’ve ever seen, how do you not want to see him in everything?)
And what is a rom-com without a brilliant supporting cast, here comprised of Callie Cooke, Ioanna Kimbook, Omar Baroud, and Bhav Joshi as maybe the closest television has ever gotten to representing the hilarious chaos of an adult friend group. Really, if your friends wouldn’t be willing to commit crimes to prove your innocence when you’ve been accused of murder, are they really your friends at all? That’s the question the series poses, and with a brilliant answer to boot, with every last member of the cast being as fun and engaging as the leads they play against.
This series is prime for fans of Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World and its dry, deadpan British humor, or even those of Ashes to Ashes, with all of Gene Hunt’s surliness and Alex Drake’s fierce belief that she is right, thank you very much. (Though I don’t think Gene Hunt would ever say something looks like “the Sistine Chapel of dicks.”) Hulu seems to have hit its stride with murder mysteries lately, and if you’re searching for something to fill the void left by Only Murders in the Building after its Season 2 finale, Wedding Season is a perfect fit.
While it may not have the celebrity cameos or the killer needle drops, the series is a fresh look at two much-loved genres, a rollicking, globetrotting, must-see adventure that’ll keep you laughing on the edge of your seat. Whether that’s because you’re dying to know who really killed Katie’s fiancé or simply because you’re just begging to see Katie and Stefan kiss? That’s entirely up to you.
Rating: A+
All eight episodes of Wedding Season premiere on Hulu on September 8.