How to statically link against an external dependency?

[PlayerLegend]

I'm using Meson 0.61.2 on Linux and am attempting to cross compile to Windows. I would like to statically link my executable against SDL2. So far, I have seen a bunch of answers saying that adding default_options: ['default_library=static'] to the project() function will do it, but this has not worked for me.
Currently, my project has a subproject which is an SDL2 wrapper library, and another subproject that contains the executable I'm trying to build. This executable depends on the wrapper library, which then depends on SDL2. I have added default_options: ['default_library=static'] to the parent project and both subprojects.
I have also tried adding default_options: ['default_library=static'] to the dependency() call for SDL2, as well as running setup with --default-library=static. In each case, the result has been an executable that depends on SDL2.dll.
Is this a bug, or have I misunderstood something?