Everything ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty’ Cast Has Teased About the Finale

The Summer I Turned Pretty is entering its final chapter.

The hit Prime Video romantic comedy series, which is adapted from Jenny Han‘s bestselling book trilogy of the same name, is coming to a conclusion with a Sept. 17 finale. Although the show is based on the books, Han, who is also showrunner on the series, has teased that the endings may not be the same.

The coming-of-age series follows Isabelle “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) as she grows up spending her summers at the picturesque Cousins Beach with her family and friends. As she gets older, she finds herself in the middle of a love triangle between the Fisher brothers, Conrad (Christopher Briney) and Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno).

As the final season unfolded, Belly goes back and forth with the brothers before ending her relationship with Jeremiah for good and moving to Paris to find herself. However, the show departed from the book’s original ending, as it lengthened out the epilogue and leaves her relationship with Conrad up in the air before the series finale.

“There is so much that is going to surprise fans about how much we’re showing of Belly in Paris and the whole ending,” Han told Entertainment Weekly in September 2025 ahead of the series finale. “It’s not just an epilogue.”

Ahead of the dramatic The Summer I Turned Pretty series finale, here’s everything the cast and Han has said about the ending.

Sean Kaufman said the episodes ‘only get crazier’

Sean Kaufman, who plays Belly’s brother Steven, told PEOPLE in August 2025 that season 3 became more dramatic with each episode — and it won’t change with the finale.

“The one spoiler I’ll give is that I remember watching the third season, it just only gets crazier,” he shared. “Every episode, you think it can’t and it only gets crazier. That’s all I got to say.”

Although Kaufman steered away from any spoilers, he explained that fans will “feel fulfilled” after watching the finale.

“I know how much work that we, as an ensemble, put into this show,” he shared.

Han is expecting to ‘surprise people’

Although the Prime Video series is adapted from Han’s book series of the same name, she has added twists to the show and has kept readers on their toes.

“I do love surprising people,” Han told the Los Angeles Times in September 2025 ahead of the finale. “I feel strongly about wanting the audience to have the experience of not knowing what’s going to happen next … even though I know that others are probably restless to see how it all ends.”

Han added, “Anything could happen.”

Han purposely changed the book’s epilogue in the TV adaptation

As the season 3 episodes played out, many fans were surprised when they found out that the epilogue — which is just a few pages in her third book We’ll Always Have Summer — made up the final three episodes of the series.

However, Han said that when she was creating the television show, she had always wanted to expand upon Belly’s story.

“I kept adding more and more to the last scripts the longer I was in Paris, because I kept thinking of more that needed to be included,” Han told Entertainment Weekly. “There’s just so much to living on your own, for the first time, in a foreign place, and that’s important for Belly as she’s growing up.”

One of the major changes Han made to the show was having Belly relocate to Paris — not Spain, as she did in the book.

“I always planned to shoot the end in Paris,” Han told Entertainment Weekly. “I mean, the last book is named after Casablanca, so it always felt right. I’ve been putting in Paris Easter eggs since the very beginning of the show too, like how Belly was reading The Hunger Games in French, so I always was planning this — whether we shot there or not.”

Han further shared that she “always loved the idea of a girl going to find herself in Paris and fall in love.”

“Doing what I think is best for the story has always been my north star, and the story to me fit for these three seasons,” Han told the Los Angeles Times. “I appreciate that they respected that. To be able to say when, to be able to call it, is rare when something is doing well and making people money. But I have to be true to myself and what I think is best for the story.”

Han aimed for a ‘hopeful ending’ – but also one that was not ‘too neat’

While Han has kept tight-lipped in all of her interviews about plot details, she said that as a young adult author, she prefers a more “hopeful” ending — but also one that isn’t totally simple.

“I like a hopeful ending. I don’t like too neat of an ending,” she shared in a July 2025 episode of the Wild Card with Rachel Martin podcast. “Personally. But I really must insist on hope.”

The author wants her viewers and readers to leave her work feeling hopeful about both themselves and their future.

“I want them to feel, like, good about themselves and good about the world around them,” she said. “That’s important to me. I mean, the third season, the characters are older. They are now adults. They are in their 20s.”

As for the ending of the television series, Han laughed, teasing, “You will still feel hope, I think. I hope so.”

Lola Tung said the finale may leave some fans ‘heartbroken’

Besides fans being heartbroken over The Summer I Turned Pretty coming to an end, they may have to prepare themselves for an emotional finale, too.

“Everybody at some point throughout the show, throughout all three seasons, will be a little bit heartbroken,” Tung told E! News in July 2025. “It’s just how it goes. And there is heartache that comes with love and with big love stories and with complicated love stories.”

Although the ending may not be what every fan is hoping for, she hopes everyone is “satisfied” with the conclusion.

“We had so much fun filming it and I feel very proud of it. I think it’s going to be pretty epic,” she shared. “Jenny had such a vision and wanted a physical representation of Belly growing up and being in bloom. I think it ended up being really beautiful.”

Han said that Belly will make a ‘clear-cut decision’

During an August 2025 interview with CBS Mornings, host Gayle King asked Han, “Will there be a clear-cut decision made?”

“I would say so. I would say so,” Han coyly replied.

However, as the finale came closer, Han also told the Los Angeles Times that the ending may not be exactly what people expect. Prior to the finale, Conrad wrote love letters to Belly and was about to board a plane to Belly’s new home in Paris, but Han still shares, “He and Belly aren’t in the same place.”

“She’s saying that she’s ready for something new this summer, and he’s something old coming back into her life,” Han said. “Are they going to meet at the same place in the road?”

Tung cried after filming the final episode

Regardless of the character’s fates, the cast members had emotional moments while filming the series’ conclusion.

“It’s like months of your life working on something so intensely, so I always cry,” Tung told PEOPLE. “I cry about everything, happy, sad. I feel emotions in a big way and I think I feel grateful for that, because I’m able to sort of really take everything in at the end, which is really nice no matter what.”

Han echoed Tung’s sentiments, telling PEOPLE that wrapping the series was “emotional,” because she “put everything into the show.”