Lola Tung and Gavin Casalegno Reveal What You Didn’t See in The Summer I Turned Pretty’s S2 Finale

The Summer I Turned Pretty’s second season has come to an end, and although last week’s penultimate episode ended on far more of a cliffhanger than the actual finale, there’s still so much to discuss, and so much that’s going to change going forward. And this is your warning now: If you don’t want to it be spoiled, stop reading.

In the finale—titled “Love Triangle”—we pick up where last week’s episode ended, with Conrad discovering Belly and Jeremiah in quite the passionate liplock. But in the minutes prior, he’s just finished his exam, high on life knowing he’s off to Stanford in the fall. He calls Steven to reiterate that “Plan Belly” is still in effect, and then, in the biggest gut punch, witnesses his brother making out with the only woman he’s ever really loved romantically. Then, in typical Conrad fashion, he pretends he’s immune to any hurt and says, “Please don’t stop. I’m the one clearly interrupting.”

Jeremiah urges Belly to go after him, but the whole thing is heartbreaking. How much more angst can these boys take?

When Belly catches up to the elder Fisher, she says she’s really sorry he had to see that, but Conrad only wants to know if she was kissing his brother to get his attention. She says no, and that this isn’t about him. “Then go,” Conrad instructs. “Go. Stop chasing after me and go be with Jer. He’s the one that wants you. I don’t. Not anymore.” Oof.

Conrad eventually returns to the car (I mean, he’s still got to get home), but in the most awkward car ride ever, he’s flippant, brash, and angry. He taunts Belly and Jeremiah about how many times they kissed last summer, and who’s the better kisser: him or Jer?

“Oh, I made [Gavin] really mad,” Chris Briney tells Glamour of the antics he was doing both in and out of character to heighten the emotion of that car ride. “But it’s got to be messy, you know what I mean? In the car scenes I was a little relentless at times. Even between takes and then ad-libbing within takes. And Gavin at a certain point, I think he just snaps.”

“I’m a patient man, but [I was] just absolutely livid,” Gavin Casalegno says with a laugh. “Yeah, it’s that messy. It’s the kind you take home with after they yell ‘cut’ messy. During the scenes I was chilling. After [that] is when I was like, ‘You are on such thin ice!’ And then he fell through and I didn’t get to talk to him after. [Laughs.]”

Later in the episode, Belly, Jeremiah, and Conrad are forced to pull over for the night and take shelter at a motel when a summer storm gets too intense. (Nice parallel, right?) Later, when Belly and Jeremiah are alone, she tries to assure him he’s The One, but Jeremiah is still scared to believe her, rightfully asking what happens when Conrad admits he still has feelings. But Belly says it won’t change anything. Jeremiah tells her she needs to have a conversation with Conrad, and if that doesn’t change anything and she still feels the same way, then he’s hers. Belly isn’t quite keen on that idea, and tells Jer, “You’re mine.” She’s convincing, isn’t she?

But because drama doesn’t stop on this show, Jeremiah goes to see Conrad, who’s sitting in the rain by a vending machine. Jeremiah gets Conrad to admit he still loves Belly. He urges his brother to tell her, but Conrad says Belly’s done with him and it doesn’t matter. Jeremiah says Belly deserves to know how Conrad feels. “If she picks you, then I’ll let her go,” Jeremiah says. “If it was anyone else in the world, I’d fight like hell. But if you’re what she needs, then I won’t get in the way again. I just won’t. I just want her to be happy. I want you to be happy too. If you’re not going to do it for yourself or for her, then please do it for me.” Conrad agrees. I’m in agony for everyone.

Things get even more heightened (actually, super weird) when Belly goes to bed, and Conrad is sleeping on the floor on one side, and Jeremiah is on the other. Conrad says to Belly, “I didn’t mean it. What I said earlier. I didn’t mean it. I still want you. Of course I do.” She says, “Conrad…,” but he interrupts and says, “You don’t have to say anything. Not right now. I just want you to know that.” Um, Conrad, your brother is on the other side of the bed. What is happening?!

Then we see the flashback of when Belly saw Susannah for the last time before she passes away. Susannah is in bed writing letters to the most important people in her life, including Belly. Will we ever find out the contents of that letter? “I hope so,” Rachel Blanchard, who plays Susannah, tells Glamour. “I’d like to know.”

