BRUTAL TRUTH: The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3, Episode 9 left fans divided as Jeremiah’s endless pity party took center stage 💔

Instead of romance and healing, the love triangle spirals into frustration, messy emotions, and a bitter taste fans can’t ignore. 🌪️

👉 The review that proves not every heartbreak hits the way it should…

There are very few things I love to see in a television show more than a great redemption arc. Some of my all-time favorite TV characters started out incredibly unlikable, including Game of Thrones‘ Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), Degrassi: The Next Generation‘s Spinner Mason (Shane Kippel), and Ugly Betty‘s Wilhelmina Slater (Vanessa Williams). There’s a right way and a wrong way to do character development. The right way includes making the character go through trials that leads them to realize that they were wrong, and the wrong way is… whatever The Summer I Turned Pretty is trying to do with Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno) right now.

Season 3, Episode 9, “Last Call” picks up immediately where last week’s episode left off. Belly (Lola Tung) decides not to go up to Conrad (Christopher Briney) at the airport, and instead, she embarks on a solo trip to Paris. Meanwhile, Jeremiah is playing the role of the angry, jilted groom, and everyone around him is coddling him because of it. It’s a transitional episode that makes way for Belly to experience some growth in Paris and everyone else to move on from the fallout of the wedding, but it feels like the show dragged out what could have been just a few scenes into an entire episode.

In ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3, Episode 9, Belly Decides To Stay in Paris

Belly made an exciting choice last episode when she decided to impulsively fly to Paris, but this week, she learns that the reality doesn’t quite match the dream. Giving up her study abroad spot for Jeremiah had its consequences, and Belly is unable to get it back. Now in Paris without a clear plan, Belly calls Laurel (Jackie Chung) to admit how lost she feels, and she agrees to come home as soon as she can. Belly’s backpack gets stolen, though, so she ends up going on a quest around the city to track it down. She winds up at a club, where she meets a group of friends: Gemma (Heartstopper‘s Corinna Brown), Max (Jahz Armando), Benito (Fernando Cattori), and Celine (Isaline Prévost).

At the club, Belly takes her backpack back from the person who stole it, and then she starts to find her place in Paris. She joins her new friends at a café and opens up to them about everything that happened with her wedding, and she seems to feel better about it. She still plans to go back home, though, and she even calls Jeremiah, looking for comfort and familiarity. Belly has spent the episode doubting herself, but when Jeremiah offers her the chance to undo it all and get back together, she finally wakes up. Belly ends things with Jeremiah for good, and then she makes the decision to stay in Paris and do this by herself. It’s a great conclusion for Belly’s arc in this episode, but the episode just doesn’t spend enough time on her.

In ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3, Episode 9, Steven and Taylor Get Back Together

The pacing in “Last Call” is much slower than the more recent episodes of this season, and it feels like it’s mostly just dragging out storylines from last week. One of these is Belly doubting Paris, and the other is the long-overdue reconciliation between Steven (Sean Kaufman) and Taylor (Rain Spencer). The two mostly spend the episode consoling Jeremiah. Steven is once again uncharacteristically harsh to Conrad, but Taylor shows some surprising empathy towards him. Taylor and Steven give a lot of focus to the messy love triangle, and Taylor even tells Steven that Jeremiah cheated on Belly in Cabo, but Steven’s reaction is ultimately underwhelming.

Steven and Taylor get back together, and while this is the ending that I wanted for them, it doesn’t quite feel earned. After spending a season apart due to a series of miscommunications, the two decide to take the risk of being together even though Taylor has a hard time with romance and might break Steven’s heart again. This relationship was ultimately a casualty of the season’s uneven pacing, but it’s nice to see them as a solid couple for the first time since the end of Season 2.

In ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Season 3, Episode 9, Jeremiah Gets Way Too Much Screentime

My biggest issue with “Last Call” was the slow pacing, but I was also frustrated with the continued victimization of Jeremiah. Instead of reflecting on why his fiancée left him on the day of their wedding, or why his brother felt like he had to bury his own feelings until finding out about his cheating, Jeremiah throws himself one heck of a pity party. Everyone around him falls for it, as Steven and Taylor spend the episode babysitting Jeremiah, and his frat brothers become an echo chamber of praise. Even Laurel and Conrad just stand there and take it when Jeremiah berates him, and it makes them look much better than he does. I wasn’t against a redemption arc for Jeremiah, but with only two episodes left and zero accountability taken, I just don’t see how that’s possible at this point.

“Last Call” feels like an odd detour after “Last Kiss,” but I’m still very excited for next week’s episode now that the post-wedding fallout is finally out of the way. As it stands, “Last Call” got The Summer I Turned Pretty where it needed to go, but there wasn’t much that made it stand out as an episode. I loved seeing Belly confront the guy who stole her backpack, and Adam (Tom Everett Scott) surprised me by actually handling things pretty well after Conrad opened up to him about his love confession to Belly. In the last two episodes of the series, what I still want to see are Belly’s adventures in Paris, her and Conrad’s eventual reconciliation, and some form of accountability for Jeremiah.

New episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty are released Wednesdays at 3:00 A.M. EST on Prime Video.