Stream It Or Skip It?

The third season premiere (“Last Season”) flashes forward three years to the end of Belly’s junior year and Jeremiah’s senior year. The couple is going strong and planning how they’ll do long distance when Jeremiah receives the news that he didn’t complete enough credits for his major to graduate. At the same time, Belly finds out that she got into a study abroad program in Paris, but hesitates to commit now that Jeremiah will be at Finch College for another semester. When she finally comes clean to Jeremiah, he encourages her to go. Everything seems blissful until Belly overhears girls at a party whispering about what it was like to hook up with Jeremiah in Cabo. He admits to it, using the classic “we were on a break” excuse, but Belly says she can’t look past this.

Cheating is a theme thus far in season 3: Belly’s best friend Taylor (Rain Spencer) and her brother Steven (Sean Kaufman) are still hooking up. The only problem is that this time, they both have significant others.

Conrad is in San Francisco, where he just landed a prestigious summer clinic job with his new friend Agnes. He’s in therapy, actively working through his grief about his mom’s death and the loss of Belly, both of which he’ll have to confront soon at his mom’s dedication service. But after a conversation about his lingering love for Belly, he realizes how difficult it will be to be in the same room as her and calls Jeremiah to tell him that he won’t be able to make it.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Summer I Turned Pretty is a classic teen drama centered on romance in a summer setting, which might remind you of many other entries in the genre: Never Have I Ever, Sex Lives of College Girls, or Outer Banks come to mind.

Our Take: In Season 3 of TSITP, everyone is trying to move on. Aided by the three year jump that puts our main cast firmly into adulthood, Belly, Conrad, and Jeremiah are all plotting their futures—both together and apart. Conrad has moved across the country to San Francisco where he seems to be thriving, while Belly and Jeremiah are blissfully in love and somewhat codependent on each other.

Belly’s mom Laurel tells her daughter early in “Last Season” to not limit herself at college, but it seems like she didn’t really listen: three years later, Belly is still wrapped up entirely in her relationship with one of the Fisher boys. Staying true to the character, the show almost falls into the age-old trope of a woman giving up her dream to stay at home for a man (The Hills, anyone?) when Belly almost doesn’t even tell Jeremiah about her Paris study abroad, and even when she decides to consider it, it almost feels like she’s doing it because she received Jeremiah’s stamp of approval. All of that makes it even harder to swallow Jeremiah’s betrayal, but hopefully this forces her to consider prioritizing herself first moving forward.

The main cast continues to turn in good work, with Tung anchoring the ensemble cast. She’s charismatic but still a bit naive, and it’ll be a treat to see how she and Casalegno navigate Belly and Jeremiah’s new normal after his infidelity completely craters their relationship. (Critics did not receive advanced screeners for Season 3 of The Summer I Turned Pretty.) Briney as Conrad is still brooding, but he’s located a spark that’s ignited by his passions and, frankly, being away from Cousins Beach.

Season 3 sees the characters spread out across the country, but with the bombshell ending to the premiere, the chess pieces are likely to move around quite a bit and in ways that we weren’t expecting. With Susannah’s dedication ceremony looming in the future, there’s no way that won’t be an explosive reunion between the trio.

Sex and Skin: The Summer I Turned Pretty is a teen (and now, college) show so there are ample references and insinuations about sex, but the acts are always shown tastefully and non-explicitly.

Parting Shot: Between patches of streetlamp-lit and dark sidewalks, Belly runs home from a college party after learning that Jeremiah hooked up with someone else while he was in Cabo on spring break.

Sleeper Star: Rain Spencer as Belly’s best friend Taylor has always toed the line between obnoxious and endearing, but Spencer is hitting the right balance in season 3 as she navigates a complicated relationship with her ex Steven, while also giving Belly the advice she desperately needs to hear.

Most Pilot-y Line: “My mom always said she found her soulmate in college, but I was lucky: I had already found mine,” Belly’s voiceover announces minutes into the season premiere while Belly and Jeremiah hug on screen. Famous last words.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The YA series continues to make the love triangle between childhood friends compelling as the show enters college and adulthood.