Goodbye, The Summer I Turned Pretty, hello Maxton Hall. Although Prime Video’s time at Cousins Beach is over, its chilly European counterpart is just getting started. Based on the BookTok sensation “Save You” by Mona Kasten, Maxton Hall has all the stuff that makes up the Young Adult genre: a rivals-to-lovers trope, tensions between the privileged and the working-class, and listening to your brain versus listening to your heart. With Season 1 breaking records as Prime Video’s biggest U.S. debut, Maxton Hall clearly has something that keeps audiences hooked. It’s also worth mentioning that a third season is already in the works — announced months before Season 2 premiered. Despite its surface resemblance to shows like Gossip Girl or Elite, the much faster-paced and punchier Maxton Hall delivers a romance viewers want to root for. At the same time, the romantic drama also offers an important critique of the realities of class divide within school halls.
What Is ‘Maxton Hall’ About?
Maxton Hall follows Ruby Bell (Harriet Herbig-Matten), a hardworking scholarship student at the elite Maxton Hall, who dreams of getting into Oxford University. Her plans are disrupted when she accidentally discovers a secret affair between Lydia Beaufort (Sonja Weißer), the twin sister of wealthy heir James Beaufort (Damian Hardung), and a teacher. To protect his family’s reputation, James tries to silence Ruby, which ignites a rivalry between them. Following an unwanted striptease prank set by James at a school gala organized by Ruby, their principal assigns them to organize a fundraising gala together. Although the two got off on the wrong foot, Ruby and James ultimately let down their walls when they realized they had crossed the line with each other.
Back home, James is expected to inherit the Beaufort fashion empire. Since childhood, he has been molded by his ruthless father, Mortimer Beaufort (Fedja van Huêt), to take over the family business. However, James has no interest in it. Meanwhile, Lydia shows far more passion and skill, yet Mortimer repeatedly overlooks her due to her personal mistakes, viewing her as a liability to the family name. By the Season 1 finale, a tragic loss crushes the already fragile family. Mortimer tightens his grip on his children, determined to protect the business’s image at all costs — even if it means sabotaging James’s budding relationship with Ruby, whom he despises for being “poor.”
As for Lydia, she continues her secret relationship with her teacher, Graham Sutton (Eidin Jalali), which stands as one of, if not the show’s most controversial storylines. Lydia defends her relationship by explaining that they met online and exchanged emails before she realized he was a teacher at Maxton Hall. She also argues that, since she’s graduating next year, she’s free to openly date Sutton. However, as James and Ruby’s relationship proves, Mortimer doesn’t take his children’s romantic choices lightly, especially when they involve a school teacher. By the end of Season 1, the situation escalates when Lydia discovers she is pregnant with Sutton’s child.
Ruby and James’ Chemistry in ‘Maxton Hall’ Doesn’t Lean on Toxic or Abusive Tropes
With Maxton Hall appealing to a young adult audience, it’s refreshing to see portrayals of boundaries in relationships, especially in a genre driven by chaos. The series sets the steamy, guilty-pleasure tone of franchises like After, focusing on the classic love-hate relationship. James and Ruby’s relationship follows this pattern at first. James comes off as an arrogant heir willing to bribe Ruby and sabotage her Oxford ambitions to protect his sister Lydia, but Ruby refuses to be intimidated. When the two are forced to work together as punishment, they are put on equal footing within Maxton Hall’s social hierarchy.
Unlike After’s Tessa and Hardin, whose relationship borders on abusive, James and Ruby genuinely try to understand each other beyond their established reputations. Their turning point comes during a heated classroom debate that gets deeply personal. Ruby accuses James of being driven solely by wealth, while James snaps back that she knows nothing about his life and that she’s seeing things from her ivory tower of moral superiority. Ruby doubles down, calling him an empty vessel defined only by his family name and inheritance. This ends with James angrily retreating, with Ruby realizing that she might’ve gone too far. By the time the two cool down, they reach a truce that leads to future romance.
Their most significant development, however, comes in Season 2, following the sudden death of James’s mother — a tragedy his father hides from him during his Oxford interviews. Overwhelmed, James spirals into substance abuse, jeopardizing his relationship with Ruby. When he finally apologizes, Ruby immediately sets boundaries with him, refusing to become his emotional crutch when things go wrong with his life. Though she empathizes with his pain, she urges him to seek professional help and prioritize his healing. Because at the end of the day, nobody can save you but yourself.
‘Maxton Hall’ Shows the Painful Reality of Both Sides of the Economic Spectrum
Maxton Hall also serves as a critique of the privilege, highlighting the vast inequality between Ruby and James’s worlds. Ruby’s relentless drive to succeed defines her — she plans every second in her binder, aces her exams, and works tirelessly on the events committee just to earn a rare recommendation letter from the principal, all to secure a scholarship to Oxford. But that dream is more than ambition; it’s her only way out of structural poverty. As the first in her family to attend an elite school, Ruby hopes to lift them out of debt, support her father, and escape subsidized housing.
Meanwhile, James has it easy — not only is he rich, he’s old money rich. Coming from a 125-year-old legacy, the Beauforts possess more than just wealth. They also have social capital and influence. Their fashion house has dressed everyone from presidents to royalty, giving them the power to sway almost anyone to do their bidding, which explains why James initially turns to bribery. This privilege is further shown when Mortimer secretly arranges a makeup interview with Oxford after James deliberately walks out of his third interview, realizing he doesn’t want to attend college.
But as Maxton Hall shows, there are dangers of being raised in a family with too much money but with no moral compass. While James comes across as a jerk in the beginning, through the multiple flashbacks shown between him and his father, it becomes clear that his viciousness is a product of Mortimer’s cold-blooded upbringing. All his life, James has been taught to be the dominant one, and that life is nothing but a game that he has to win. It’s a mindset Mortimer implemented so that James could be a dominant successor in the business. Obviously, with Ruby putting some sense in him and showing him that he deserves to be loved beyond money, James attempts to cut the generational trauma inflicted by his father on him and his sister, which serves as the major driving force of Season 2.
Maxton Hall: The World Between Us Like Follow Followed TV-MA Drama Romance Thriller Release Date May 9, 2024 Network Prime Video Directors Martin Schreier and Tarek Roehlinger Writers Daphne Ferraro Cast See All Damian Hardung James Beaufort Harriet Herbig-Matten Ruby Bell Sonja Weißer Lydia Beaufort Fedja van Huêt Mortimer Beaufort Where to watch Close WHERE TO WATCH Streaming
Powered by Expand Collapse
