This text accommodates spoilers for Season 3 of “The Summer I Turned Pretty.”
As “The Summer I Turned Pretty” involves an in depth, Isabel “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) resides her greatest life in Paris. Her childhood associates, the brothers and romantic rivals Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno), have grown too, following the messy implosion of their summery love triangle. And with only one episode left within the third and ultimate season of Prime Video’s world hit, followers are anxious to see how the story will finish — and who its heroine will find yourself with.
However showrunner and creator Jenny Han, who tailored the coming-of-age romantic drama from her personal bestselling YA novels, is the final one who’d let slip whether or not followers will get the swoony endgame of their goals or one which deviates from the books.
“I do love surprising people,” says Han with a smile over video chat, fittingly from France, days earlier than the Paris-set finale arrives Wednesday and brings closure to a season that’s seen a curler coaster of feelings (and a path of emotional carnage) form Stomach’s journey into maturity. “I feel strongly about wanting the audience to have the experience of not knowing what’s going to happen next … even though I know that others are probably restless to see how it all ends.”
“Restless” may be as a lot of an understatement as the fragile little engagement ring Jeremiah gave Stomach this season, prompting viral memes galore. Every week TikTok movies, podcasts and fan reactions on social media predict and agonize over who the younger heroine, now ending faculty overseas, will select. The uncertainty has followers in such a choke maintain that small particulars within the present have taken on huge canonical which means, like Bitter Patch Youngsters; the colours pink, blue, darkish grey and gold; the infinity image; peaches; hydrangeas; a stuffed polar bear named Junior Mint and the Taylor Swift needle drops that punctuate the present’s impeccably curated soundtrack.
In the meantime, the flower aisle at Michael’s has develop into hallowed floor synonymous with dreamy craving because of Season 3’s fifth episode, advised from Conrad’s perspective, that additionally marks Han’s directorial debut.
Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Stomach (Lola Tung) in Episode 5 of Season 3, which marked Jenny Han’s directorial debut.
(Erika Doss / Prime)
Even on a well-earned trip, Han acquired a welcome observe from the proprietors of the house she rented in Provence that included assist for Conrad, the brooding elder Fisher brother with the younger Leonardo DiCaprio vibes who’s studying to be open together with his emotions. And through a current birthday dinner, Han acquired one other shock when the restaurant despatched over a dessert impressed by Jeremiah, a golden retriever frat boy and budding foodie, and his particular marriage ceremony request to Stomach: A two-tiered darkish chocolate cake with a raspberry coulis filling and a mirror glaze.
After bringing her novels to the display, together with “To All the Boys” and its spin-off “XO, Kitty” on Netflix and now her powerhouse “Summer” sequence, the recognition of her diversifications has been staggering. Prime Video says the Season 3 premiere drew 25 million viewers in its first week and hit No. 1 on the platform in 120 international locations, and is its most-watched season amongst ladies ages 18-34. Advert Age reviews that just about 200,000 TikTok posts associated to the present generated 2.9 billion views within the final month alone. This was additionally the season that main manufacturers hopped onto the “Summer” meme-wagon by riffing on the present’s title font and weighing in on its viral moments, and strangers at packed bar watch events screamed collectively over moonlit seaside confessions. MLB and NFL groups, and associates and households alike confronted off within the debate of our occasions: Workforce Conrad or Workforce Jeremiah?
However Han is very touched to know that viewers round Stomach’s age are experiencing the present collectively and constructing neighborhood.
“One of my favorite things has been seeing people watching the show in their dorm rooms and common rooms, maybe with new friends,” she says. “That’s special to me. I remember freshman year and how scary those first couple of nights were, and to think that maybe somebody can make a new friend by watching the show or talking about it makes me emotional — to be part of helping to make a community somewhere, and to see people coming together watching it like it’s the Super Bowl.”
Over the past three seasons, the creator, producer and screenwriter had her fingerprints on each side of the present with unprecedented artistic management, delivering on the heart-fluttering “non-negotiable” moments from the books that readers craved whereas additionally making key adjustments to her saga of an adolescent navigating old flame and heartbreak over idyllic summers in fictional Cousins Seashore.
