Steven and Taylor’s Chemistry Blows Jeremiah and Belly’s Away

Warning: Spoilers for The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 (but not the book) ahead!

As someone who was in grade school when The Summer I Turned Pretty trilogy was coming out, seeing Belly’s endgame come to fruition onscreen has been a long time coming.

I knew what it was gonna take to get there, of course. I anticipated plenty of ups and downs before I finally saw Lola Tung’s character ride off into the Cousins Beach sunset with her one true love, but what has snuck up on me is how invested I am in the series’ secondary love story: Steven and Taylor.

At this point, I hesitate to even call it secondary at all, because it feels so necessary to the crux of the show.

In the books, Taylor’s childhood crush on Steven reads as annoying, and you certainly don’t find yourself rooting for them to be together after their secret kiss ruins Belly’s birthday. Even after season 1 of the series, I was all for Steven (played by Sean Kaufman) and Shayla (Minnie Mills) to make it work.

Season 2 brought the possibility of a Steven and Taylor (Rain Spencer) romance more to the forefront, as the pair road-tripped to Cousins to help Belly, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney) save the beach house. A slow-burn between them ensued before they finally sealed it with a kiss — but plenty of bickering, a fist fight and an emotional breakup took place in between, making it feel like this coupling would never happen.

Now in season 3, they’ve had their fair share of on-again, off-again phases. The story picks up at the end of Belly and Taylor’s junior year of college, four years after season 2’s timeline, and Taylor and Steven can’t escape each other — even though they’re both actively in other relationships.

To get them to reckon with their true feelings for each other, author-turned-showrunnner Jenny Han, masterfully pulled out a twist and made it so Steven gets T-boned in his car right after confessing his real feelings for Taylor.

In that split second, everything changed for both characters. She confessed her love for Steven at his hospital bedside — “I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” she confessed, even though he was in a medically-induced coma. Steven, however, sees the accident as a wake-up call of the opposite nature: He’s done messing around with Taylor, who will never be on the same page.

I was again left feeling heartbroken that these two might never work it out.

That changed when episode 3, which dropped on July 23, saw the exes come face-to-face for the first time since their hospital breakup, and the weight of the love they so clearly had for each other was so palpably suffocated by their shared stubbornness, they couldn’t have an honest conversation.

It was intoxicating.

With just one nine-second, chemistry-laden longing gaze, Staylor blew any of Jeremiah and Belly’s earlier scenes out of the water. Like, it wasn’t even close.

You could see how badly Steven wanted to give in to Taylor, like he always has, and how scared Taylor was of the rejection she knew was coming. But that brief exchange between them was the romantic highlight of the whole hour-long episode.

Belly and Jeremiah’s romantic scenes, in comparison, lack that palpable, “I want to jump through the screen and talk some sense into you” intensity that typically comes with an onscreen couple whom you’d root for and support into the ground but can’t seem to ever get it together. (Think: Damon and Elena from The Vampire Diaries).

Three episodes in, the only moments that came close to that intoxicating Staylor moment were when Conrad learned that Belly and Jeremiah are engaged, and you could see his world stop turning for a beat longer than it should, as the news settled in. The second was when we saw sweet Conrad lying beside Belly on the floor after she tripped down the stairs in Cousins. Other than that, this love triangle hasn’t been giving much.

The irony here is twofold: The couple that is getting married is not quite delivering the chemistry we need, and the only time Belly does have palpable chemistry with someone, it’s with her fiancé’s brother.

The key element of a successful love triangle is, of course, for the audience to be torn between the two options. In season 2, the transition felt natural: I went from rooting for Conrad, to hating him for how he left Belly out to dry, to loving the idea of a second chance for Jeremiah, which was the goal.

In the case of season 3, though, at least so far, the pull toward Jeremiah, who Belly has just agreed to spend the rest of her life with, is seriously lacking, especially now that the two of them and Conrad have been in the same room.

As the episodes keep rolling out through the Sept. 17 series finale, I’m hoping to feel more of that oomph from Belly-Jere (so that I can at least see why they could be a couple I’d root for), but my need to see Steven and Taylor give in to their undeniable chemistry? That’s truly a non-negotiable.

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New episodes of The Summer I Turned Pretty season 3 drop Wednesdays at 12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET on Prime Video.