Between Love Island USA and The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 premiere, it’s been a rough summer for Jeremiahs.
Based on Jenny Han’s book series of the same name, Prime Video’s adaptation has thrived off of harnessing the most powerful tool in its arsenal: the YA love triangle.
The first season offered a healthy dose of escapism, as our heroine Isabelle “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) enjoyed a summer at her family friends’ beach house. Amid beach bonfires and volleyball tournaments, she found herself torn between the brooding, perfectionist Conrad Fisher (Christopher Briney) and his sunny, carefree younger brother, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). Although Belly initially chose Conrad, a major death and the threat of losing the summer house drove her back into Jeremiah’s arms by the end of Season 2.
After the two shared a kiss set to Beyoncé’s “XO” and Belly declared that she had evicted Conrad from her heart in last season’s finale, Team Jeremiah has been riding high throughout the show’s two-year hiatus. That ended last week, when the first two episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3 hurled fans into a teen soap s--tshow marked by cheating, a poorly-timed proposal, and a cursed Benson Boone needle drop.
Whereas the show’s first two seasons unfolded over two successive summers, Season 3 jumps nearly four years into the future. Belly, now a college junior, has settled into a long-term relationship with Jeremiah. Despite what the smattering of slow-mo make-out sessions and gratuitous on-campus PDA montages might suggest, things aren’t entirely rosy between the couple.
Jeremiah’s demanding father might be loaded, but he’s so pissed at his son for needing an extra semester to graduate that he now owes his dad $20,000. Belly, who has just gotten off the waitlist to study abroad in Paris, suddenly becomes convinced that she needs to put her lifelong dream on hold to spend four months emotionally coddling her boyfriend (for the love of God, don’t give up your reverse “Big is moving to Paris” moment, ladies!).
That all comes crashing down when Belly discovers that Jeremiah slept with sorority girl Lacie (Lily Donoghue) twice during a recent spring break trip to Cabo. Jeremiah throws out enough “We were on a break” excuses across two episodes to rival Ross Geller, but to Belly, they weren’t really broken up.
Although Jeremiah’s cheating scandal is also in the books, the show decides to spread the drama around by also deciding to make Belly’s older brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) and best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer) also cheat on their significant others during their latest on-again, off-again fling.
Things escalate when Taylor insists that Steven let her out of the car during a late-night argument, only for Steven to immediately get into a life-threatening car accident as a result. But don’t worry, because his brush with brain damage was actually teeing up a hero moment for Conrad!
The older Fisher brother has left his familial love triangle behind for Stanford, where he’s buried himself in medical school. It just so happens that his new advisor has a friend of a friend back home who can make sure that Steven is A-okay. Oh, and Belly secretly shared a cozy day at the beach house with Conrad scored to Sufjan Stevens’ “Mystery of Love” last Christmas break (Call Me By Your Name’s impact cannot be overstated).
Meanwhile, Jeremiah has been in full crash-out mode, alternating between venting to his mustached frat bro Redbird (Tanner Zagarino) and sending Belly the classic “Tell me what to do” texts of doom.
That doesn’t stop him from having the audacity to meet Belly at the hospital, where he decides that now is the perfect time to propose to her, standing up, with no ring. Did I mention that “Forever and A Day” by Benson Boone is playing? I haven’t seen such a cursed proposal scene on television since Tom proposed to Shiv while her father was on life support on Succession, but at least that was satire.
Fans are not happy:
Somehow, Belly accepts, and the stage is set for some of the messiest teen soap antics this side of Riverdale. Whereas newer Jenny Han projects like XO, Kitty have taken pains to show their teenage protagonists learning to look past their initial romantic fantasies and embrace the unexpected twists and turns of growing up, the Summer I Turned Pretty placing Belly’s fate squarely between two boys she’s known since infancy can feel relatively dated. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show ends with Belly ditching her shotgun wedding to Jeremiah and choosing herself, Paris plane tickets and a potential future with Conrad in her back pocket.
That hasn’t stopped the show’s fans from voicing their outrage over Jeremiah’s betrayal and Belly’s acceptance of his proposal all over the internet. Boone might be a popular singer right now, but he’s faced so much online hate lately that the backlash has practically become a meme. Surely, fans have posited, The Summer I Turned Pretty’s decision to use his song for their engagement but Stevens’ song for Conrad means something! And Sabrina Carpenter’s new single “Manchild?” Well, it’s already accompanied several viral anti-Jeremiah TikToks.
Prime Video was already prepared for this level of fan fervor, having shared a statement to the show’s Instagram Stories rightfully requesting that people lay off on harassing its actors. That doesn’t mean that the ship wars that have made The Summer I Turned Pretty a phenomenon show any sign of slowing down, though, and it’s now open season on Team Jeremiah.
