Why is everyone watching The Summer I Turned Pretty? Nostalgia, teen drama, soccer teams and Taylor Swift

Anyone following a football team on TikTok, whether it’s Napoli, Inter, Paris Saint-Germain, or Bayern Munich, will have noticed a strange trend in recent days: teams are openly choosing sides between "Team Conrad" and "Team Jeremiah." These names refer to Conrad and Jeremiah Fisher, the brothers at the center of the love triangle that has been impossible to escape this summer if you have even one social media account. The Fishers are, in fact, the protagonists of the Amazon Prime series The Summer I Turned Pretty, based on the trilogy of novels written by Jenny Han, now in its third and final season.

The Summer I Turned Pretty, the plot

The plot, like that of any teen-drama/young-adult, is essentially simple and predictable: Belly Conklin (Lola Tung) is a teenager who has spent every summer of her life at the beach house of her mother’s friend, Susannah, in the company of Susannah’s sons - Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). The two boys have watched her grow up and grown up alongside her (they’re all the same age). Since childhood, she has secretly been in love with Conrad but, as she grows older, she realizes she’s also drawn to Jeremiah. One is reassuring and introverted, the other charismatic and outgoing, and this may be the first teen series where the male leads are more interesting than the protagonist, who comes across as a better-dressed Bella Swan.

The three seasons span a period of four years, and the themes and structures that shape the series are classics of the genre: the aforementioned love triangle, the loss of a loved one, misunderstandings and lack of communication, the debutante ball, the college choice, and so on. Everything takes place mostly in the comforting small town of Cousins Beach - a fictional place meant to evoke Cape Cod - and is filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, where other cult teen dramas like Dawson’s Creek and One Tree Hill were shot. Meanwhile, watch parties for the third season are being organized all over the world: I personally haven’t seen such enthusiastic and participatory ones since the airing of Game of Thrones.

Why is everyone watching The Summer I Turned Pretty?

Several complementary elements have helped make the series popular across a broader demographic: its events unfold in cozy, familiar settings (somewhat like the summer version of Stars Hollow from Gilmore Girls), it has strong continuity with romantic comedies of the ‘90s - Belly’s brother Steven even has a poster of 10 Things I Hate About You hanging in his room - and it features a recognizable and clean aesthetic. In season three, Belly wears pieces by Reformation, Dôen, Brandy Melville, and SKIMS, while the two male leads dress in Ralph Lauren polos and Levi’s jeans. The love triangle itself isn’t a groundbreaking narrative device - just think of Materialists by Celine Song, coming out on September 4 - but in The Summer I Turned Pretty it carries a different weight, as it is intertwined with the protagonist’s own coming of age. The audience gets glimpses of her childhood through brief flashbacks, like a kind of collective archive of our very first crushes.

Taylor Swift’s influence

Above all, what has radically changed the trajectory of The Summer I Turned Pretty goes by the name of Taylor Swift. The series’ microcosm is an extension of Swift’s songs, which can be read as an additional narrative layer, often serving as storytelling devices. Author Jenny Han revealed in an interview that she listened to Swift’s Fearless album while writing the novels, published between 2009 and 2011, and that she personally wrote a letter asking the singer for permission to use her music in the show. In season one, for instance, Taylor Swift’s songs accompany every important moment between Belly and Conrad: their first meeting (Lover), the almost-kiss (False God), their real first kiss (This Love), and the debutante ball (The Way I Loved You).

In season three, it’s Swift’s latest album that makes an appearance (The Tortured Poets Department, released on April 19, 2024): two of its tracks (Robin and loml) appear in the seventh episode of the season. In this episode (SPOILER!), Belly once again finds herself torn between two choices: the upcoming wedding with Jeremiah and the consequences of Conrad’s sudden confession. To discover what her final choice will be - and which other Taylor Swift songs will crown the love story - we’ll have to wait until September 17, the air date of the season finale.