SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” series finale, “At Last,” released Sept. 17 on Amazon’s Prime Video.
Summer is over and Belly has made her choice: It’s Conrad. It’s only ever been Conrad.
“The Summer I Turned Pretty” launched its 80-minute series finale Wednesday, revealing how Belly Conklin’s (Lola Tung) love triangle with brothers Conrad Fisher (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno) — plus the concept of summer — came to a close.
After a year living in Paris, far, far away from her family, friends and Cousins Beach, Belly gets a surprise visit from Conrad on the day before her 22nd birthday. She’s shocked to see him there and apprehensive at first, but agrees to tour him around the city before he heads off to a medical conference in Brussels. They spend several hours seeing the sights, but Belly is keeping herself from engaging in any meaningful way.
Then he asks to see “her” Paris, and she takes him to a rooftop that’s special to her, and they finally begin to open up about their experiences over the past year since her wedding to Jeremiah was called off after Conrad confessed his love. She invites him to a small birthday dinner her friends are throwing for her that night. Once there, they slowly begin to reconnect even more until they are leaving the party together at the end of the night and walking the streets of Paris alone.
They reminisce about old times in their relationship — good and bad — while spontaneously slow dancing by the Seine river to The Flamingoes’ “I Only Have Eyes for You” until Belly decides to kiss Conrad. Then Taylor Swift’s “Dress” starts to play, as Belly invites Conrad back to her apartment and the two have sex for the first time since they were dating in high school.
When they are lying in bed together after, Conrad mentions Belly now has him “forever,” which startles her. She tells him he shouldn’t miss any of the first day of the conferences, suggesting he take the 5 a.m. train. Conrad can tell something is wrong, and they have a very honest conversation about their feelings. When Belly expresses her fears that she and Conrad might not love each other for themselves — but because it’s what his mother, Susannah, would have wanted — Conrad tells her that’s untrue. She’s still unable to embrace that, and he heads out for the train.
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Belly picks up her stuffed animal Junior Mint and sees the infinity necklace Conrad gave her, and realizes much has changed about her but her love for Conrad never has. She then runs to try and find him on the way to the train station, taking a cab to get her the final way there and then boarding the train to Brussels still searching for him. When she finds him, they kiss and finally both say “I love you” to each other.
Elsewhere: Steven and Taylor are in love and moving off to San Francisco; Denise and Jeremiah get together; Adam, Laurel and John all end up single and happy for their kids.
The episode ends with Belly and Conrad back in Cousins Beach after some time has passed, before cutting to some photos of them spending Christmas in Paris after they got back together.
Though the show ends without a wedding for Belly and Conrad — which was the final scene in the book series — a message to the fans at the end of the episode teases their could always be more. In the written note, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” creator Jenny Han thanked everyone for their love and support for the show and teased that they might all meet again in Cousins some day.
From Variety US