‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3 Episode 8 Recap: “Last Kiss”

If The Summer I Turned Pretty wasn’t committed to the “last” nomenclature format, I’d title the eighth episode of the final season, “Belly is Crashing Out.” It turns out, it’s not so easy to put on a brave face and go through the motions of a wedding the day after your true love finally says the words you’ve been waiting to hear for years—who knew? 

But that’s not to say that Belly doesn’t try in “Last Kiss.” Waking up the morning after Conrad’s beach confession, she tries to act normal. Her fiance Jeremiah is on a fishing trip with his boys, and she thinks she’ll have a moment to process what happened the previous night. But she’s immediately accosted by the image of Conrad in the kitchen, and anger—the same vibes she brought to his words last night—is the first emotion that bubbles up. 

Initially, Conrad thinks he can explain it away. He says he was drunk out of his mind and asks her to forget what happened. Those are words she’s heard before, and she calls him on it. She takes it a step further, asking him to “make up one of his bullshit excuses” and skip town before the wedding. He flat out says no. Her anger continues rising, but the thing that’s now bothering her is one of those details that only bothers you when the person you’re arguing with really matters to you: She’s mad that he keeps saying her name. 

They trade jabs—he tells her she broke his heart, while she calls him heartless. He turns that around on her and says she knew that he still loved her. At this moment, Belly is still riding her lie that he meant nothing to her, saying that they only dated for a few months in high school. How was she to know he still loved her? But Conrad is ready to play ball. He brings up Christmas, their shopping trip to Michael’s, and his surfing accident. How was he supposed to read any of that? 

But she denies all of it, and Conrad walks away with his hands up, figuratively. He tells her she can have it her way, but he’s done pretending. And when Belly’s voiceover chimes in, she admits that Conrad makes her feel everything and that she’ll never fully let him go. Moments after the fight, she proves her inner thoughts right: in her closet, she still has a teddy bear from Conrad who is wearing the infinity necklace. 

Taylor—who has become the MVP of Season 3—has her own little chat with Conrad. She scolds him for waltzing in when he finally remembered she existed; he counters by saying he never forgot. Now that Conrad is baring his feelings out in the open, he’s not relenting and it’s kind of amazing. But Taylor doesn’t think Conrad can be the person Belly needs and asks him to let her go. There’s no mention of Jeremiah’s extracurricular activities in Cabo, which would have been a nice counterpoint, but it seems like Conrad is mostly taking the higher ground in his crusade to get Belly back.

Suddenly, it’s the rehearsal dinner. Belly’s voiceover mentions that she’s avoiding looking at Conrad and wonders why he’s still there, and it seems like she’s trying to make him jealous by being lovey-dovey with Jeremiah. Conrad, to his credit, sits there without making a scene, though his brooding says it all. After the “happy” couple make individual toasts to their immediate family and friends (Jeremiahs’s to Conrad is, of course, that he’s loyal and that they are “brothers for life”), Adam approaches to congratulate them not just on their wedding but also on Jere accepting an offer to work at the firm full time. Belly can’t contain her shock. This wasn’t something that Jeremiah discussed with her and she wants them to make these types of decisions together. Jere falls back on his tried and true “if you don’t want me to, I won’t,” but Belly, sensing Conrad observing this tiff, smooths it over quickly. 

After dinner, the kids decide to go out for ice cream, but Conrad thankfully doesn’t accept the invite. He claims he’s tired from the previous 24 hours, and Jeremiah is a bit passive aggressive about him opting out of yet another activity. And to be fair, Conrad is supposed to be the best man! Or at least, co-best man. Jeremiah makes a backhanded comment about looking forward to Conrad’s speech on the big day and lets him skip. The ice cream trip proves to be clarifying for at least one couple. Denise and Steven finally kiss, and in a scene right out of 27 Dresses, they don’t feel anything at all and decide to just be friends and business partners.

Instead of going to bed, Conrad is joined near the pool by Laurel, who can tell that Conrad is struggling with the impending nuptials. When asked he says, “it’s killing me” and Laurel can’t do anything except tell him that she’s there for him. 

Laurel should’ve also checked in on Belly because she’s not doing so hot. Unable to sleep, she goes for a swim and realizes that she can’t marry Jeremiah with this secret between them. (I’d argue that you can if it’s one-sided, but it’s clear that she’s hiding something from him.) She breaks traditional wedding conventions and goes to his room to tell him about Conrad’s confession. Jere, understandably, is pissed and wants to go find him. He says that he knew Conrad has had feelings for her this summer—and maybe even longer—and that last part scares Belly because it means Conrad wasn’t lying about the depth of his feelings. So instead of admitting her own, she doubles down on the love between her and Jeremiah and says she doesn’t want to lose him. 

Despite those reassuring words, she wakes up without him. But he’s not just in the bathroom or downstairs; no one has seen Jeremiah on the morning of their wedding. Belly is freaking out and when she tells Steven about her conversation with her fiance the previous night, Steven (who is also MVP) says what we’re all thinking: why would you do that??? He quickly regains his composure and seeks out Conrad for a chat. Steven calls him out for both his feelings and his brooding, and says he’s insane for thinking she’d change her mind on the weekend of her wedding. For a season that has kind of painted Jeremiah as a villain, Steven gives him some much-needed kudos. Jere is his best friend who he sees everyday, who comes to Thanksgiving, and who has embraced their culture and calls their grandma her Korean title. Steven accuses Conrad of staying away for years, but Conrad cuts in to explain that this is why.  

