The Early Spring Sequel (盛夏晴朗) Confirmed: Is Season 2 Really Happening, and Are Jing Boran and Sun Qian Coming Back?

Quick answer: Yes. A sequel to The Early Spring (早春晴朗) is officially happening. On 16 September 2026, Youku unveiled 《盛夏晴朗》 — rendered in English coverage as Midsummer Clear Skies — as part of its 2027 programming slate, alongside a concept poster and a tagline. The original behind-the-camera team at Youku's 千予工作室 (Qianyu Studio) returns, including the screenwriter of the first drama. The story is not another novel adaptation: it is an original script, and it picks up with Luan Nian and Shang Zhitao after they marry.

What Youku did not announce is the cast. No leads have been confirmed. Whether 井柏然 (Jing Boran) and 孙千 (Sun Qian) return is, as of this writing, genuinely unknown rather than merely unreported. And no premiere date exists beyond "the 2027 slate" — anyone giving you a month is guessing.

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What Youku actually announced on 16 September

Youku presented its 2027 slate on 16 September 2026 and confirmed 《盛夏晴朗》 as the direct follow-up to The Early Spring, releasing a concept poster with the line:

喧嚣予我，偏爱予你。盛夏有风，人间晴朗 "Let the noise be mine and the favouring be yours. In midsummer there is wind, and the world is clear."

Three things in that announcement are firm, and worth separating from the speculation that followed within hours:

1. The platform and the year. Youku, 2027 slate. That is the full extent of the scheduling information.
2. The creative team. The project is credited to Youku's 千予工作室 (Qianyu Studio), the same unit behind the first drama, with the original screenwriter returning to write.
3. The story shape. Chinese coverage is consistent that this is an 原创剧本 — an original screenplay, not an adaptation — focused on the married, domestic life of Luan Nian and Shang Zhitao, deliberately stepping away from the separation-and-reunion engine of part one.

One naming note, because English and Chinese coverage diverge here: Chinese outlets give the returning screenwriter as 高小娴, romanised Gao Xiaoxian, which matches the writing credit on The Early Spring itself. Several English-language drama sites have rendered the same person as Gao Yixian. It is the same credit; the English spelling is simply unstable.

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早春晴朗 → 盛夏晴朗: the title is doing the plot summary

This is the part no cast rumour can tell you, and it is the most informative thing about the sequel that currently exists.

Both titles are four characters, and two of those four are identical. 晴朗 (qíng lǎng) — "clear and bright," fine weather — is carried across unchanged. What changes is the season in front of it.

• 早春 (zǎo chūn) is early spring: the thaw has started but the cold snaps have not stopped. It is the season before the season, which is exactly why it worked as the title of a drama about a relationship that was real but could not yet be admitted. We took that argument apart in full in why 早春晴朗 matters: a brightness that has to be earned, attached to a season that is not yet stable.
• 盛夏 (shèng xià) is high summer, midsummer — and the character to watch is 盛 (shèng), which does not mean "hot." It means flourishing, abundant, at full strength. The same character sits inside 盛开 (shèng kāi), a flower in full bloom, and 茂盛 (mào shèng), lush growth. 盛夏 is summer at its peak, with nothing left to become.

So the pair is not two arbitrary seasons. It is a deliberate progression from not yet to at last, fully. The weather word stays constant while the season underneath it matures — which is a reasonably precise description of what a sequel about marriage would have to be, if the first drama was about two people who could not yet hold the clear day they'd found.

A caution on the English: Midsummer Clear Skies is a working translation used in English coverage, not an official international title. Youku has not published an English name for the sequel, so expect the English rendering to change when Netflix or another international partner picks it up — the first drama, after all, went out as The Early Spring rather than any literal rendering of 早春晴朗.

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The cast question, answered honestly

The honest answer is the useful one: Youku has not announced a single cast member. Not the leads, not the supporting ensemble at 凌美. Chinese entertainment coverage on the day of the announcement described the casting as the project's biggest open question, and nothing has closed it since.

What fuelled the reunion speculation was marketing, not news. On the night of the announcement, the in-character Weibo accounts run for the first drama posted a matched pair of lines: the account for 栾念 (Luan Nian) wrote "盛夏，没有冰雕" — "in midsummer, there are no ice sculptures" — and the account for 尚之桃 (Shang Zhitao) wrote "说了不会结束的" — "I told you it wouldn't end." Fans read both as a signal that the original pairing returns.

They may be right. But those are character accounts operated for promotional purposes, and a character account posting is not an actor signing. Until Youku names a cast, the position to hold is that the characters are confirmed to continue and the performers are not.

