By Beth Nugent, third year, Film and Television
WARNING: Major Spoilers Ahead
After three months of weekly episode drops The Summer I Turned Pretty (2023 - 2025) finally came to an end on the 17th of September and with it came the choice that most of the world was rooting for, Belly choosing Conrad, but it left almost all of its audience completely dissatisfied. With the longest season yet at 11 episodes, somehow the ending still felt rushed and many plot lines unresolved.
The finale revolved around Conrad visiting Belly in Paris the day before her birthday, and the rest of the main cast at Cousins beach for Jeremiah’s big food influencer meal (because apparently the 80% cacao with mirror glaze unleashed a deep desire to be a chef in the last two episodes?). It was no surprise that little to no care was taken to finish the characters outside Conrad and Belly in a meaningful way. Jeremiah was coupled off with Denise, Laurel and John broke up off screen and Taylor and Steven are moving to California. All of which made the viewers question ‘How did we get here?’. Instead of building up Denise and Jeremiah we were given an eight-episode long arc with Denise and Steven that was ended with a simple nothing kiss, Taylor was landed with a side plot of her mum’s business failing which had no effect on the overall plot, and why did John and Laurel get together in the first place? This entire element of the finale negated the previous ten episodes of the show and it was frustrating at how blatantly Jenny Han favours Conrad and Belly.
The other half of the finale, set in Paris, was okay. Nice? Sure. Predictable? Definitely. While it’s true that the whole word was being asked about Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah, from the way the show was shot it was painfully obvious the direction it was going to take. The consistent use of slow mos when the two love interests looked at each other to portray them only existing in their own universe, the song choices that subconsciously made the viewer align themselves with the winning team and the constant eye contact was enough to map out exactly how this last episode was going to pan out. But the chemistry? Non-existent.
The hardest battle this show had to overcome was answering the question of how do you keep chemistry burning when the love interests haven’t seen each other or interacted with each other in four years? Rather than allowing Conrad and Belly to acknowledge how they have grown in their time apart and form new memories, the writers were so focused on the nostalgia of childhood love that their romance felt aged and dead. Throughout the finale present day scenes were intercut with scenes from the previous seasons which only emphasised the idea that their love is based on their past, and not their present. Instead of positioning Conrad as the man who was so in love with his soulmate he loved her all those years apart, it came off slightly strange that he pined for his brother's girlfriend for that long. Multiple times in the show characters highlighted how Conrad has been avoiding his brother and Belly for four years because he couldn’t handle seeing them together and that’s not romantic, that’s someone who needs to get over their four month high school relationship.
The ending of the finale was fractured into two. Belly and Conrad in Paris, with the entire rest of the cast at a family dinner and flash forward into the future where Conrad and Belly return to Cousins by themselves. To reiterate, one of the largest shows in the world which has spanned across three seasons and focused on a found family friendship group, ended with the love interests not interacting with any of the main cast except themselves in the entire finale episode. Belly received no birthday call from her parents, brother or best friend, we never saw any kind of proper reconciliation between the Fisher brothers either and so what was the point? Was Jenny Han wanting to show that for Belly to have the man of her dreams she would cut off her entire support network?
The story is far from over with news of a movie announced mere hours after the finale was released, but movies shouldn’t be a crutch to excuse bad writing. Shows and films are wildly different mediums and if you have to rely on an extra movie outside of your TV show to resolve an unsatisfying finale, maybe the focus should be on mastering one art form before turning to another for help.
Featured Image: Amazon MGM Studios
How did you find the finale, are you excited at the prospect of a film?
