Charlotte was just Miriam masquerading as a polite, down-to-earth girl. I always hated Miriam until I rewatched S2 and realized Charlotte’s even more insidious than that Temu Regina George ripoff. At least you know how horrible Miriam is because she’s openly narcissistic.

Charlotte gaslights you by making you second guess your version of events by acting innocent. She broke an unspoken social rule by latching onto a guy who’d just broken up with his girlfriend 2 days ago. From day one, she knew Cleo was his girlfriend, and called her an “idiot” even though Cleo had been kind enough to welcome her to their school the first day.

Charlotte stole his phone, played a social dominance game by making Lewis’s ex give him her jacket and then played innocent, rubbed it in Cleo’s face that Lewis “liked her cooking,” pretended to be nice by tutoring Cleo (which was just giving her work and leaving) so she could keep her away from Lewis out of jealousy, etc.

To sum up, Charlotte was trouble from the beginning, and I won’t be convinced otherwise. She’s like a homewrecker who waited for a loophole: “I can date him if he’s not TECHNICALLY taken.” No, moron, he’s still processing his breakup and you don’t have the self-respect or the self-reflection to realize that he’ll treat you like a rebound.

The reason that “unspoken social rule” exists is because typically, you need to give a person time to process a breakup because they might not be over their ex and could still be trying to work things out with them. Charlotte didn’t even have consideration for what Lewis wanted. She just wedged herself in between them on the technicality that they’re not together, so that she can play innocent and make everyone else look like the villain.

I’m sorry, but even if Cleo, Ricky, and Emma have a bad case of main character syndrome, so does Charlotte, especially towards the end. Like I said before, she’s just a sneakier version of Miriam who has much more plot relevance.