After three years, Belly has finally made her decision. On Sept. 17, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” concluded its three-season series with an episode titled “At Last.”
Warning: This review includes spoilers, so if you’ve yet to watch the finale, I’d maybe come back after having watched it.
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” is a coming-of-age drama series based on the novels written by Jenny Han. It follows Belly Conklin’s life in the span of six years through three seasons, and her complicated relationships with brothers Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher. Belly’s brother, Steven, and best friend, Taylor, are also huge characters in the series and key parts of her journey.
The previous episode ended with Conrad getting ready to travel to Paris and visit Belly for her birthday. At this point, Belly and Benito seemed pretty smitten, and fans were desperately waiting to see if she would break Conrad’s heart.
If you are a fan of the show and spend a lot of time on social media, you’ve probably seen some memes about Belly’s new haircut, which was another cliffhanger from the last episode. Fans made tons of edits, including one that even edited a fade onto her. Lola Tung, Belly’s actress, had addressed this edit herself, admitting she found fans’ speculations funny.
Conrad and Belly finally reunite, and we see that she indeed did not get a fade but rather a French bob, symbolizing her attempt to really start over and put everything behind her. She decides to give him a tour of Paris before he leaves that same day for a conference in Brussels. Eventually, she invites him to her birthday dinner, where both Conrad and the fans find out that she had actually broken it off with Benito not long ago — one point team “Bonrad.”
At the same time, the audience also gets to see what is going on with the rest of the characters. Jeremiah has a new passion for cooking — now it makes much more sense as to why he was so upset about a chocolate mirror glaze cake earlier in the season — though this passion could’ve been revealed more throughout the seasons instead of just the finale.
One problem that I have with the show is that a lot of the ideas are either rushed or unnecessary. They spent a lot of time focusing on minimal details that don’t appeal to the audience, while details that help develop characters or storylines weren’t focused on enough.
Taylor and Steven are still going strong, having decided to make a big commitment in their relationship due to the business plan idea that Steven has with coworker Denise. The plot twist, which many fans had predicted, was Denise and Jeremiah sparking a new romance as they made out in the kitchen.
The conflict between Adam and Jeremiah has settled with Adam admitting that he was proud of Jeremiah despite their many disputes. It seems as though writer Jenny Han was tying up loose ends with the characters and ensuring everyone had a good ending.
Going back to “Bonrad,” Belly had finally let her guard down and started accepting her feelings for Conrad. So much so that they took a taxi back to her apartment, and well, if you’ve watched the episode, you’ll know what I mean.
This is the moment everyone has been waiting for, until Belly freaks out afterwards when Conrad starts talking about “forever.” She sends him on his way to take an early morning train to the conference, only to soon realize that she was making a huge mistake while holding her stuffed polar bear, Junior Mint.
It didn’t take Belly long to run out of her apartment and find Conrad’s train to profess her love to him. The two share a kiss and are shown at the concluding scene back at Cousins Beach. If you were hoping that she would continue her life in Paris, don’t worry. The scene at Cousins was just a trip, as fans see a photo album of Belly and Conrad spending Christmas happily together in Paris during the credits.
As a “Bonrad” fan myself, I was thrilled to see that their canon remained unchanged from the books. Fortunately, an unexpected movie announcement was made on the same day the finale was released, so their story has not come to an end just yet.
Overall, I really like how all the characters got something in the end and weren’t ignored to focus just on “Bonrad.” Still, I think this could’ve been done over the whole season rather than everyone getting their canon endings thrown in at the same time.
In the end, after all the stress that Jenny Han put fans through in season three, the desired ending did occur. I do wish we had more episodes with Belly and Conrad together instead of so many episodes of extra chaos.
Rating: 4.75/5