The True Love Stories Behind Every Modern Love Season 2 Episode

How many ways are there to say "I love you"? At least eight, according to season two of Amazon Prime's critically acclaimed series Modern Love. Based on the long-running New York Times column of the same name — and this season, a story from the Times' Tiny Love Stories — Modern Love is back as of August 13 with eight new stories exploring love in its endless forms, from young to lost to unrequited.

Unlike the season 1 finale, where viewers once again met characters like Anne Hathaway’s Lexi and Dev Patel’s Joshua after their individual episodes, Modern Love’s second season never intertwines the stories of each episode’s main characters. While each character exists solely within their own story, the series’ original goal of showing how people can fall in love in more than one way is done with humour, heart, and heartache. This season, viewers are transported from New York City to Dublin to London, to the distant past of the nineties and a not-so-distant past of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and into the lives of queer teenage girls, widows, and veterans. The message, however, remains the same: everyone falls in love sometime.

Before grabbing a box of Kleenex and sitting down to binge the new season, here are the true stories that inspired each episode of Modern Love is based on this season.