“Last Christmas,’ the second episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty Season 3, picks up not long after the bombshell discovery of the premiere. Belly is rethinking everything about her relationship with Jeremiah after finding out he hooked up with a girl named Lacie in Cabo when he thought they had broken up. Resident angsty pop girl Olivia Rodrigo’s “Lacy” (an apt title) scores Belly’s memory of their big fight before the trip, in which her frustration with Jeremiah’s carelessness blew up into a relationship-altering fight. When Jeremiah forgets to tell her that he booked a last minute flight for spring break, he perceives her annoyance with him in the moment as an overall judgment on his frat life and lack of direction—especially compared to his brother Conrad.
The fight escalates and Jeremiah suggests that they end it, meaning he’s likely felt these shortcomings for a while. In the heat of the moment, Belly agrees. They spend spring break apart, and Taylor consoles her while she’s waiting for a text from him that never arrives. “Men are like dogs who hide when they’ve picked a fight,” Taylor reasons, telling Belly to be patient and go to him once they’re back at school. His lack of fight should be a red flag, but Belly persists. He tells her that he’s a total asshole and that he fucked up, but doesn’t come clean about what exactly happened in Cabo—partly because Belly won’t let him get a word in edgewise. He gifts her a puka shell bracelet and they get back together as if nothing happened.
Of course, that was then. Now, Belly is bedridden and refusing visitors—even a breakfast burrito from Taylor. On some level, Belly connects Taylor to Lacie because they’re sorority sisters, and Taylor takes this out on Jeremiah when she runs into him outside of Belly’s dorm. He retaliates and brings up her tryst with Steven and her cheating on her boyfriend Davis, but Taylor doesn’t care. “You were supposed to be the ideal,” she accuses before walking away.
Both Belly and Jeremiah are sleep walking through their heartbreak. Belly turns to her roommate Anika for support, lamenting about how everything in her life “leads to him”—her summer job, her summer plans, and her future. Everything on campus reminds her of Jeremiah, so she decides to find her own escape route. She calls her mom asking for her birth certificate, and informs her that she’s applying for a passport because she got into the Paris study abroad program. Laurel is at a literary conference, but is excited that her daughter is expanding her horizons, though she doesn’t yet know the real reasons that brought this on.
Jeremiah, meanwhile, tells his frat bro Redbird that he’s losing the best part of himself and asks him for advice. Surprisingly, Redbird delivers: He agrees that Jer and Belly were on a break, but that he should’ve come clean about it when he got back from Cabo. Now, Redbird suggests, he needs to stop apologizing and start showing Belly how he feels. Jeremiah takes this advice and runs to Belly, who asks him more details about the hook-up with Lacie. They slept together twice, he admits, but he cried in the shower after. It’s not a good enough explanation for Belly, who is hurt by the details she asked for.
But it turns out that Belly is hiding something too, though her secret is far less nefarious than Jeremiah’s. Last Christmas, while her family and Jeremiah were spending the holiday in various places, Belly drove herself up to the Cousins beach house. She thought she’d be up there alone, but Conrad arrived unannounced after his travel was canceled at the last minute. The former lovers hadn’t spent this much time together since their break-up, but they quickly fell back into easy patterns with one another. After she fell down the stairs, he picked her up and carried her to the couch; they got cozy, solving crosswords and watching old romantic movies together. Then one morning, Conrad is gone without a trace, and Belly never told Jeremiah about their few days together.
While it’s not overt cheating like Jeremiah, Belly admits to herself (and via voiceover) that part of her will always love Conrad. She discovers that he left her a sticky note wishing her a Merry Christmas, and she fills out one of the unanswered clues in the crossword puzzle Conrad was working on. 12 Down, a reference to another Jenny Han novel: P.S. I Still Love You.
Things aren’t any better for Steven and Taylor. Steven doubles down on his romantic gestures by breaking up with his unseen girlfriend Mia and immediately asking Taylor to dinner. But when he arrives at the sorority house to pick her up, she gives him the cold shoulder before blowing up at him when she finds out that his relationship is over. Taylor tells Steven that she hopes he didn’t end things with Mia for her, and that they work better when things are casual. Steven counters by asking her to try and by admitting that he loves her. This admission clearly scares Taylor and it sets her off. She demands that Steven stop the car and let her out, and even after she starts storming away, he doesn’t give up.
