The third and final season of the hit Amazon Prime Video series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” reached viewership of over 25 million globally in the first week, according to Amazon Prime. The show has carried quite the social media presence with millions tuning in every week to find out which brother Belly (Lola Tung) will choose and have created trending hashtags like #teamconrad and #teamjeramiah.
The series follows a love triangle between a girl and two brothers, Conrad (Christopher Briney) Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno). During the three seasons, there has been plenty of back and forth between the brothers, but we finally know who her true love is.
The show is an adaptation of the three-book series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” by Jenny Han. The majority of the first and second season plotlines stayed true to the books, making it easy for viewers to predict what would happen next. In the third season, however, Han decided to take a new direction with the ending. The eighth episode of the season ended where the book had three pages left, leaving many questions unanswered. The last three episodes were full of new content, ensuring that viewers would need to come back every week to know the true ending. That made this the summer we learned patience.
This Prime series was one of the first shows to revert to weekly airing. During the rise in streaming service shows in the early 2020s, shows started airing entire seasons at a time, making the shows highly bingeable, but the popularity period was shortened. Since reverting, the show’s popularity has continued to grow from July to September this year.
This schedule led to lots of commentary and theories being made while viewers waited between episodes. This, in turn, has taught viewers to learn a sense of patience that we have slowly lost over the last few years. The break has also allowed a stronger community to grow, with online dialogue not only in the community but with influencers and companies bringing content in as well. As viewers, we started not only tuning in for the show, but also for everyone’s reactions afterward.
From rivalry brothers to an unexpected move to Paris, this late summer and early fall taught us the importance of patience and the possibility of open dialogue, both virtually and physically, with each other. Now the lesson is far from over, as we must wait for “The Summer I Turned Pretty” feature film.