Anyway, Belly tells Susannah that Conrad broke up with her, but Susannah tells her not to hate him. “He’s having a really hard time with all of this. Please don’t push him away. He needs you. He loves you, you know?” Susannah also asks Belly to watch after Connie, but seconds later, Jeremiah walks in. Did he overhear what his mom said to Belly? “In my mind—and I don’t know if it’s right—but I don’t think he heard,” Blanchard says. “I think he was just walking in to see his mom and then was surprised to see Belly there and didn’t know what to do.”

As for Blanchard’s tender and emotional scene with Lola Tung’s Belly, she says it’s something she still thinks about months later. “Lola just has such an openness about her, so seeing her face and those scenes, it’s just really sad imagining that you’re saying goodbye to someone and you won’t be around to watch your children grow up. She’s like a daughter to me, so those were kind of gutting scenes to film.”

In the next scene—which is back in the present day—Belly wakes up in the motel room and gets ready while the boys are still sleeping. When she comes back out, Jeremiah is gone. She freaks out, but soon finds him outside, where he’s just come back from running an errand. She tells him she talked to Conrad, and before she can say more, he thinks she’s about to break his heart again. But then she says, “Jeremiah, look at me. What am I thinking?” In that moment, Beyoncé’s “XO” starts playing, and Belly leans in and kisses him. Jeremiah picks her up. The moment is breathtaking, the lighting is gorgeous, and I’m pretty sure Team Jelly Belly has lost their collective minds.

As stunning as the moment looks onscreen, it wasn't so smooth coming together. Casalegno tells Glamour it was raining constantly, so they had to put up a giant umbrella and light the scene while also avoiding the lights in the rain. “There was so much rain, and as I was doing this scene, I was thinking to myself, This is going to look horrible.” Casalegno admits that even he still doesn’t understand how production pulled it off, but watching the final cut, “It just ended up being one of the most visually beautiful scenes. It blew my mind. Plus with the Beyoncé song, I think it is just the cherry on top.”

Tung tells Glamour she felt the same while filming the momentous scene. “It’s really wild when you hear behind-the-scenes stories of what actually was happening and it’s so unglamorous. I think we actually shot Gavin’s coverage and my coverage on different days because the weather was bad.”

Still, knowing how pivotal the moment was for Belly and Jeremiah, Tung says she’s lucky she got to share it with Casalegno, rainstorms and all. “You just trust in your scene partner and listen to the music and, of course, Beyoncé elevates it even more. It had to be this really sweet and urgent moment because Belly thought that Jeremiah almost left and she kind of lost her chance.”

Once Belly and Jeremiah come up for air, she returns to the motel room, where Conrad admits he was trying to screw things up for Belly and Jer, but whatever he said, he didn’t mean it. In a voiceover, Belly says, “I couldn’t even be mad at him because this is who he is. So I release you Conrad Fisher. I evict you from my heart.” After some more talking, he decides to go back to Cousins and tells Belly and Jeremiah—who has just walked in—that he’ll see them on the Fourth of July. Belly says she wouldn’t miss Susannah’s favorite holiday, and Conrad tells Jeremiah to get Belly back safely. As we’re treated to another T. Swift song, Jeremiah embraces Belly, but Conrad is outside in agony.

She can’t go back to Conrad again after that, right?

“Oh, my gosh,” Tung says with a nervous chuckle. “I think there’s been a lot of back and forth throughout both seasons because I think they play with her heart a little bit too. At this moment in time, Belly is making this decision, and it’s a long-term decision. It is what is right for her in this moment.”

Tung adds that Belly has been through so much with Conrad, and ultimately she’s deciding to choose the person (Jeremiah) who’s been choosing her for so long. “You don’t know what the future holds, but I think more than [anything], this season ends on this beautiful note of Belly saying, ‘I don’t know what future holds, but it’s mine.’ Regardless of the boys, [the future] is hers. So I don’t know.”

“Well, she’s so young still, so it might change between the boys over the next few years, or it could be someone completely new,” Blanchard surmises of what’s in store for Belly's love life. “And I think they’ll always be connected, whether any of them end up together or not, they’ll be in each other’s lives forever.”

