Itâs late autumn in Hawkins, 1984. The trees are bare, the air smells like wet leaves and cigarette smoke, and the town feels quieter than usual â except for Charlie Harringtonâs life, which is anything but quiet.
Itâs late 2015, and Made in the A.M. has just been released. The world canât stop talking about it â five boys from One Direction, still on top, still everywhere. The album feels older, wiser, and a little sadder, but the energy around it is electric.
For two years, Sam Winchester has been living what he calls a normal life. Heâs left the hunt behind, pouring himself into law classes at Stanford and building a steady, quiet life with Charlie Thompsonâa warm, sharp-witted girl who grounds him in a way nothing else ever has. Charlie knows Sam as kind, brilliant, and guarded, a man who works too hard and bears a few unexplained scars. She assumes his past is painful in an ordinary wayâfamily fractures, grief, the sort of things you donât push for. So she doesnât.
Itâs the summer of 2015, and One Direction are tucked away in Los Angeles, splitting their days between the recording studio and a rented house in the Hills while they finish their upcoming album Made in the A.M.âstill a work-in-progress, still secret, and still causing far more stress than any of them will admit out loud. Zayn is still in the band, more relaxed and creatively plugged-in than heâs been in years, and the group is riding on that rare mix of exhaustion and excitement that comes right before something big.
Charlie Ashford has always been part of the Wilkerson ecosystem. She grew up next door, scraped her knees in the same yards, survived the same neighborhood disasters, and learned early on that loving the Wilkerson boys meant accepting constant noise, destruction, and humiliation. By season four, sheâs officially Reeseâs girlfriend of six monthsâsomething that shocks literally everyone except Reese, who is unapologetically devoted to her in his own loud, unhinged way.
The year was 2013 â stadiums screaming, cameras flashing, and every step the boys took turning into a headline by morning. It was the most chaotic era of their lives, which made it the worst possible time for Niall Horan to be secretly dating Charlie Depp.
The summer before senior year in Austin, Texas, unfolds slowly and endlessly, the kind of heat-soaked season that feels like it might never end. For Charlie Newhouse, seventeen and right at the center of her world, it becomes a summer defined by loyalty, laughter, and the quiet tension of knowing things are about to change.
Thomas arrives in the Glade the same way everyone else didâpanicked, confused, and stripped of his memories. The Box doors open to blinding sunlight and shouting voices, and for a moment it all feels unreal. The towering stone walls, the unfamiliar faces, the strange rules barked at him from every direction.
When Friends begins in season one, Charlie Taylor is already a fixture in Phoebe Buffayâs life. Twenty-five, effortlessly cool, and working as a fashion designer at Vogue, Charlie met Phoebe two years earlier in New York and quickly became her closest friend. By the time the pilot rolls around, Charlie is already a familiar face at Central Perkâsketchbook on the table, coffee in hand, listening to Phoebeâs songs and pretending they donât make perfect sense.
Charlie Beckett has always belonged to the Cut. She grew up barefoot and sunburned alongside John B, JJ, Kiara, and Pope, the five of them inseparable since they were kids stealing rides on boats and hiding out at the Chateau. Charlie is sharp, warm, and deeply loyalâthe kind of person who feels like home to the people she loves. She and Kiara are especially close, bonded by being the only girls in the group, sharing secrets on docks at night and looking out for each other in a world that constantly underestimates them.
The Midnight Memories tour was already chaos â sold-out arenas, endless flights, and cameras that never seemed to turn off. But for Harry Styles, nineteen and in the middle of the biggest tour of his life, there was one calm in the storm: Charlie Jagger.
House on Danbury is set in 1987 in Bowmann, Maine, a fog-soaked coastal town just outside Biddeford, frozen in neon diner lights, crackling radios, cigarette smoke, and the kind of teenage freedom that feels endless until it isnât. Bowmann looks and feels like it was built to be a movie setârocky shorelines, a flickering drive-in theater, empty streets after dark, and a record store that never closes on time. Beneath the glow of nostalgia and rebellion, secrets sit quietly, buried under wealth, civic pride, and the illusion that nothing truly bad could ever happen here.
Charlie Anderson was the picture-perfect Soc girl â polished, sharp, and untouchable. Her father, Judge Anderson, made sure of that. His word was law in Tulsa, and his reputation rested on the familyâs spotless image. But what no one knew â not her friends, not even Randy at first â was that Charlie spent her nights slipping past the dividing line between the west side and the east.
Charlie Emerson is the eldest of the Emerson siblingsânineteen, independent, and already living in California for college when her family fractures. After her parentsâ divorce, her mother Lucy uproots Michael and Sam to spend the summer in Santa Carla, moving into their eccentric grandfatherâs cliffside house. Despite having built a life away from home, Charlie chooses to come with them for the summer, wanting to protect her brothers during a time when everything feels unstable.
In 1926, the Hotel Cortez rises over Los Angeles like a jeweled daggerâornate, indulgent, and already infamous. Designed by James Patrick March, every inch of the building reflects his meticulous brilliance: maze-like hallways, art-deco grandeur, rooms that seem to shift when no one is looking. The hotel is alive with excess, attracting the cityâs most elite and most desperate. It does exactly what March intendedâit consumes.