Unpopular Opinion: I'm Team Jeremiah And Always Will Be
I knew I was team Jeremiah the moment he told Belly she was the main character in Season 1 and I don’t have the patience for an emotionally unavailable man — which Conrad continues to be. With #TeamJeremiah having 1.2B views on TikTok, I know I’m not alone, but the Jeremiah girlies still fall second to the whopping 2.3B views that #TeamConrad holds strong.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty.
The hit Prime Video series loosely follows author and producer Jenny Han’s trilogy The Summer I Turned Pretty and It’s Not Summer Without You. Throughout the weekly released episodes of Season 2, TSITP fans have been taking to the internet to fight the fight as to whose team they were on and if they were holding strong through the plot twists and game-changing moments each episode brought.
TikTok/@team.jeremiah596
TikTok/@team.jeremiah596
Someone in the comments of this post brought up, “Jeremiah’s best lines in Conrad’s worst doesn’t seem fair,” and at first, I was in agreement and had a moment of doubt, but that was until someone rebutted with, “Jere’s worst lines are never towards belly though, interesting isn’t that?”. This has been a key point for me throughout both seasons. Conrad’s feelings regarding Belly as both a friend and a romantic partner seem to ebb and flow along with how he is feeling, what’s going on in his life, and what he is perceiving from her all without asking or communicating about it. From day one, Jeremiah always had Belly’s best interest in mind and communicated to her both when he needed her and when he wasn’t able to emotionally support her versus leaving her in a time of need as Conrad has.
As someone whose first crush and first kiss was with her childhood best friend, I can tell you that I feel the pull Belly has on Jeremiah and the gut-wrenching patience he grips onto as he waits for her to come around. But, as someone who also tried – with everything in me – to keep my best friend, just my friend, after trying to direct my romantic interest to someone else I thought was right for me, I understand the burning desire Belly feels to reconnect with Jeremiah on a different level than with Conrad because that best friend is now my lifelong partner.
We all knew that tension was building between Jeremiah and Belly throughout earlier episodes in the season, but I was holding my breath all of Episode 6 and wasn’t expecting the kiss of the decade. While watching with one of my best friends, she described the kiss perfectly: the perfect combination of lust and love. Jeremiah not only wanted her, but he needed her and we saw that come to fruition in that kiss.
“It wasn’t like a first kiss because we knew each other too intimately for that. And it wasn’t like a last kiss because we’d only just begun. It was the kiss you spend your whole life waiting for. The kiss you wish would swallow you whole so you’d always be living it. This was the kiss of a lifetime, shared with a woman I’d spent a few lifetimes waiting for.”
It’s easy to look at the relationship between Conrad and Belly and think that you want the dark, mysterious, serious, and deep-rooted relationship that they have. It’s in every book and every movie since the beginning of time. The whirlwind and once-in-a-lifetime romance like Allie and Noah in The Notebook, Paige and Leo in The Vow, and Savannah and John in Dear John. But what about Elle and Noah in Kissing Booth, Peter and Lara-Jean in To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, and even Troy and Gabriella in the High School Musical trilogy? The couples that were not just lovers, but all-around friends, experienced everything together and just had fun.
I’ve always rooted for the friends-to-lovers trope because the strongest relationship I’ve had in my life stemmed from a deep-rooted friendship that grew into an unmatched romantic connection that went deep below the surface. Belly and Jeremiah’s relationship is full of the light-hearted breath of fresh air the younger me needed in a partner and everything the adult me continues to keep alive in my marriage. They have a relationship that makes you feel alive and Belly and Conrad have a relationship that you have to fight to keep alive. They’re two very different situations and one takes a lot of energy that may or may not survive a lifetime.
After watching Season 1 and Season 2, Han’s on-screen adaptations haven’t had the best track record for staying 100% true to the book and even have fans questioning whether there could be a major plot twist or change to the ending in Season 3. Thankfully, we’re guaranteed to find out because per Han’s Instagram post, Season 3 is officially a go and we’ll have not only eight episodes but ten!
Regardless that I might’ve once been a book version of Team Conrad, I’m hoping that Jere will be the leading man in the rest of Belly’s on-screen story.
FEATURED IMAGE VIA THE SUMMER I TURNED PRETTY/SCREENSHOT/AMAZON
