Sorry Team Jeremiah, ‘TSITP’ Was Always Belly And Conrad’s Love Story

Are you Team Conrad? Team Jeremiah? Or are you, as actress Lola Tung claims to be, Team Belly? The position you take can say a lot about who you are—a romantic, a pragmatist, a bandwagoner—and it can also tell you if you’re very, very bad at media literacy. Because, believe it or not, there’s actually a wrong answer here.

I’m looking at you, Team Jeremiah.

Prime Video’s The Summer I Turned Pretty may have premiered in 2022, but it stays true to it’s 2009 roots, when the first book was released. Back then, love triangles were in vogue—think Team Edward and Team Jacob, Team Stefan and Team Damon, Team Peeta and Team Gale. The young women at the turn of the millennia were constantly forced to make difficult emotional decisions via their favorite TV shows, movies, and books, which is probably what gave them their addictive quality—and, truthfully, is probably what gives The Summer I Turned Pretty that same compelling quality over 10 years later.

As a Millennial who grew up in the golden age of love triangles, I’ve loved the nostalgic return to the will-they-won’t-they-or-will-they? quality of the show. But it’s also proven to me that a decade later, people are worse than ever at understanding what a love story actually is.

If I open instagram one more time and see someone say, “Belly actually never looked at Conrad the way she looked at Jeremiah,” I will scream. If I see one more TikTok talking about how you know this is Jeremiah and Belly’s love story because “90% of the season was about them,” I’m going to throw my phone into the ocean. Are we watching the same show? Has something in the universe glitches and I ended up in an alternate timeline where Conrad and Jeremiah switched roles? Or am I simply witnessing a mass delusion before my very eyes?

Because author and show creator Jenny Han has been telling us the ending of this show from the very beginning. Remember in that first episode of season 1, when Belly and her family first arrived at the summer house? Jeremiah’s character introduction was him running out of the house and yelling, “What’s up?” Conrad’s character introduction was him walking out to the song ‘Lover’ by Taylor Swift.

In fact, the entire first season is meant to mirror and foreshadow the rest of the show. Conrad and Belly almost get together on the pier; Jeremiah jealously disrupts them with the firework. Later, Conrad decides to take a step back because he knows his mother is dying, even if the others don’t. Because Belly takes this as meaning he’s no longer interested in her, she instead turns to Jeremiah and fights her feelings for Conrad, but when the Deb Ball happens (a thinly-veiled allusion to a wedding, anyone?), Jeremiah doesn’t show up, and Conrad steps up instead, ultimately leading to Belly and Conrad getting together. Is that not the whole entire story?

Because yes, Belly did spend the majority of the third season engaged to Jeremiah, and know what she also spent the majority of the third season doing? Trying to resist her pull toward Conrad! Did we not watch Belly basically admit that just seeing Conrad over Christmas break felt like cheating on Jeremiah? Did we not see Belly nearly kiss him after his surfboard accident, despite the fact that she would be marrying his brother in a few weeks? Did we not all witness the same scene where she literally tells Taylor that the only part of her wedding she ever imagined was Conrad?

I’ve lived through enough love triangles to know this: The main character doesn’t end up with the person who cheats on her. She doesn’t end up with the character who she claims is “reality” instead of what she’s always dreamed about. She doesn’t end up with the person who selfishly tries to sabotage her relationship with someone else. She also doesn’t end up with the character she uses to erase her feelings for her initial love interest.

Jeremiah may have been given his moment in the sun, but as we’re told in the first season, Conrad is the sun—and while the sun can be eclipsed for a moment or two, it always comes back full force.