“Yeah, you just hope that she takes the time to explore and meet different people and see what is important to her in a relationship and grow and figure it out on her own,” onscreen mom Jackie Chung (Laurel) says.

As the episode comes to a close, Belly makes a plea to rejoin the volleyball team and gets to have her moment. Jeremiah is there to root her on, and as much as I want Conrad and Belly to be together, there’s no denying that Jeremiah and Belly are adorable and he’s her biggest cheerleader. Meanwhile, back at Cousins, a melancholy Conrad unpacks Belly’s room, getting the house back in order in time to celebrate Susannah’s favorite holiday. Dua Lipa’s “Love Again” starts playing as we see Belly finding her footing on the volleyball court—and in her love life.

And now we wait for the Fourth of the July. And season three.

Interviews with the cast of The Summer I Turned Pretty were conducted before the SAG-AFTRA strike on July 12.

July 12, 2023: When Prime Video dropped The Summer I Turned Pretty’s second-season trailer, the headlines and initial reactions focused on how it featured “Back to December (Taylor’s Version),” a sneak peek of her upcoming Speak Now rerecording. But the bigger news—in my opinion—was how much the trailer reveals of the plot line.

While the series follows Jenny Han’s best-selling books for the most part, there were some changes in season one of the Prime Video series, the biggest being that Susannah decides to do the trial to treat her rapidly advancing cancer. While it gave some fans (including myself) hope that she won’t meet the same fate as she does in the books, we find out in the trailer that she has indeed passed away.

“You never know the last time you’ll see a place…a person,” Belly (Lola Tung) says in a voiceover. “I knew I’d lose Susannah eventually. I just didn’t know I’d end up losing all of them.”

“The series follows the books quite closely, so I always kind of knew,” Rachel Blanchard, who plays Susannah, tells Glamour. “Maybe a tiny kernel of me [hoped Susannah would survive], but I knew the direction it was going in.”

Christopher Briney, who plays her son Conrad, tells Glamour that he assumed from reading the books that the storyline would stay the same. Adds Gavin Casalegno, who plays Conrad’s brother, Jeremiah, “Yeah, there was wasn’t too much hope [that it would change].”

And still, when you see how it all plays out, it’s a gut punch knowing that summer at Cousins will never be the same. In the trailer we see Steven, Belly’s brother, yelling at his sister over the fact that Conrad and Jeremiah won’t even text him back since she made things so messy. And then there’s Conrad telling Jeremiah that their beloved summer house, which Susannah curated so perfectly, has been put up for sale. “I feel everyone slipping away, and the house is the last thing tying us together,” Jeremiah says.

What does remain the same? Belly’s feelings for the Fisher boys, especially Conrad. No matter how much she convinces herself that he’s not right for her, we know she still harbors major feelings for him. (Jeremiah even tells her he knows something will always be there between them.)

“Belly has gone through a lot in the past year since we’ve seen her,” Tung tells Glamour. “She’s feeling many emotions that she’s never had to deal with before, and she is dealing with a change in a lot of her relationships with the people that she loves and the people around her. It’s really a journey of self-discovery.”

And not just for Belly. The sophomore season also sees Conrad and Jeremiah experience plenty of growth as well. “They’re forced to mature,” Briney says. “They have to take on a lot of responsibility.” Adds Casalegno, “You get a deeper look into their lives. It’s fun and beautiful.”

Plus, says Tung, “We get to see a lot of Conrad-Belly moments that Team Conrad people will really appreciate.”

And speaking of those Conrad-Belly moments, the best—and at least, happiest—one happens in episode two (spoiler ahead!) when Conrad and Belly make love for the first time set to Des'ree's “I'm Kissing You.” It's a beautiful and romantic scene that, at least for a few minutes, makes you forget about the fact that it's a flashback while in the current day, Conrad wants nothing to do with Belly when she shows up with Jeremiah at the beach house.

“More than just the part of Belly losing her virginity, it’s this really beautiful scene of seeing these two people in this magical place together they’ve both loved for so long, where nothing else matters in the world in this moment,” Lola Tung tells Glamour. “You just see that connection between them, and it’s really special.”

For more on what Chris Briney has to say about the scene, as well as why Tung asked for a nudity rider, check out their interview here.