If you want to know who else would have to come back for the sequel's world to hold together, our full character and relationship chart for 凌美 maps the agency's org chart, which was the first drama's real engine.

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Why this sequel exists: the numbers behind it

The Early Spring ran 24 episodes on Youku from 26 August to 9 September 2026, adapted from the Jinjiang web novel of the same name by 姑娘别哭, and streamed internationally on Netflix.

Netflix's own announcement on 2 September put it at No. 2 on the Global Top 10 for non-English TV for the chart week of 24–30 August, with 2.4 million views and 21.5 million hours viewed — a result achieved on only five days of availability inside that window. Netflix listed it charting in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, Venezuela, Qatar, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam. By mid-September, English coverage was noting that the show had held a place on Netflix's global Top 10 for roughly 20 consecutive days, unusual staying power for a title less than a month old.

That is the commercial logic for a sequel announced barely a week after the finale aired. It is also why the sequel is an original script rather than an adaptation: the novel's story is finished, and the drama already diverged from it in four substantial ways, including cutting the book's epilogue entirely.

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Where the story picks up, and the genre problem it creates

The first drama ends on a proposal, not a wedding — we broke the finale down in full here. The sequel reportedly starts on the other side of that line, with the marriage the finale declined to show.

That is a real genre change, and it is worth naming. Part one ran on 破镜重圆 (pò jìng chóng yuán), "the broken mirror made round again" — the reunion idiom, and the whole reason the tension worked. You cannot run that engine twice on the same couple without cheapening the first ending. A married-life story has to find its interest somewhere else.

Chinese has a well-worn vocabulary for exactly that somewhere else, and it is not romantic in the Western sense:

• 相敬如宾 (xiāng jìng rú bīn) — "treating each other with the courtesy owed a guest." The classical ideal of a marriage, and also, read a certain way, its quiet danger: politeness where intimacy used to be.
• 举案齐眉 (jǔ àn qí méi) — "raising the tray level with the eyebrows," from the story of a wife serving her husband with visible respect. It describes mutual deference, and it carries an old hierarchy inside it that a drama about two 势均力敌 equals would have to argue with.
• 白头偕老 (bái tóu xié lǎo) — "together until both heads are white." The blessing said at weddings; the thing a sequel would be promising.

The first drama earned its ending with 苦尽甘来 (kǔ jìn gān lái), bitterness ending and sweetness arriving. The interesting question for 盛夏晴朗 is whether a story can hold attention once the bitterness is genuinely over — whether it finds 柳暗花明 (liǔ àn huā míng), a new opening where the path looked closed, or settles for 水到渠成 (shuǐ dào qú chéng), the channel that forms simply because the water kept flowing.

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Is there a "four seasons" franchise?

You will see this claim, so it is worth being precise: no autumn or winter instalment has been announced. Once 盛夏晴朗 followed 早春晴朗, Chinese viewers and entertainment writers immediately started speculating about a seasonal tetralogy — inventing titles like 秋日晴朗 for autumn — and some coverage has run with the phrase 四季晴朗宇宙, a "four seasons clear-skies universe." Youku has committed to no such thing. Two titles that happen to share a structure are a pattern, not a slate.

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Frequently asked

Is there going to be a season 2 of The Early Spring? Yes, in the sense that matters: Youku confirmed a sequel, 《盛夏晴朗》, on 16 September 2026 for its 2027 slate. It is a standalone follow-up rather than a numbered second season.

When does 盛夏晴朗 come out? No premiere date has been announced. It sits on Youku's 2027 slate, and that is the only scheduling information that officially exists.

Are Jing Boran and Sun Qian returning? Unknown. Youku has not announced any cast. In-character Weibo accounts posted teasing lines on announcement night, but no actor has been confirmed.

Is the sequel based on a book? No. Unlike The Early Spring, which adapted 姑娘别哭's Jinjiang novel, the sequel is described as an original screenplay.

What does 盛夏晴朗 mean? "Midsummer, clear skies." 盛夏 is high summer at its fullest — 盛 means flourishing or abundant, not merely hot — and 晴朗, "clear and bright," is carried over unchanged from 早春晴朗.

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More on The Early Spring:

• The Early Spring ending explained: is it happy or sad, and what happens at the proposal
• Why 早春晴朗 matters: title symbolism, names and cultural mood
• Who's who at 凌美: the full character and relationship chart
• Is The Early Spring based on a book? Novel vs drama, and what changed
• The Early Spring famous quotes explained
• Luke, Flora and Will: why everyone at 凌美 has an English name
• 11 Chinese idioms every The Early Spring fan should know
• Learn Chinese watching The Early Spring: 北漂、二本 and 8 workplace chengyu