The series is a love letter to LA, but Episode 5 is a love letter to Martha’s Vineyard.
This article contains major character or plot details.
By Darian S. Harvin | TUDUM | May 12, 2025
Mara Brock Akil is known for crafting stories inspired by the details of her own experiences. In her first sitcom, Girlfriends, there are echoes of her approach to life in the character Joan Clayton, played by Tracee Ellis Ross. Love Is ___, the 2018 series she co-created with her husband, Salim Akil, was even more autobiographical. In her latest series — Forever, an adaptation of Judy Blume’s groundbreaking1975 novel — Los Angeles, the city Brock Akil has always called home, is its own character. These nods feel like a tribute to the moments, the fabrics, the relationships that have shaped her. And these moments, often, are quite divine, sometimes in ways the creator herself may not realize until they are illuminated.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Brock Akil lives part-time in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, and so does Blume. So setting a pivotal episode of Foreveron the island, a storied and beloved spot, and choosing to direct it made sense for the showrunner and creator. “I am in an era of my fullest expression of myself as a storyteller, and that includes my ability to translate the script to screen,” she says. “I wanted to direct, and to figure out what the best place for me to do that was. The Vineyard is special.”
Forever is a coming-of-age romance between two teens who become each other’s firsts over the course of eight episodes. Set primarily in 2018 Los Angeles, the series follows Keisha Clark (Lovie Simone) and Justin Edwards (Michael Cooper Jr.), who, by Episode 5 “The Vineyard,” have already broken up and gotten back together what feels like a million times — you know how teenage love and angst go. This time, it’s Keisha who puts the wall up. Now she’s in Martha’s Vineyard trying to reconcile with Justin, who’s blocked her number and has no idea she’s on the island — until he does.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
In the midst of the back-and-forth breakup to make-up, every episode of Forever stillhas momentum. Keisha and Justin shed vulnerable layers, which allows them to grow more honest with each other, and also helps them cultivate the bravery to speak up for what they want. Both are juggling whirlwind lives. There are parents’ expectations to live up to, sports to excel at, colleges to get into. And now their emotions are entangled. Awkward, tender, unresolved. How will they handle each other? Martha’s Vineyard answers this question as much as it can, midway through the season.
As Keisha and Justin’s relationship maneuvers through ups and downs, the show’s plot broadens to the shifting dynamics among the other characters too. We see the familial and community circles unfold and let their hair down. Episode 5 reveals Justin’s mom, Dawn (Karen Pittman), and father, Eric (Wood Harris), in a fuller light, one that isn’t just about them being parents, but people with their own friends and lives before their kids.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
On the island, Keisha and Justin are out of their usual surroundings and into one where everything feels much “lighter,” as Simone puts it. “This is when they grow up in a sense,” the actor says. “Everything is out on the table after Episode 5. Everyone has been brought into this love story … so it’s really liberating.” Life on the Vineyard offers a kind of safety that makes way for the kind of relaxation Black people don’t always have easy access to in their neighborhood.
The episode holds the ease of Martha’s Vineyard hand in hand with the emotional push-and-pull between Keisha and Justin. It’s the type of tension that creates turning points, stirs new possibilities, and sets the tone for what’s to come.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Arriving on the Vineyard
The first time you make the journey to Martha’s Vineyard, you were likely brought by someone you consider kin: People who invite others to Martha’s Vineyard don’t bring anyone they don’t call family. While you’re there, you strengthen those bonds, and start to truly understand one another. This is how it becomes one of those places where you remember the first time you came here, whether by ferry, car, or plane.
Martha’s Vineyard is a summer spot. This much is true. It’s a place where Black families of a certain financial bracket or social status spend their time off, whether they’re staying in multigenerational homes or renting for the season. Over summer, the population swells with Vineyarders. People will remind you like it’s a fun fact that the Obamas vacation here — but this is true as well. Yet just those two facts can put a haze around the experience. It puts a little bit of superficiality into what Martha’s Vineyard is and who it’s for. “It is our island. It’s our history, it’s our legacy,” says Brock Akil. “It’s what we have collectively worked hard for, to keep alive and to keep thriving.”