Her general cope with Amazon got here with a excessive diploma of religion from the studio: She knew her viewers greatest after constructing an intimate relationship along with her readers as an creator. In addition they trusted her imaginative and prescient for adapting her books right into a multigenerational ensemble drama and granted her a large music price range that will make the present’s starry soundtrack both a launchpad to or a return to the charts. Songs like Ariana Grande’s “We Can’t Be Friends” and a bevy of Taylor Swift tracks, together with “Cardigan,” “The 1” and “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” function unconscious inside monologue for Stomach, to call a couple of current memorable musical moments.
“One of my favorite things has been seeing people watching the show in their dorm rooms and common rooms, maybe with new friends,” Jenny Han says. “That’s special to me.”
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
The adjustments Han launched to the sequence included new and expanded characters, the Season 1 debutante ball and a four-year time leap. Viewers of the present additionally noticed Stomach expertise essential milestones that weren’t within the books, like a Season 2 flashback the place she loses her virginity to Conrad, set to Des’ree’s “Kissing You” from 1998’s “Romeo + Juliet,” throughout a snowy go to to the summer season home.
“It felt right to me because we had been on this journey with this character and experienced so many firsts with her, and I didn’t want to miss that one,” says Han, wanting again on the harder challenges of adapting and including to her books. “I wanted to give that to her. I think it’s important for the audience to understand, too, that they really did love each other.”
The fan base and its loyalty multiplied this season when “Summer” pivoted to weekly episode drops, making a nail-biting frenzy over Stomach’s entanglements and the way her story will finish. (In contrast to earlier seasons, advance screeners weren’t supplied to press.) Now an epilogue, considerably expanded from the novels, has introduced the ultimate three episodes into uncharted territory: Stomach is blossoming in Paris, the place she’s gained independence and a style for ache au chocolat, discovering herself in new friendships and even courting somebody new. (Bonjour, Benito.)
On the finish of final week’s penultimate episode, Conrad boarded a aircraft to seek out Stomach within the Metropolis of Love as viewers noticed her getting a dramatic haircut, prepared for a brand new starting. The present’s promos have playfully frayed fan nerves by teasing, “Anything could happen.”
Conrad (Christopher Briney), Stomach’s brooding love curiosity.
(Stephanie Branchu / Prime)
The three-episode conclusion has supplied Han the chance to offer Stomach a extra absolutely dimensional journey of unlearning dangerous habits, spreading her wings and determining who she desires to be on the planet.
Sending her to Paris within the wake of her damaged engagement to varsity sweetheart Jeremiah (as a substitute of Spain, the place she goes within the books) was a essential push out of her consolation zone impressed by Han’s personal early maturity. “For many young people who are so lucky and privileged to study abroad, that’s the moment when you go, ‘Oh, wow. This is harder than I thought,’” she says. “I think as a young person you need to test your mettle a little bit and find out what you’re made of. It’s so satisfying when you realize that you have the inner strength to keep going.”
The change of surroundings may shock readers, nevertheless it’s been hinted at for the reason that first season. Han titled her third e-book, “We’ll Always Have Summer,” after the well-known line from 1942’s “Casablanca,” and pitched Paris early on to Amazon Studios. Cinematic nods all through the sequence reference one other Humphrey Bogart basic, the 1954 romance “Sabrina,” by which Audrey Hepburn has a glow up within the French capital amid a love triangle between two brothers, and 1953’s “Roman Holiday,” by which Hepburn lops her hair right into a bob and rides a Vespa earlier than discovering love.
“Audrey Hepburn in Paris, coming into her own and becoming a young woman there, is so iconic I thought it would be so lovely if Belly could have that too,” says Han.
When manufacturing moved from Wilmington, N.C., to Paris, the place Stomach pays the hire on her cramped flat by working on the Écoles Cinéma Membership, the theater serendipitously already had a poster of the 1967 Alain Delon movie “Le Samouraï” adorning the wall. “Alain Delon was one of my references for Conrad’s style in Paris, so it was a nice wink to myself to have that,” Han says.
No matter how her love life shakes out, Stomach’s Paris period is essential for her to study that she will be OK on her personal and have experiences exterior the Cousins Seashore bubble, says Han. “That’s a running motif through other stories that I’ve told, with Lara Jean [the heroine of ‘To All The Boys’] and her mom saying, ‘Don’t go to college with a boyfriend; spread your wings,’ and Kitty [the protagonist of ‘XO, Kitty’] going to Korea,” she says. “I think you have to find out who you are alone before you can really be with somebody else.”