Original post: Grab the ChapStick, tissues, and sunscreen because we’re diving back into the romance series that made you cry all your mascara off: The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Yes, The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2 is happening, a follow-up to the Prime Video show based on Jenny Han’s best-selling young adult book series. In fact, it was renewed for a second season before the first even aired. Han will continue to be co-showrunner on the series; her partner on season one, Gabrielle Stanton, will be replaced by Sarah Kucserka for the second season.

And…it may be more than summer. “I’m looking forward to seeing other seasons,” Han has said. “Literal seasons. All you see is summertime now. There’s a lot more road to hoe and we’ll get to see (Belly’s) world get a bit bigger.”

Here’s everything else we know about The Summer I Turned Pretty season 2, including the first look photos, the episode schedule, and more.

Which cast members are returning?

The main cast are all locked in for more seasons. Lola Tung, who plays protagonist Belly, told Today that she’s “excited to see how the relationships evolve and how the characters continue to grow” in future seasons.

Christopher Briney, who plays dreamy but angsty Conrad Fisher, said of the future, “I want to know what happens! I read the book, but I haven’t seen the script yet.” Gavin Casalegno, who plays Conrad’s nice-guy brother, Jeremiah, added, “You never know.”

However, Minnie Mills, who played Steven’s girlfriend, Shayla, won’t be returning this season. In a detailed Instagram post, she gave an emotional goodbye. See below.

Who is joining the cast?

On August 31, 2022, Prime Video revealed that two new stars have been cast in recurring roles for season two: Elsie Fisher and Kyra Sedgwick.

Their exact roles haven’t yet been disclosed, but in an Instagram Reel regarding the news, Fisher is seen in a trailer with the name Skye on the door.

What’s it about?

We’re assuming that since the first season (generally) followed the first book, the second will follow the sequel, It’s Not Summer Without You, with some changes, of course.

In the book series (spoiler!), Jeremiah and Conrad’s mother, Susannah, dies between the first and second books, so much of the second book is about the main characters processing her death. However, in the book series, Susannah decides not to treat her cancer recurrence, a decision that was reversed in the streaming show. Does that mean Susannah will live to see another summer on Amazon? Very possible.

The second book is a continuation on the themes of the first, with the central love triangle of Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah, as well as themes of growing up and learning to be independent. Conrad is in college now and using his newfound freedom unwisely. So it’s up to Jeremiah and Belly to make things right—easier said than done.

And there’s this from Prime Video: “Belly used to count down the days until she could return to Cousins Beach, but with Conrad and Jeremiah fighting over her heart and the return of Susannah’s cancer, she’s not sure summer will ever be the same. When an unexpected visitor threatens the future of Susannah’s beloved house, Belly has to rally the gang to come together—and to decide once and for all where her heart lies.”

When will it premiere?

Viewers will spend summer Fridays in Cousins Beach all summer long, with new episodes debuting weekly. The first three episodes premiere on Friday, July 14, and new installments will drop weekly until the season finale on Friday, August 18. Check out the announcement video below.

The cast also revealed all eight episode titles, allowing fans to speculate which of their favorite storylines from It’s Not Summer Without You, the second book in Han’s series, will make it to the screen as well as what new surprises unique to the series might be in store.

The episode titles are as follows:

Episode 201 – “Love Lost” (out now)
Episode 202 – “Love Scene” (out now)
Episode 203 – “Love Sick” (out now)
Episode 204 – “Love Game” (Premiering Friday, July 21, 2023)
Episode 205 – “Love Fool” (Premiering Friday, July 28, 2023)
Episode 206 – “Love Fest” (Premiering Friday, August 4, 2023)
Episode 207 – “Love Affair” (Premiering Friday, August 11, 2023)
Episode 208 – “Love Triangle” (Premiering Friday, August 18, 2023)

The second season started filming on July 25, 2022. Co-showrunner Jenny Han posted on Instagram (along with star Lola Tung) that they’re back in Cousins Beach (actually, North Carolina) for the much anticipated sophomore season.

What about new photos?

On Wednesday, May 31, Prime Video released a bunch of new photos from the new season, and they run the gamut from romantic to surprising. Take a look.

We need more! Is there a trailer?

The teaser trailer dropped in early June. Watch it below, and we’ll update this post when the official trailer becomes available.