By Meg Walters

Copyright vogue

The Summer I Turned Pretty spoilers ahead.
The Summer I Turned Pretty finale is here and people are losing their minds. In fact, some have even convinced themselves that it’s not ending at all, actually. Unfortunately, I’m here to tell you that even if it isn’t, it should be.
It’s hard to adequately convey the astounding impact of The Summer I Turned Pretty. On the surface, it’s just your average teen dramedy—the tale of high schooler Belly Conklin and her ongoing love triangle between two brothers (yes, brothers), Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. But what began as run-of-the-ill guilty pleasure teen romantic fare has, by its third and final season, become nothing short of a phenomenon: It boasted 25 million global viewers within the first seven days of the season premiere in July. On TikTok, the hashtag #tsitp has 981.4K videos and counting. The show has seen new friendships formed and bitter rivalries forged. At elaborate themed watch parties, women of all ages proudly sport their infinity necklaces as they sip on pomegranate margaritas and sample from a spread of Sour Patch Kids and muffins. And, crucially, everyone is watching very, very closely.
To be a fan of TSITP, you must, first and foremost, be a close reader. You must understand the nuances of the reds and blues on the screen. You must delve deep into the hidden meaning of the lyrics of the Taylor Swift song playing in the background. You must spy the oh so subtle nods to Pride and Prejudice and Audrey Hepburn’s Sabrina. You must, in other words, be ready write a full dissertation on the show as if it were a literary masterpiece.
And the showrunner and author of the original book series, Jenny Han, encourages this sort of manic hyper-fixation. Last month, she even teased fans with the bombshell that they had missed a few Easter eggs. “People are always picking up on stuff,” Han said to Entertainment Weekly. “There’s definitely some that people have not picked up on, which I wouldn’t discuss until after everything’s out, and then you could look carefully for some of those little breadcrumbs.”
Is The Summer I Turned Pretty finishing? The conspiracy theorists think not
With TSITP conclusion upon us this Wednesday, a sort of mania seems to have settled upon the show’s fiercest fans. There’s a sense of impending doom. Wide-eyed young women are taking to TikTok and Instagram like the Charlie murder wall GIF from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia come to life. The general consensus? The show’s ending has wrapped up too quickly! We haven’t seen enough! We need more! Naturally, some fans are convinced that there will be more. And the latest conspiracy theory? There is a secret additional episode coming after this week’s finale. Or four more episodes. Or perhaps even a secret fourth season.
And, apparently, there are Easter eggs to back this theory up. For instance, in one video (set to Taylor Swift’s ‘Mastermind,’ duh) a fan explains her theory that there are four more episodes coming—because of a comment from the official Summer I Turned Pretty account and something about October 8 matching the Conrad-coded infinity sign. There are plenty of similar fan videos going around.
Now, I could be wrong, but sadly, I don’t think so—I think it’s all coming to an end with just one more episode. And what’s more, I think it’s high time it did. Please bear with me while I explain.
The Summer I Turned Pretty so far
First, a quick recap to get us all up to speed. Based on Han’s popular YA trilogy, Prime’s The Summer I Turned Pretty follows Isabel “Belly” Conklin, a teen who spends her summers hanging out in Cousins (a fictional coastal New England town) with her mom’s best friend, Susannah Fisher, and her sons, Conrad and Jeremiah. The whole thing (all 36 episodes of it) is basically a dance of will-Belly-choose-Conrad-or-Jeremiah. For the uninitiated, yes, this is a fraternal love triangle we’re talking about here.
In season 1, Belly’s long-standing crush for Conrad finally seems to be about to pay off. However, unexpected flirtation with Jeremiah throws a spanner in the works. In season 2, she has a brief relationship with Conrad, but things fall apart after Susannah dies and Conrad struggles to be a good boyfriend. (Belly could have been a little more understanding about him forgetting her corsage after, you know, the death of his mother, but she is a teenager after all—and that is a topic for another time.) Anyway, they breakup and somehow, everyone thinks it’s ok for Belly to start dating his younger brother, Jeremiah.
In season 3, we fast forward four years and Belly and Jeremiah are still together having dated all through university. Conrad has disappeared to studying premed on the other side of the country where he silently pines for Belly. Jeremiah and Belly get engaged, seemingly as a way to prove their relationship after he cheats on her (or at least hooks up with a rando hours after they take a break). As Jeremiah becomes more and more annoying and less and less appealing, Conrad sidles back onto the scene and he and Belly have a lot of yearning moments in Cousins in the run up to the wedding. Conrad tells Belly he loves her, Jere tells Belly he knows she still loves Conrad, and the wedding is called off. And this is where we found ourselves two weeks ago with three little episodes left to go.
Why fans are up in arms about The Summer I Turned Pretty coming to an end
At this juncture, it’s important to note that in the books, this is basically the very end. In the books, we get just a few pages of exposition to tie things up after the failed wedding. Belly takes some time for herself, studies abroad, and, eventually, after a suitable amount of time, she and Conrad find their way back together and get married. The end.
