The World Between Us have spent two seasons watching Ruby Bell and James Beaufort circle each other like opposing magnets: one from a working-class family fighting for every inch of ground, the other born into unimaginable wealth yet suffocating under its weight. Season 2 has already delivered heartbreak, power plays, and enough slow-burn tension to power a small country. But nothing, absolutely nothing, prepares you for the brutal, soul-crushing contrast the show slams into your chest in episode 5.

While Ruby is laughing under golden sunlight, James is kneeling in the rain beside a coffin.

Yes, you read that right. At the very same hour, on the very same day, the writers decided to rip our hearts in two completely opposite directions, and the result is one of the most devastating pieces of television you’ll see all year.

Let’s start with Ruby.

For the first time in her life, Ruby Bell is genuinely happy. Not the cautious, “I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop” kind of happy she usually allows herself, but full-throated, head-thrown-back laughter. The picnic scene is pure summer magic: checkered blankets, homemade lemonade, her twin sister Iris stealing strawberries from her plate, her dad embarrassing everyone with terrible dad jokes, Angus sneaking her little brother an extra slice of cake when their mum isn’t looking. Ruby is wearing a simple yellow sundress that cost less than James’s pocket square, and somehow she has never looked more radiant.

The camera lingers on tiny, perfect details: sunlight catching in her curls, the way she leans into her mother’s shoulder when she laughs too hard, the quiet pride in her father’s eyes when he watches his daughter talk about Oxford like it’s already hers. This is the life Ruby has been protecting all along, the one she was terrified Maxton Hall and James Beaufort would destroy. And for one glorious afternoon, it feels untouchable.

She has no idea that, less than fifty miles away, the boy she loves is being shattered into a thousand pieces.

Cut to James.

The Beaufort family mausoleum is cold even when the sun is shining, but today the sky is the colour of ash. Black umbrellas, black suits, black grief. The funeral is for Lydia Beaufort, James’s older sister, whose sudden death in a car accident has been whispered about in tabloids for weeks. The official story is “tragic accident.” The unofficial story, the one James has pieced together in sleepless nights, is far uglier and involves their father’s enemies.

James stands ramrod straight in a tailored black coat that suddenly looks too big for him, as if grief has physically hollowed him out overnight. His mother is a statue, beautiful and frozen. His father doesn’t cry; he negotiates with mourners like it’s a board meeting. And James? James looks like someone has reached into his chest and switched off every light.

There’s a moment, just one, where the camera pushes in so close we can see the tremor in his jaw. He’s trying so hard to be the perfect Beaufort heir: stoic, untouchable, unbreakable. But when the coffin is lowered, something inside him cracks wide open. His knees buckle. He doesn’t fall, because Beauforts don’t fall in public, but he sinks slowly until he’s kneeling in the mud like a supplicant. Rain mixes with tears he’ll never admit to shedding.

And here’s where the show performs absolute sorcery.

The editors cut between these two worlds without mercy.

Ruby raises a glass of sparkling elderflower: “To never forgetting where we came from.” James watches his sister disappear into the ground forever.

Ruby’s little brother chases butterflies across the grass. James’s father murmurs, “You’re the only heir now. Act like it.”

Ruby kisses Angus on the cheek and whispers, “Thank you for making today perfect.” James’s mother finally breaks, just for a second, clutching his arm so hard her manicured nails leave crescents in his skin.

Ruby closes her eyes and lets the sun warm her face, thinking: Maybe everything is going to be okay. James stares at the sky and realises nothing will ever be okay again.

The contrast isn’t just rich vs poor anymore. It’s life vs death. Joy vs annihilation. The girl who has nothing finally tasting everything she ever wanted, and the boy who has everything discovering it can vanish in a heartbeat.

What makes it unbearably cruel is that neither of them knows what the other is going through in that moment. Ruby’s phone is on silent, tucked in her picnic basket because her mum insisted on “no Maxton Hall drama today.” James hasn’t answered a single one of Ruby’s worried texts in days, because how do you tell the girl you love that your entire world just ended?

When they finally collide again later in the season, the fallout is nuclear. Ruby thinks James has been ignoring her out of cruelty or indifference. James thinks Ruby was happily living her perfect little life while he buried his sister. The misunderstanding is so perfectly, excruciatingly human that you almost can’t blame either of them.

Almost.

This parallel editing masterclass isn’t just clever filmmaking; it’s a thesis statement on everything Maxton Hall has been building toward. Ruby and James were never just a class-difference romance. They are two people who keep almost reaching each other, only to be yanked apart by forces bigger than both of them: money, grief, family expectation, trauma dressed up as tradition.

The picnic and the funeral happen on the same day, under the same sky, but in completely different universes. One character is learning that happiness is possible. The other is learning that safety is an illusion.

And we, the audience, get to watch both truths destroy them in real time.

If you haven’t seen episode 5 yet, clear your schedule, grab tissues, and prepare to have your heart professionally wrecked. Because Maxton Hall just proved it can make you sob over a strawberry picnic and a rain-soaked graveyard in the same breath.

And somehow, that’s the most beautiful kind of cruelty.