Knowing that Jere has gone AWOL, Conrad joins the search party and eventually finds him sitting on a bench sulking. Their confrontation is immediate: he asks Conrad why he told Belly about his feelings, who replies saying he knows about Cabo. That’s the catalyst for Jeremiah’s first punch. Jere says Conrad treated Belly like shit, and asks him to admit his feelings. The new Conrad isn’t shying away from anything, so he does. Jere snarls that he gave Conrad his shot with Belly years ago; he doesn’t get another one. 

Conrad doesn’t fight it. Instead, he pushes a letter from Susannah into Jeremiah’s hands. But when he opens it, it’s addressed to Conrad. Jere reads it tearfully and what little we can read of it is clearly about Belly, driving the knife in further. When he’s done, he makes an irreversible statement: Conrad is dead to him, he’s not his brother anymore, and he never wants to see him again. Conrad is now uninvited to the wedding by both parties. 

While all of this is happening, Belly is—you guessed it—crashing out. She shares a tender moment with her mom, who also gives her a letter from Susannah, but Belly is distracted by her comment about the hydrangeas from Susannah’s garden, which was Conrad’s idea. Later, when Taylor arrives asking whether Jere’s disappearance is the worst thing in the world, Belly loses it and tells her to leave. Taylor (again, MVP!!) makes many good points: she doesn’t think Belly should marry Jere because she doesn’t think she wants to. After all, it’s been less than 48 hours since Belly told her about Christmas, about how she always pictured her wedding with Conrad waiting for her at the altar, and since she cried herself to sleep after Conrad came clean. But even more than that, Taylor feels like Belly has lost herself in her relationship with Jeremiah, as she’s put him before her Paris plans, her mom, and now even Taylor. It’s codependency, Taylor rightfully calls it like she sees it.

Belly doesn’t know how to take criticism, and while I’ll give it to her that this is a moment of very heightened emotions, she’s pretty awful to her best friend. She’s going in on Taylor, saying that she’d never take relationship advice from her. Thankfully, Steven walks in and defends Taylor. (Our two MVPs!!) He tells Belly that Taylor has been the best friend in the world to Belly. Angry, Steven leaves Belly alone to contemplate what to do. Downstairs, Steven compliments Taylor on how great of a friend she’s been to not just Belly, but also to him. He tells her that he and Denise aren’t together and it seems like it’s about to be a moment of reconnection for them when they’re interrupted by the wedding planner. Despite the intrusion, I’m glad that creator Jenny Han is allowing these two, who have suddenly become my two favorite characters, to find their way back to each other.

Belly’s M.O. is the continue acting as though nothing happened, so she carries on with getting dressed all alone, having alienated her closest friend. It’s a stark image compared to Jeremiah’s return, where his groomsmen are all waiting for him. He asks for a moment alone, sticks his hand in the ice bucket, and spots a note from Conrad in which he’s left Susannah’s ring for Belly. As the second stop on his farewell tour, Conrad also stops in Belly’s room, not for one last grand gesture or plea, but rather to say goodbye. He apologizes for screwing things up and hurting her, and tells her he’s not staying for the wedding and he won’t see her for a long time. It’s for the best; it hurts him to be near her like this. Before he goes, he says what she needed to hear from him and sends her off with a kiss on the head—being with her and loving her was worth it to him, even though he’s on the brink of losing so much. Her voiceover chimes in to say that a part of her always thought they’d find their way back to each other, but this goodbye felt final. Girl, if that’s not a sign…

After he leaves, there’s another knock at the door. This time, it’s Jeremiah. Initially, he tries to skate over the fact that he’s been MIA for the entirety of their wedding day. When he finally starts talking, he’s comparing himself to Conrad. “I’m the one who stays, Conrad is the one who leaves,” Jere says. Belly can’t help but react to Conrad’s name, and Jere notices it. He asks her to look him in the eyes and say she doesn’t love Conrad. Belly skirts around it, telling Jeremiah she loves him. He asks her again, and this time she admits that she still loves Conrad—a part of her always will—but she chooses Jere. 

That’s not good enough for Jere. He wants all of her. And for all of their so-called happiness, Jere has been keeping more secrets. He admits he knows about the Christmas she spent with Conrad because a neighbor mentioned seeing him there at the same time that she lied and said she was at the beach house alone. He knows that that’s when she started to love him again, and he was mad at her for lying about it so he picked a fight with her before his Cabo spring break. Part of Jere’s original wound is that he was always second-best to Conrad—we’ve seen how Adam has treated him, and Susannah’s letter being addressed to Conrad doesn’t help—and he tells Belly that he thought her saying yes to marrying him meant he’d finally be chosen. It’s hard not to feel for him in this moment, especially when he says that Belly has never looked at him the way she looks at Conrad. “You can’t marry me to erase Conrad,” he says, and coming from Jeremiah, those are some bars. He walks out the door, effectively calling off the wedding.

Belly and her friends and family are in a state of numbness. Laurel consoles her daughter and cleans up the dressing room, while Belly goes to the Cousins beach house to pack her things for what seems like the final time. She leaves the key that Jere gifted her on the counter while she’s flooded with memories dating back to childhood in that home. But it’s no longer hers, and she wheels her suitcase out the door and straight to the airport. 

We get another Taylor Swift needle drop in the form of “cardigan” as Belly uses the airline gift card from Laurel to buy a last minute flight to Paris. She’s in the line to board when she glances over, and sees Conrad and his baggage (pun intended) waiting for a flight back to California. This time, she’s not angry. There’s a look of hopefulness on her face as her body begins to move in his direction before cutting to the credits. And while I’m 100% Team Conrad, if Belly chooses a boy over Paris again, I might lose it. So join me next week to find out about her decision—and the fate of my sanity.

Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, Vulture and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.