Like an invisible string pulling teenage heroine Belly Conklin to Cousins Beach, Prime Video’s hit series “The Summer I Turned Pretty” will return for a third season with an expanded episode order, the streamer announced on Thursday.
Based on Jenny Han’s bestselling YA romance trilogy about a teenager’s coming of age amid the whirlwinds of first love and crushing loss (but living for the hope of it all), “Summer” debuted last year at No. 1 on Prime Video. The popularity of the series even sent the novels back to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list, and it has only grown since.
The series, which stars Lola Tung, Christopher Briney and Gavin Casalegno, returned for its second season in July and more than doubled its Season 1 worldwide viewership in three days, according to Prime Video. Thanks to the youthful love triangle at its center and a soundtrack filled with even more Taylor Swift tunes, Season 2 is already one of the 10 most-watched seasons in the streamer’s history.
“We’ve been delighted to see the passion with which fans have embraced ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’ making ‘Summer’ Fridays an entertainment phenomenon,” said Vernon Sanders, the head of television at Amazon and MGM Studios, in a statement. “Jenny Han is a gifted storyteller, whose fans have been clamoring for the third chapter of this story. We’re excited today to share the news that they have a lot more ‘Summer’ to look forward to.”
Along with book sales, the musical artists featured in the series saw a boost in streams and the stars of the series saw their social media follower counts skyrocket when the series premiered in 2022. The series boasts needle drops from high-profile artists like Swift and Olivia Rodrigo. To date, the #thesummeriturnedpretty hashtag has racked up more than 10 billion views on TikTok, a number that’s sure to grow as the eighth and final episode of Season 2 approaches on Aug. 18.
Season 3 will be 10 episodes long, extending the narrative runway for Han and company to chart the highly anticipated conclusion to Belly’s love life — an outcome fans have been heatedly debating for years.
Season 1, which was adapted from Han’s 2009 novel “The Summer I Turned Pretty,” introduced viewers to 15-year-old Belly, who finds herself torn between the brothers she grew up spending summers with in fictional Cousins Beach: sunny Jeremiah (Casalegno) and brooding Conrad Fisher (Briney).
Season 2 follows the events of the book sequel “It’s Not Summer Without You,” in which a reunion with Jeremiah and Conrad forces Belly to revisit her whirlwind romance and break up with the elder Fisher brother and her evolving feelings for both boys.
The season also adds new characters and storylines that are not in the novels. Elsie Fisher (“Eighth Grade”) and Kyra Sedgwick joined the ensemble as Skye and Aunt Julia, while David Iacono, Sean Kaufman, Rain Spencer and Jackie Chung returned as Belly’s friends and family, each with expanded character arcs of their own.
Per Prime Video, the third season was officially renewed prior to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes and will not begin production until a resolution with the AMPTP is reached.
As with the first two seasons, which followed the first and second books of the trilogy, fans can expect the third season to follow the events of the third novel, “We’ll Always Have Summer.” But will Han flip her own script and update “Summer’s” endgame — set in Belly’s college years and beyond — where she makes the choice between Team Jeremiah and Team Conrad?
“People think they want exactly what’s in the book, but I think that there’s real fun in the not knowing too,” Han teased to The Times on the “Summer” set last year. As Swift would say, it’s a roller coaster kind of rush — and that’s the way Han loves to tell Belly’s story.