Unfortunately Steven turns the car around a little too hastily and gets hit head-on by an oncoming truck. He survives but is in a medically-induced coma when Belly arrives at the hospital. Taylor handles calling the Fisher siblings and Belly and Steven’s parents, and when Jeremiah arrives, he keeps his distance but provides support by staying in the lobby. The Conklin parents are unreachable at their conference, where they’ve reignited their romance and slept together after getting wine drunk. When Laurel finally checks her phone, she immediately feels guilty that she wasn’t there for her kids in their time of need, and it’ll be interesting to track how this affects her burgeoning reunion with Steven and Belly’s dad.
Belly and Taylor stay by Steven’s side, and when they get a moment alone, Taylor tearfully admits that she loves Steven—she was just scared to admit it, and afraid that one day he’d change his mind and decide that she wasn’t worth it. She vows to give them a chance once he recovers and tells Belly that she’s going to break up with Davis to give them a shot. She gives Belly some advice too: If being with Jer is what she wants, she shouldn’t throw away four years worth of love and memories over this mistake.
Conrad is blissfully unaware of all of the complications back home until he gets a call from Taylor about Steven’s accident. He’s in his first rotation at the competitive summer clinic, living his own version of Grey’s Anatomy complete with a tough doctor that’s reminiscent of season 1 Dr. Bailey. He and Agnes are competing to make a name for themselves and right now, Agnes is winning that battle. When he gets the news about Steven, he asks his new boss Dr. Namazy if she can call in a favor at his hospital’s neurology department. She agrees and asks Conrad if he needs to take the day to emotionally deal with the news, but he refuses and decides to push through the feelings instead of confronting them.
That proves to be the wrong decision. When he accidentally mislabels a blood draw, Dr. Namazy takes drastic action and dismisses him from the program. He tries to appeal but she reads him, saying that he needs to learn how to balance his emotions and learn his limits. Agnes stops by later to double down on the doctor’s observation, urging him to pay attention to and face his feelings. “They’ll run you and not the other way around,” Agnes warns him. She’s talking about Belly, but it surely applies to his complicated feelings about his brother and the grief about his mom that he’s working through. Seemingly heeding her advice, Conrad texts Belly about Steven, breaking their no-contact since the previous Christmas, and they have a short conversation that certainly sparks old feelings for both of them.
When Steven wakes up with Taylor by his side, he’s had an epiphany. Unfortunately, it’s the opposite of Taylor’s tearful bedside confession. The car accident was a wake-up call that snapped things into focus for Steven: Things with Taylor will never work, he’s decided, and he was foolish to think otherwise. It’s a shot to the heart for Taylor, but instead of fighting for it, she allows him to make this decision for both of them. It’s heartbreaking to see Taylor continue to not stand up for herself, and hopefully it won’t be the last time she has the opportunity to be honest with Steven.
Belly, meanwhile, has decided to take Taylor’s words to heart and look past Jeremiah’s indiscretion. Seemingly spurred by her sudden contact with Conrad, her voiceover claims that while Conrad was her first love, Jeremiah is her last. Belly takes Jeremiah back, but instead of taking things slow after such a monumental lapse in trust, the couple accelerates. Belly says yes, reading his mind, before Jeremiah can even get the words out of his mouth. He backs up to ask her properly, though he doesn’t get down on one knee: “Isabella Conklin, will you marry me?” Of course, Belly says yes, and ends the “Last Christmas” engaged, which throws many things into question. Will she go to Paris? Will this push Conrad further away? Will “Bellyjere” actually get married? After a jam-packed two-episode premiere, it seems we’re in for quite the rollercoaster for the remainder of this final season.
Radhika Menon (@menonrad) is a TV-obsessed writer based in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared on Paste Magazine, Teen Vogue, Vulture and more. At any given moment, she can ruminate at length over Friday Night Lights, the University of Michigan, and the perfect slice of pizza. You may call her Rad.