Diksha Sundriyal
Prime Video’s ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ follows the story of Isabel “Belly” Conklin and her love triangle with Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher. Over the course of three seasons, Belly explores her love for both of them. While she has a four-year relationship with Jeremiah, which turns into an engagement, she continues to have feelings for Conrad, whom she dated between seasons 1 and 2 and broke up before the events of the summer of the second season. The third season majorly focuses on her and Jeremiah’s crumbling relationship, which reaches its breaking point on the day they are supposed to be wed. This leaves Belly single again, and while she starts a new chapter of her life in Paris, her feelings for Conrad continue to be a point of contention, which receives its conclusion in the Season 3 finale. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Conrad and Belly Reunite in Paris in Season 3 Finale
Belly Conklin had been in love with Conrad Fisher since she was a child, but she never got to act on those feelings until the circumstances of Season 1 led Conrad to admit his feelings for her as well. Later, it is revealed that Conrad, too, had loved her for a long time, but it was the summer she turned sixteen that he realised the true extent of his feelings. After dating for a few months, they break up when Belly finds Conrad emotionally distant while he struggles with his mental health, especially with his mother’s imminent death due to cancer. This breakup pushes Belly towards Jeremiah, who is more open about his feelings for her, and at the end of Season 2, she chooses to be with him.
Their relationship continues for four years through college, but the shadow of Conrad looms large on their relationship, and even Jeremiah admits that the connection between his brother and Belly is too strong. Eventually, Belly and Jeremiah break up, a decision sparked by Conrad’s love confessions to Belly on the eve of her wedding to his brother. However, the break doesn’t prompt her to jump back to Conrad. Instead, she chooses to go to Paris to put some distance between herself and the Fisher boys and gain some perspective. Belly spends more than a year in Paris, during which time she patches up with Jeremiah and receives a string of letters from Conrad. She doesn’t reply to him for a long time because she wants to move on, hoping not to get caught up in the same cycle with him.
To her credit, she does move on, engaging in a brief affair with Benito, which she calls off when she feels he is getting too serious about her. Conrad, on the other hand, continues to think about her, showing no signs of trying to move on. After a while, he and Jeremiah patch up, with the latter telling him not to waste his chance with Belly. This prompts Conrad to go to Paris, even though he is supposed to go to Brussels for a conference. Due to minimal communication with Belly, he doesn’t know what her life really looks like now, and he is only focused on seeing her again. However, things are not the same anymore. Or at least, that’s what it seems initially. Belly is caught by surprise with Conrad’s arrival, and the awkwardness is evident in their first interaction since they last saw each other in Cousins.
He tries to make the excuse that he is there for her birthday, while she tries to figure out when he will leave because she doesn’t know how to be around him anymore. After some hesitation, she decides to show him around the city after he says that he will take a later train to Brussels. The more time they spend with each other, the more their walls begin to crumble, and by the end of the day, Belly feels comfortable enough to invite him to dinner with her friends. Slowly, they become comfortable in each other’s presence, and their conversations start to give them flashbacks to the way they used to be, even before they were in a relationship. The tension between them is palpable, and by the end of the night, they give in to their feelings and end up having sex.
Belly’s True Feelings About Conrad Come to the Surface
Being with Conrad is what Belly used to dream about. While they are in bed, she tells him she used to wish for him every birthday. When he says that she is stuck with him forever, she is pulled back to reality in an instant. Conrad senses this shift in her demeanor, and instead of beating around the bush, Belly eventually asks him why he really came to Paris. When he professes his love for her, she starts to wonder if his feelings were influenced by Susannah’s death and the fact that she wanted him to end up with Belly. Conrad assures her that his mother’s death has nothing to do with the way he feels about her. However, Belly is not convinced. She is not ready for the same heartbreak all over again, something that she’d so desperately tried to move on from, something that she came to Paris for.
She believes that getting back together with Conrad would mean undoing all the progress and evolution she experienced over the past year or so, which is why she doesn’t stop him when he leaves. While Conrad packs up his stuff and hails a cab to the train station, Belly starts to think about him and whether she made the right decision by pushing him away again. As he boards the train, he believes that perhaps Belly really has moved on from him. While he nurses his freshly broken heart, Belly finds the soft toy he’d won for her at the fair and the infinity necklace he gave to her as the symbol of their love. She comes to the realisation that loving Conrad is inherent to her, just like she has brown eyes and brown hair.
This isn’t something she can change about herself so easily, and this isn’t something she should try to run away from. She tried to put the distance of space and time between them by moving to Paris, but it only took one evening with him to go back to loving her. This is similar to when she and Jeremiah were together and she hadn’t met Conrad in a while. But one day of being around him in Cousins is all it took for her feelings to resurface. No matter where she goes and what she does, her love for Conrad will remain, and there is no point in running from it.
So, she chooses to run towards it, chasing after Conrad, finding him in the train, and declaring her love for him. The season ends with Belly and Conrad getting back together, and this time, their relationship is on more permanent grounds as both of them have evolved since they were last together. This evolution is evident from the fact that Belly doesn’t leave her life in Paris just to be with Conrad again. They maintain a long-distance relationship, and he visits her for Christmas. They nurture their love over the next few months. Eventually, Belly returns home, and they start a new chapter of their lives together, visiting the beachhouse, where everything started for them.
Read More: The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 4: Why Was it Canceled?
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