Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the first two episodes of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” Season 3 …
Season 3 of โThe Summer I Turned Prettyโ officially premiered on July 16, and fans already have a lot to discuss.
The highly anticipated start of the showโs final season is jam-packed with Taylor Swift tearjerkers and gasp-inducing moments.
The season opens with a four-year time jump. Belly (Lola Tung) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) are happily together at Finch University, while Conrad (Christopher Briney) is still on the West Coast, pursuing a career in medicine after graduating from Stanford.
But in a shocking turn, Episode 1 ends with the reveal that after Belly and Jeremiah fought and “broke up” before spring break, he slept with a girl named Lacie โย twice.
From Heartbreak to a Proposal
Belly learns about this months later at a fraternity party. Distraught, she throws up outside and tells Jeremiah their relationship will never be the same.
“Sheโs, at the moment, feeling a little bit shattered,” Tung tells TODAY.com in an interview about the Season 3 premiere.
But the betrayal doesn’t lead to a breakup. Episode 2 confirms that Season 3 โ so far โ is sticking to the plot of Book 3 in Jenny Han’s series.
After she learned that he cheated, Belly and Jeremiah reconcile with an engagement. But the proposal looks different on screen.
In the book, their proposal comes shortly after Belly’s freshman year. Season 3 slightly ages all the characters up, with the events of the first two episodes taking place at the end of Belly’s junior year of college.
Additionally, in the show, her decision to say โyesโ to Jeremiah comes right after Bellyโs brother, Steven (Sean Kaufman), is seriously injured in a car accident.
โSheโs dealing with a lot of real feelings,โ Tung says. โSheโs realizing that things can be repaired with Jeremiah, and he is one of those people that makes her safe.”
“When you lose someone, or almost lose someone, that can change things for you and bring you closer to the people in your life that really matter,” she adds.
Jeremiah’s infidelity is notably Belly’s second heartbreak at the hands of a Fisher brother. In Season 2, Belly and Conrad tearfully broke up on prom night after he was emotionally distant, leading her to assume he didn’t want to be with her.
โThe heartbreak with Jeremiah probably feels like a little bit more like a betrayal,โ Tung says. โJeremiah and Belly have been together for a lot longer.โ
But both brothers, Tung says, ultimately have the same problem to work on.
โAt the heart of it is โฆ miscommunication, which is a trait of the Fisher brothers,โ Tung says. โI think both (heartbreaks) arenโt because they donโt love each other, but itโs just because of miscommunication.โ
The rest of Season 3 will come out over the summer, with a new episode dropping on Prime Video each Wednesday at midnight PT/ 3 a.m. ET until the season finale on Sept. 17.
The official trailer previewed dramatic scenes, like Steven’s car crash, and crushing heartbreak, including Belly running away from Jeremiah set to Taylor Swift’s “You’re Losing Me.” But it also teased that while Belly may be engaged to Jeremiah, things with Conrad aren’t over.
In fact, in a flashback scene in Season 3, Episode 2, Belly and Conrad coincidentally spend a wintry day together at the Cousins Beach house, leading her to realize, “A part of me will always love you.”
Their day involved a “Casablanca” rewatch and completing a crossword puzzle โ which many eagle-eyed viewers noticed involved a reference to Jenny Han’s second book in her “To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before” series. The answer to one of the crossword clues came from “P.S. I Still Love You.”
“Being a part of the Jenny Han universe, you always see little Easter eggs. I think itโs so fun and cool that the movie exists in that world,” Tung says.
While we don’t yet know whether Belly’s final choice will be Conrad or Jeremiah, the official teaser subtly previewed what those great loves mean to Belly. At the beginning, Taylor Swift’s “Daylight” played over scenes of Belly and Jeremiah in college, before abruptly shifting to “Red” when Conrad appeared on screen.
โJeremiah has always been that sunshine, golden retriever boy and I think ‘Daylight’ perfectly represents that,โ Tung explains of the song. โThen ‘Red’ has this sort of intensity and passion that maybe is associated with Conrad, and they both represent the emotions that Belly feels for both. Theyโre both equally strong โย just different.โ
