SPOILER ALERT: This post spoils the ending of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3.
Conrad (Chris Briney) made it to Paris! But Belly (Lola Tung) and Benito (Fernando Cattori) pulled up on their red moped while he sat, yearning for her, on her doorstep. Oh, and Belly did get that bob.
There is a lot to unpack from the series finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty, so let’s get into it. There are two main storylines that play out in the finale, so we’ve broken it down for you.
Paris — Belly and Conrad
The episode opens with Conrad surprising Belly outside her apartment in Paris. She isn’t exactly excited to see him, but she agrees to spend the day with him before he takes the last train out of Paris to his work conference in Brussels.
While all this is playing out a home, Belly is playing tour guide for Conrad all around Paris. They even somehow make it to Versailles, even though it’s a hefty distance from the center of the City of Love. Conrad eventually tells Belly that he really wants to see Paris through her eyes, and she says she knows just where to take him.
Back in Paris, Belly and Conrad are finally opening up to one another a bit on a rooftop in Paris, moving through some of the awkwardness of not seeing each other in more than a year. Belly explains to Conrad that she really feels like she’s found herself in Paris, and he’s nothing but encouraging of her endeavor. After all, wasn’t it their moms that called her a “feral alley cat”? He thinks that’s quite the compliment, but she points out it maybe wasn’t.
Despite a bit of discomfort, Belly decides to invite Conrad to her nighttime plans — the ones she’d initially mentioned as an excuse to ditch him come 8 p.m. Getting dressed in her lavish new apartment, Conrad notices some photos of Benito on the wall, which definitely seem to make him question whether Belly is even open to reconciling at all (well, that and her sort of cold shoulder when he first approaches her at her doorstep).
Jenny Han once again nails the female gaze with the next scene, when Belly emerges from the bathroom in a gorgeous little black dress, asking Conrad for help with her jewelry. Before anyone can make a move though, it’s time to leave for Belly’s birthday dinner.
Of course, once they arrive, all of Belly’s French friends are intrigued to find out that Conrad is not only in Paris but here at this birthday party. And at long last, Benito and Conrad finally meet. Oh, and in Paris, she goes by Isabel, thank you very much.
Benito surprises Belly with a photo of herself tangled up in the sheets of her bed, which definitely puts Conrad in his feels. It certainly isn’t made better when her friends start grilling him about his participation in the devolution of Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship. During dinner, we also finally learn that Belly shut down Benito’s offer to go to Mexico and broke up with him, which sets up perfectly for the eventual Belly-Conrad reconciliation. Conrad also finds his voice in this scene, quipping back at Benito’s somewhat territorial comments about Belly.
By the time we see them again in Paris, Belly and Conrad are fully flirting now, and her friends are joining in on the fun. Her friends went in on a gift together: a single joint that Conrad refuses to smoke. It certainly adds to the sexual tension of the moment when he takes the joint from her and passes it along without taking a drag.
As her parents are toasting to Belly back in Cousins, she’s getting closer to Conrad, sitting on the couch at her birthday dinner. At this point, he gives her a “little piece” of Cousins, a vial of sand from the beach that reminds him of home. She gives him a kiss on the cheek in return.
The next time we see Belly and Conrad, she’s wearing his jacket as they wander the streets of Paris, and he’s wondering if he should call her “Isabel” now, like all her French friends. For the record, no, she wants him to call her Belly. As they stroll back to her apartment, Conrad admits he thought she was running away from her problems when she moved to Paris, but he’s happy she’s found herself. Belly says she feels like she ruined everything by breaking things off with Jeremiah and calling off the wedding, but as always, Conrad reassures her.
Before the night is over, Belly tells Conrad she wants to take him to one more place. It ends up being the walkway along the Seine, leading to quite a heartfelt scene where they dance under the moonlight along the famous river. The last time they danced was prom, and it didn’t end well. They discuss how that night turned out incredibly badly, even though they expected it to be the best night of their relationship thus far. Belly muses that it feels like “a million years ago,” and she tells him that his letters over the last year in Paris have kept her feeling assured in her decision to move (and to move on).
