<i>The Summer I Turned Pretty</i> Season 3 Premiere Recap: An Explosive Start

Spoilers below.

The season 2 finale of The Summer I Turned Pretty seemed to have settled the question of who Belly would end up with between the two Fisher boys: She chose Jeremiah over Conrad. But fans of coming-of-age-stories know that a true love triangle is never really settled—it only shifts.

Season 3 began with two episodes that reveal the current norm for Belly and Jeremiah’s college relationship...and the winds that blow her back to Conrad. The first episode starts with Belly heading off to the fictional Finch College, joining Jeremiah on campus, before flashing forward three years. Belly is now a junior studying sports psychology after an accident took her off the volleyball court. The couple is still going strong—even with Jeremiah active in his fraternity—and he promises that they will be “doing this for the rest of our lives.”

However, Belly’s mom, Laurel, warns her to spread her wings a little and explore more. Jeremiah is graduating soon and Belly has one more year at Finch. The rest of their lives is a long time.

Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother Susannah is gone, but her memory lurks in every corner. The Fishers and Belly’s family are set to reunite at an upcoming garden dedication and memorial ceremony where the brothers are set to give a joint eulogy. Belly is quick to notice how Conrad is struggling with finding the words to say, well, anything, but especially about his mom. He starts off the season dating someone new, a lovely gal named Agnes, but the heavy implication is that therapy has still not helped him get over his lost (first) love.

A few issues pop up quickly to send all three points of the love triangle in different directions. Jeremiah gets the bad news that he’ll be repeating a semester and not graduating after all, because he failed to take a few core classes. Belly finds out she got off the waitlist for a study abroad program, which means she’ll spend the next semester in Paris. And Conrad gets a clinic job with Agnes (who’s now just a friend) at Stanford for the summer—which means missing his mother’s memorial.

So what is everyone else up to? Steven starts the third season focused on his finance internship after an early graduation from Princeton—that is, when he’s not fixated on Taylor. The pair are still sneaking around and hooking up, but there’s more on the line now. They’re both in separate relationships, setting up a challenging dynamic.

Another hookup that threatens to tear apart a happy couple comes to light in this episode: It turns out that during his previous breakup—or was it just a break?—with Belly, Jeremiah slept with Taylor’s sorority sister, Lacie Barone, during spring break in Cabo.

Belly gets the awful news at a party when she overhears Lacie gossiping about their night together and confronts her boyfriend, telling him he “ruined everything.” Naturally, Jeremiah tries to plead his case, saying they weren’t technically together. But technicalities don’t get him very far with Belly. Her feelings are deeply hurt, and there’s now another crack in their foundation. Cue Taylor Swift.

The show doesn’t leave what happened to our imaginations. In episode 2, viewers get a series of flashbacks that allow us to make our own call. Was it a break? A breakup? Did Jeremiah cross a line that can’t be uncrossed? In the flashbacks, we see how Jeremiah was acting moody and distant in his relationship with Belly before heading to Cabo, dropping off on texts and other forms of communication. He then never admitted what went down during one hot beach night. Though a flashback implies he tried, he didn’t try that hard.

Back in the present, Belly is struggling with the revelation, finding reminders of her love for Jeremiah everywhere. She is also feeling distant from Taylor, who shares a sorority with Lacie. Little does she know, Taylor reads Jeremiah the riot act for how he behaved, shaming him up and down the street.

The flashbacks also reveal that Belly has her own secret: Last Christmas, while she and Jeremiah were dating, she and Conrad spent some quality time together in Cousins. It seems as though it was strictly platonic (who knows what other flashbacks we will see in future episodes), but she never told her boyfriend/his brother.

The episode also provides more insight into how Taylor and Steven are connecting, or struggling to. During a dramatic drive, Steven confesses he’s split with his girlfriend Mia and wants to be with Taylor, saying he loves her. This is apparently not what Taylor has been dreaming of hearing, because she hops out of the vehicle. As Steven tries to U-turn to follow her, he gets slammed by another car, sending him to the hospital with a traumatic brain injury.

Belly is unable to get in touch with Laurel, because (gasp!) she has just slept with her ex-husband, John (Steven and Belly’s dad), after meeting up at a conference. But Conrad hears about the accident and manages to connect Steven to a higher-up doctor at the hospital. (His boss at Stanford has a mutual friend in the neurology department.) Conrad turns down an offer to take a day off and join Belly, then ends up getting fired anyway after making a big, distracted mistake.

Finally, Belly is joined by her mom and Jeremiah at Steven’s bedside, where his condition has stabilized. The horror of her brother’s accident and another heartfelt apology from Jeremiah has softened Belly, allowing her to forgive him. And Taylor was finally able to tell Steven how she feels—while he was unconscious. But after he wakes up, he tells her that they’re not right for each other after all, and Taylor is crushed. One day, these two will be able to say “I love you” at the same time.

But the biggest news? Jeremiah and Belly really do want to be together forever: They’re getting married! During some time alone at the hospital, Jeremiah apologizes for what he’s done and promises to do whatever it takes to earn Belly’s trust back. In their lovedrunk state, Jeremiah proposes to Belly, and she blurts out “yes” before he can even finish his sentence.

Nothing like a grand proposal after the reveal of a serious betrayal. It’s going to be an explosive summer.