“I think you have to find out who you are alone before you can really be with somebody else,” says Jenny Han in regards to the operating motif of her tales.
(Christina Home / Los Angeles Instances)
As “Summer” ends, Stomach’s not the one character who’s on a life-altering journey of progress. Conrad — who’s changing into a physician, going to remedy and has simply reconciled with Jeremiah months after ruining his brother’s marriage ceremony to the woman they each love — could also be en path to Stomach after handwriting her subtly romantic letters, however “he and Belly aren’t in the same place,” teases Han. “She’s saying that she’s ready for something new this summer, and he’s something old coming back into her life,” Han says. “Are they going to meet at the same place in the road?”
Followers are so invested, and so ardently break up between the fictional Fisher brothers, that Prime Video preemptively issued warnings in opposition to “bullying and hate speech” on social media after Han, who’s fiercely protecting of her solid, spent the second season pleading for kindness in remark sections. “People can forget that you’re talking about a character, but you’re saying things about the person that plays the character when you’re talking about their appearance or mannerisms,” she says. “That is a real person, and just because they’re famous doesn’t mean that it’s not painful to read those things.”
However even Jeremiah, just lately dubbed “the internet’s most hated boyfriend” by the New York Instances, has began to earn redemption because the finale approaches. Han hopes that after subsequent week, viewers can take a beat and recognize the character’s journey. Like “Summer’s” different central arcs, it’s one marked by love, grief, errors and therapeutic, and as Han notes, “growth is not linear.”
“I genuinely love his story this season,” says Han. “People were really hard on him [for hooking up with Lacie Barone in Cabo while he and Belly were on a Ross and Rachel-esque break], but in many ways the story is heartbreaking. In his heart of hearts, he knew Belly still loved Conrad and he knew Conrad still loved Belly. And he also knew he was always going to keep taking her back no matter what she said. In his mind when he slept with someone else, it was him making an irrevocable break from her because he thought that she was never going to forgive that.”
Even when frustrations are aimed toward her as “Summer’s” creator and showrunner, Han reminds herself that it’s a privilege that anybody cares deeply sufficient in regards to the story to really feel something in any respect. “You can be Team Jeremiah and be friends with somebody who’s Team Conrad and vice versa, it’s all valid,” she says. “And it wouldn’t be so split if there was an easy answer.”
After making her first foray into directing this season, Han discovered to embrace the unknown — type of like Conrad, a personality she feels a particular kinship to. “I put a lot of my own journeys into all the characters but I have a lot in common with Conrad when it comes to, I guess, everything,” Han says. “We’ve had similar struggles. And as the oldest child I really understand him, so it’s really easy to write him.”
And as a showrunner so intimately concerned in each storytelling resolution for the final 5 years, she’s blissful that the studio didn’t push her to maintain the present going past the three-season run due to its success, which felt proper to her. “Doing what I think is best for the story has always been my north star, and the story to me fit for these three seasons,” says Han. “I appreciate that they respected that. To be able to say when, to be able to call it, is rare when something is doing well and making people money. But I have to be true to myself and what I think is best for the story.”
That’s to not say she wouldn’t take into account increasing the Cousins Seashore universe. Followers are already clamoring for a prequel spin-off exploring the soulmate friendship between Laurel (Jackie Chung), Stomach and Steven’s mom, and her greatest buddy Susannah (Rachel Blanchard), Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother. Han isn’t precisely saying no to extra “Summer.”
“But it has to feel like genuine excitement for me, because showrunning is 24/7, 365 days a year,” she says. “I feel I have to be there every day to make sure I can stand behind it. I’m definitely open to doing more stories in the universe, it’s just that I want to figure out what the story is that I feel so compelled to tell it that I’m willing to spend the next few years throwing my whole body into it.”
With “Summer’s” finale on the horizon, Han likes to suppose that individuals will likely be watching it collectively and hopes it leaves hearts feeling full.
“I love it when I see dads and grandpas watching it with their daughters and granddaughters, and people having conversations about what the characters are doing,” she says, “although I want people to go easy on Belly. People can be really harsh with her, but she’s a young woman in the world who’s figuring things out. They’re all young people just figuring it out.”