Now, it’s also important to note that fans didn’t exactly love this ending. It felt too fast! Why didn’t we get to see Belly and Conrad actually being together? How did they get back together? According to many fans, the rushed ending of the book was unsatisfying.
Author Jenny Han knows all of this. Her fans, after all, are vocal. And earlier this year, Han promised she would slow things down in the show. She would fix the rushed pace of the The Summer I Turned Pretty’s book’s ending. She would give us more.
Fans were happy to hear it. But now that we are actually in the home stretch, the fans have started panicking again. They were particularly disappointed by episode 9, the episode after the botched wedding. In episode 9, Belly sets off for Paris to study abroad and proceeds to spend most of the episode chasing a stolen bag around via her AirTag. There was no Bonrad (Conrad and Belly’s ship name) and a little too much Jeremiah fallout.
“You tell me I waited a whole week just for Belly to go search for her god damn bag,” one fan complained on TikTok.
“Episode 9 was not in the books… but nobody needed a full episode of that,” another fan wrote on Reddit. “A quick wrap up would suffice instead of having the characters repeat the same thing over and over with no progress. Plus It would have been nice to see more of Belly in Paris …which will happen majority of the next episode if the pacing is the same as previous episodes …so why is everything else paced so slowly and the end is the rushed part? If the show has a Bonrad endgame why wouldn’t they focus on that more? Unless it doesn’t have one 🤷🏻‍♀️ It just makes no sense to me.”
The backlash has been so great that even Han weighed in. In response to a comment on TikTok claiming she “gave us NOTHING this episode,” she replied, “I gave you the last 4 years of my life. I have given all I have to give, enjoy!”
Some even compared the ending to Game of Thrones, a show that notoriously wrapped up its highly anticipated ending too quickly leaving fans—well—furious.
The fans thought they’d be getting the pay off of seeing Bonrad get together and be together—but so far, it seems that we won’t see too much of them actually being together after all. Even though Han stretched out her book epilogue into three episodes, most of those episodes have focused on Belly’s life in Paris. She has a new apartment, a new boyfriend, a new life, a new hair cut. Just like in the books, it seems like we’ll be seeing Belly and Conrad getting together at the very, very end.
It’s no wonder some fans are hopeful that they’ll secretly be getting more. “If they wait till the very end of the last episode [for them to get together] we ride at dawn and we riot and demand a couple extra episodes,” said one fan in a TikTok video.
In defence of The Summer I Turned Pretty ending
Despite this fan uproar, I wish to state my case in defence of this so-called “rushed” ending.
Although we may all think we want to see loads of happy together time for Bonrad, I don’t think we would like it much if we did. What makes The Summer I Turned Pretty so damn watchable is the fact that Belly and Conrad can’t seem to communicate well enough to actually be together. This gives us a little something we all know and love—yearning. We get to see Belly and Conrad gazing longingly at each other, both believing that they’ll never get to actually be together. It’s so frustrating! It’s so painful! It’s so good! And it’s also what drives our very best love stories.
The pay off of all of that yearning, three seasons of it in this case, is not a lifetime together. For the characters it is, sure, but not for us. For the fans, the pay off actually comes down to one magical moment. After all of that build up, the tension will finally be resolved when Belly and Conrad can look each other in the eye and admit to each other and to themselves that they want to be together.
If we look to the best love stories over the years, it’s always this moment that we’re waiting for. It’s the second proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice. It’s the moment Ross and Rachel kiss in the café. It’s the New Year’s Eve confession in When Harry Met Sally.
Of course, we love these couples and we might think we want to see them living happily ever after… but it’s usually a lot better as a vague epilogue. Did we enjoy seeing Ross and Rachel dissolve into miscommunication and bickering after they got together? No. Did we enjoy seeing the messy aftermath of Luke and Lorelai in Gilmore Girls? No. Did we enjoy that icky scene of Mr. Darcy canoodling with Elizabeth Bennet in the American version of Pride & Prejudice? Personally, no.
The Summer I Turned Pretty follows a tried and tested formula. And that formula dictates that the central couple should spend most of the story apart—that they should only come together at the very end.
As much as we love Bonrad, as much as we might think we want to see more of them, unfortunately, the saga is nearly its natural conclusion. And Han has laid the groundwork perfectly. This season has been filled with moments that have built the tension to a fever pitch: the peaches, the surfing injury, the subtle looks in the kitchen, the shopping trip. All that’s left is for them to find each other again after some time apart. It may feel “rushed,” but it’s actually been a long time coming and a perfectly structured build.
Like it or not, I think it’s finally time for summer to end.
This article first appeared on Glamour.co.uk

Why every millennial woman you know is suddenly watching The Summer I Turned Pretty
The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 outfits, graded by wearability, styling, and overall vibes
The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Gavin Casalegno reacts to being the internet’s “most hated boyfriend”