Warning: This article contains spoilers for the second season of The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The Summer I Turned Pretty‘s second season began streaming a night early with three premiere episodes for fans to fawn over. With love as the season’s central theme, it only took a moment for us to be swept off our feet — and we’re not the only ones.
Fans of Jenny Han’s book trilogy have a deep emotional attachment to a few extraordinary moments in It’s Not Summer Without You — the book which season two will follow, and one of them was the night Belly and Conrad drove to the Fisher beach house and enjoyed something that only happens on a rare occasion; a bit of magic that seemed crafted especially for them.
It was the middle of winter, and the forecast called for snow, so Belly snuck out and climbed into Conrad’s waiting car, and they drove to Cousins. There was only a 30 percent chance they’d see snow on the beach, but it was about more than that; it was about playing house in the home that shaped them.
Belly and Conrad were alone in the most perfect place on Earth, the place where magic hid, and all they had were hopes and dreams — somehow, it was enough. As we read about Belly making hot cocoa before sitting in front of the fire with Conrad, our hearts melted; seeing it play out in front of us was even sweeter.
The connection between Lola Tung’s Belly and Christopher Briney’s Conrad is magnetic, and we saw the look in their eyes as they took in every feature of each other, pieces of one another they’d seen before that felt different this time around. It was clear something important was building between them. This trip suddenly turned into something that would change things, change them.
So why did I give a spoiler warning for a scene fans knew was coming? For two reasons, if you’ve not yet read the books, you might not know this is an integral scene between them. Two, things were altered ever so slightly in the episode.
First, we see their dreams come true as snow begins falling on the beach; a beautiful scene plays out, and they act like kids together, playing in the sand, looking up at the flakes falling, and feeling so alive at the moment that they become untouchable. Until, of course, the cold set in.
Upon going inside to put on dry clothes, they opted to sit in front of the fire together, and everything Belly wanted was inches away from her; close enough to touch, and savoring it was the only thing that mattered. She reached out to touch Conrad, and he shivered; she laughed and called him cold-hearted.
“For everyone else maybe — not for you.”
Conrad smiled at her like he’d just told her a secret, hoping she’d keep it close to her forever. He was gentle with Belly; it’s almost as if he felt her too fragile to be himself with, like something about the broken pieces he hid would tarnish the perfection she exuded. Belly welcomed the fractured pieces of him, loving him enough to recognize their importance, too.
The way Han layered the most perfect moment in Belly’s life with her most heartbreaking is a level of perfection I wasn’t expecting. It genuinely took my breath away. Flashbacks to the night when Conrad and Belly shared cocoa, snow on the beach, and a lot of firsts played out as Belly walked up to that same beach house to see Conrad for the first time after everything changed — for the worst.
As she walked in and saw Conrad as a shell of himself, we’d just seen flashes of her sharing the most memorable night of her life with him. We heard Belly whisper to Conrad that it had only ever been him for her, and the next flash was Conrad looking at her and asking aloud why she was there. Emotions were high on opposite ends of the spectrum; it was all love and lust before flashing to anger and disdain, and it was as heartwarming as it was painful, beautiful, and sad, all in the same breath.
When Han said she recognized the importance of this scene, we had no idea that she was taking something fans adored and transforming it into something we’d never forget.
This Tweet says it all; it really is art — and if you’re anything like us and have stayed up far too late to watch the episodes twice already, we can all agree that so much of this season has already blown us away.
Nothing, however, beats cocoa, snow on the beach, and Belly and Conrad.
You can now watch the first three episodes of season two of The Summer I Turned Pretty on Prime Video, with new episodes airing each Friday.
