Prime Video’s hit show The Summer I Turned Pretty officially wrapped its third and final season this month, and for those of us who have been fans of the books and the show, the end of Belly, Conrad and Jeremiah’s years-long journeys inspired a lot of reactions.
I was feeling all the usual emotions at the end of a show: sadness, anxiety over whether I would be satisfied with the ending and a burning curiosity to absorb any and all theories, fan edits and cast interviews online. It was during a pre-finale Instagram scroll that I saw the show’s creator (and author of the books the series is based on) Jenny Han confirmed that this isn’t actually the end. A TSITP movie is in the works, with stars Lola Tung and Christopher Briney already confirmed to return as Isabel “Belly” Conklin and Conrad Fisher.
My stomach dropped at the news. Seriously? Is this what Susannah would’ve wanted?
Before any well-meaning fans start drafting angry emails to send me, I want to say that, of course, this is not objectively bad news. But a follow-up movie introduces a strong possibility that all of the good the show has accomplished will be undone, and we’ll never get back what we had.
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So much of what I’ve loved about TSITP is its community of online fans. Especially for season 3, which had weekly episode drops, fans like me got to theorize, meme and laugh together over the show. As a Gen Z girl who grew up after the boom of weekly network television, I can’t help but relate it to stories I’ve heard from older friends and family about sitting around a couch every Thursday night to watch Friends. The show was a weekly occurrence my friends and I looked forward to, something that got us through rough workweeks and let us travel to Cousins beach, where the biggest problem was the percentage of cacao in a wedding cake.
TSITP achieved the near-impossible in a fragmented, online-driven streaming industry: It grew to be a mainstream success beyond fans of Han and its books. It sparked weekly entertainment and online discourse, similar to the award-winning The White Lotus. Its series finale that aired last Wednesday should’ve been its shining moment, its highest peak. Instead, it was overshadowed by all the movie news.
I know the movie news loomed over my experience watching the final episode. All of the things I wanted to see in the finale but didn’t — all four Conklins together, Steven, Taylor and Denise in their new jobs, a final Susannah flashback — were likely loose ends left to be tied up in the movie. It was frustrating to realize I would have to wait, but likely wouldn’t have had to if the show were ending, as had been promised for months.
The Summer I Turned Pretty first premiered in 2022. Now we have to wait until 2027 for a movie. What is this, Stranger Things?
It’s also hard not to look at this movie cynically as a cash-grabbing scheme for Prime Video. TSITP has been one of its top-performing TV shows for years, so the idea of extending the story seemingly has a certain Monopoly Man, dollar sign appeal for the streaming service. Why should Prime Video care if the movie destroys the canon if it gets to keep raking in the cash?
This leads to a question I’m sure is on most fans’ minds: What exactly is this movie going to be about? We’ve nearly run out of plot set forth in the book, but Han has deviated from the original inspiration before. Han said on the Today show that the movie won’t be here this year or next year. Briney and Tung told Teen Vogue they hope the movie will bring “happy, healthy” versions of their characters. There’s a certain appeal to this after watching Conrad Fisher suffer for three straight seasons, but why not just extend the final episode to incorporate more of that? The final episode was perfect, but I doubt anyone would’ve minded if it was longer than its runtime of nearly 80 minutes.
I’ll probably watch the movie whenever Prime Video releases it. But too many TV shows have ruined themselves in later seasons because their showrunners and networks didn’t know how or when to say goodbye. I am heartbroken at the possibility that TSITP will be one of them.
All we can do is hope Han knows what she’s doing, or at least that she gets the same music budget for the movie as she did for the TV show.