As much as she has tried to move on, has it worked? The answer is no. Right there on the bank of the Seine, Belly and Conrad share a kiss that quickly turns into much more as they make their way back to her apartment (a scene that represents much of the payoff fans have been waiting for all season set to Taylor Swift’s “Dress”).
Immediately after their intimate moment, Belly seems pretty tense. She questions what he had planned, showing up to Paris unannounced…and, shockingly, he tells her he loves her again. “And?” she replies, to which he says that he just wants to know whether she even loves him anymore. She does, and she feels like that’s the problem. She still hasn’t been able to figure out whether they were supposed to love each other, or whether they just felt like they had to after Susannah’s death, given how much she wanted to see them together.
“What if you only loved me because that’s what your mom wanted?” she asks. Conrad insists that has nothing to do with it. “I have tried everything not to love you,” he says. “The way that I feel about you has nothing to do with my mom.”
He adds, “If I met you for the first time tonight, I would still love you.”
Belly says, though she wishes she could be as sure as he is about his feelings, she isn’t. Conrad stands to get ready to finally grab a train to Brussels, leaving her with a “Happy Birthday Belly,” before leaving her alone. Conrad sheds a tear as he walks down the late-night Parisian streets.
Thankfully, Belly comes into her right mind fairly quickly and catches up with Conrad on that 5 a.m. train to Brussels. Wearing that infinity necklace Conrad gave her many moons ago, Belly declares: “I choose you of my own free will. There are infinite worlds. Every one of me chooses you in every one of them.”
With that, it seems we have a happily ever after. Belly and Conrad return to Cousins in the final minutes of the finale, strolling into the beach house hand-in-hand. And with that, the series has come to an end.
Boston/Cousins — Steven, Taylor, Jeremiah, Denise & more
We first see Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) playing chef in Denise’s (Isabella Briggs) apartment. Looks like he’s got a new career as a TikTok chef in Boston. They seem to have gotten pretty comfortable since Jeremiah moved into her spare bedroom six months ago. He also seems relatively chill about Conrad making his move on Belly in Paris. That’s when Denise drops a bombshell that she and Steven are moving to San Francisco in a month after finally getting the seed funding for their new venture. Taylor doesn’t know either…until she does. She walks in on Denise telling Jeremiah and totally freaks out.
Like we said, Taylor is pissed. Somehow, Denise manages to talk her down for the time being. But, Jeremiah is gearing up to host an elaborate dinner (more on that later), and since Taylor first came by to tell them that the venue they’d originally booked is flooded, they need to figure out how they’re going to pivot.
They set up the party at the Cousins house, where Taylor first confronts Steven about the impending move in her own way, trying to plan out their apartment in Boston. She insists they should paint the walls and get a kitten, but all he says is that they should take a beat. That’s when she let’s him know that she knows about the move, storming off to deal with yet another crisis regarding Jeremiah’s dinner, telling Steven she lost “half her waitstaff.”
Adam (Tom Everett Scott) shows up to the party, saying his invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, and Jere almost wants to call the whole thing off, but Denise gives him a rousing pep talk.
This is also when we learn that Kayleigh left Adam. He tells Laurel (Jackie Chung) and John (Colin Ferguson) at the Beach house. While Steven helps Jeremiah cook, Taylor returns, and she and Steven hash out why Steven didn’t tell Taylor about moving to California.
Steven wasn’t sure if they were ready for that type of commitment to each other, but it quickly becomes clear that they are. “Living with you and being with you, that’s my dream too,” Steven tells Taylor.
Taylor says she wants to be with Steven and do well in PR after he says he doesn’t want her to give up things for him. Looks like the happy couple is moving to San Francisco!
In the final moments of this chapter, Denise taste tests a chocolate soufflé for Jeremiah, and she lets it slip that she thinks he’s pretty hot. He admits that he let Belly give up Paris back when they were together only to then reveal that he has regretted not kissing Denise while living with her. They kiss, and Jeremiah, hinting at more between this new couple as they end up holding hands under the table as Jeremiah’s dinner begins.
Jeremiah also finally gets the approval he’s been seeking from Adam, who tells his son he is proud of him. Happily ever after for everyone? It seems so!
That’s a wrap on The Summer I Turned Pretty.
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