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
“We prepped for 10 days and we shot for another 10 days,” says Brock Akil. “There was a moment when we were scouting and Ruby, chief of staff, asked me, ‘What’s wrong?’ And I was like, ‘I brought work to my sanctuary.’ ”
The luxury is to be able to walk outside your home without makeup or with a stubbly beard, knowing you may or may not run into someone from your industry or town, and it won’t matter — you’re both here to find respite and lift the weight of work off your shoulder so you can love on the people that matter to you, fully. “It’s where you catch your breath so you can go and deal with the rest of the year,” Brock Akil says. “You get those two weeks and really want to fill up on that gas tank of love, of friendship, of bonding, of relaxation. Just very human, simple things.”
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Martha’s Vineyard iseffortlessly beautiful. The island doesn’t bend to the demands of the people who show up, people who are used to having what they want at the snap of a finger. Instead, you have to let go a little. There’s a level of respect you have to bring with you for the land and its community.
The history of Oak Bluffs
The Wampanoag, known as “People of the First Light,” were the first inhabitants on the island, and they’ve continued to live there for more than 10,000 years. The federally recognized Native American tribe is matrilineal. Historically, they migrated seasonally and tended the land and the surrounding sea. In spite of the violence, disease, and overall devastation brought by European colonizers, the Wampanoag have a presence on the Vineyard that can still be felt. Areas like Aquinnah, the furthest southwest tip of the island, are home to sites preserving the area’s historical foundation — and it’s where Keisha and Chloe’s family meet Justin and his family for a sunset night on the beach.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Oak Bluffs is where Justin and his family stay each year. After the Civil War and the start of Reconstruction in 1865, Black people who had been enslaved on the island and free Black families from Boston; New York; Washington, DC; and the South, began looking for places where they could live, travel, and vacation without fearing for their lives. Oak Bluffs became one of six towns in the Vineyard without formal segregation laws. It could be argued that this sense of safety that one feels in Oak Bluffs is historical, that it spreads to other areas of the island and remains one of the reasons Black folks stay in Oak Bluffs today. “Understanding the essence of the island, even in the way it shaped the story, is important,” Brock Akil poses. “You think you’re just arriving on the island, and you don’t realize the culture and nuance that come with that.”
Back to the plot …
This summer, in Episode 5, Justin’s family is sharing a home with longtime friends. Meanwhile, Keisha comes to the Vineyard with her best friend, Chloe (Ali Gallo), who is white and whose aunt owns a cottage in West Tisbury, a bigger town known for agriculture and natural preservation. Here, older homes often remain under the ownership of the original family — whether Black, Indigenous, or white.
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Keisha is, in fact, in Martha’s Vineyard to win Justin back. So she decides to ride a bike from West Tisbury to Circuit Avenue in Oak Bluffs, a trip that could be as far as nearly 10 miles. Circuit Avenue is a destination where people of all ages staying on all parts of the island congregate, like the island’s town center. You could walk Circuit Avenue at any time and see familiar faces, or none at all.
Martha’s Vineyard brings out a more visibly vulnerable Keisha. “She can be outwardly trying to make decisions for herself instead of by herself, with friends and with her community,” says Simone.
When Eric tells Justin she saw Keisha on Circuit Avenue, his heart drops. What is she doing here? Who is she with … and is she perhaps here to see him? His dad reminds him that he has two options: stay in his room, or venture outside with an energy that will bring him and Keisha together. “Imagine Keisha hoping that he would be happy to see her,” Brock Akil says. “For her to take that journey to see something that she likely would not have seen if it were not for Justin.”
PHOTO BY ELIZABETH MORRIS
Once you visit Martha’s Vineyard, you start looking for small ways to hold onto the feeling until the next time — not to replicate the trip, but to stay in the heart space it puts you in. “For Justin and Keisha, it’s like a mecca or an oasis that they journey to. To have this one place that feels like freedom. And it’s freedom because it feels safe. That’s what it is,” says Brock Akil. “The anticipation of seeing those we love and care about. We know that there’s a collection of us somewhere in the world, happy to see each other. That is the universal thing.”