The long-awaited mess that was the wedding day of Belly (Lola Tung) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) is officially over, yet the third and final season of The Summer I Turned Pretty still has a little ways to go. The entire third book in the Jenny Han trilogy on which the show is based focuses on the buildup to the wedding, while the epilogue gives a brief explanation of what follows in the next few years after. Now, in the show, Belly is in Paris to get an early start to her semester abroad, and to experience some much-needed growth away from Jeremiah.

For the final episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty, the show has the chance to honor the events of the epilogue in more detail, and to fill in the blanks about what happened in Belly’s life in the years following her failed wedding to Jeremiah. In the book, the epilogue’s main purpose is to explain how Belly and Conrad (Christopher Briney) ultimately found their way back to each other, and it’s likely that the show will follow suit. There is one line from the ending of the final book in the trilogy that should be left out of the show, though.

The End of ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Trilogy Sees Belly Reflecting on Her Relationship With Jeremiah

Before its epilogue, the third book in the The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy ends with Belly and Jeremiah calling off their wedding. From several years in the future, Belly reflects on the moment when she and Jeremiah called off the wedding.. Like in the show, Belly explains that she could tell that Jeremiah still would have married her, even though she was still in love with Conrad. Still, though, Belly made the choice to let the wedding fall apart, which she thinks back on a few years down the line. Belly says, “Sometimes I wondered if we had rushed into getting married because we were both trying to prove something to the other and maybe even ourselves. But then I think no, we really did have the best of intentions. It, we, just weren’t meant to be.”

It is understandable that Belly would give Jeremiah the benefit of the doubt when looking back on their past together, particularly because she had a lot of guilt for almost marrying him when she was still in love with Conrad. Still, though, this line wouldn’t make as much sense when adapting it for the show. Jeremiah was certainly flawed in the book, and made quite a lot of mistakes, but the show has fleshed out Belly and Jeremiah’s dynamic even more to reveal the issues in every one of their interactions. Jeremiah was always leaning on Belly to comfort him and bend to his every need, to the point where she made so many compromises, that she lost who she was. Their relationship was just not as simple as both of them loving each other and having the best intentions. Jeremiah proposed to Belly to try to erase his cheating, and Belly primarily said yes to erase her love for Conrad.

Jeremiah Needs to Take Accountability for His Actions in ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Final Episodes

Jeremiah played the victim throughout his relationship with Belly, and he used this to manipulate her into letting him make all the important decisions for their wedding. As of the wedding episode, “Last Kiss,” Jeremiah could continue to play the victim after basically being left at the altar. It would be easy for Jeremiah to be treated like the jilted groom for the rest of the show, but the much more interesting thing would be seeing him take accountability for his actions and actually try to change. Jeremiah has been a selfish character throughout The Summer I Turned Pretty, and he’s been especially frustrating in Season 3. The season has given a deeper look into Jeremiah’s relationship with Adam (Tom Everett Scott), though, and the insecurities that Jeremiah developed due to Adam’s obvious preference for Conrad. As such, this could be the start of Jeremiah’s redemption arc.

Jeremiah is now on the path to becoming Adam, and he’s even going to be working for Adam in the fall. Jeremiah needs a major wake-up call to get him to reflect on his behavior and actually try to change. That could be the wedding falling apart, or perhaps Jeremiah might finally find out about the affair that Adam and Kayleigh (Emma Ishta) had eight years before. Although the focus in the last three episodes will definitely be mainly on Belly and her journey, it’s important that the show devotes time to making Jeremiah take accountability for his actions, if it is planning to redeem him. Jeremiah was selfish in his relationship with Belly, and he’s shown no real signs of growth since the start of the show. It’s not enough for the show to try to gain sympathy points for Jeremiah at this point; he needs to actually acknowledge that he doesn’t want to be this person anymore.

Jeremiah needs to actually work for his redemption arc over the course of the final episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty, and this starts with the show cutting Belly’s line that absolves Jeremiah of everything that he did wrong in their relationship. It’s too much of a simplification to say that they both just wanted to get married out of love for each other, when the entire engagement was a rushed response to Belly finding out that Jeremiah cheated on her. The Summer I Turned Pretty has a ways to go before redeeming Jeremiah, but the first step would be admitting that he and Belly were together for the wrong reasons, and then allowing him to take accountability for how he acted in their relationship.

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