The Show of the Summer Was Supposed to Have a Grand Finale. Then Came the Fake-Out.

After briefly considering staying up until 3 am Wednesday to catch the finale as soon as it went online, I compromised by waking up at the for-me-ungodly hour of 6:45 that morning, and a little over an hour later, I thought that was a wrap on TSITP . The show's gastrically monikered main character, whose nickname is short for Isabel (played by Lola Tung), ended up with the older and more emotionally mature of the two brothers, Conrad (Christopher Briney), after the two reunited on a train bound for Brussels from Paris. Back in the US, the younger Fisher brother, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno), had gotten over breaking up with Belly on their wedding day by developing the same sort of spontaneous interest in cooking that suddenly struck Brooklyn Beckham a few years ago. He also paired off with another girl, Denise (Isabella Briggs), less because they seemed right for each other than because the show had a B-plot with a different love triangle this season that left her without a romantic prospect, and I guess they both have curly hair and can find common ground over mousse.

Though I wished Conrad and Belly's final-hour reconciliation had managed to inject more surprise and less contrivance into the inevitable, there's one thing I was convinced the show nailed: It made a choice, once and for all, that resolved its central love triangle . In real life, I might advise a girl torn between two brothers to, in addition to seeking ample mental health support, date some other people and spend a few years growing up before so much as considering committing to one of them. But the universe of TSITP was never going to brook such ambiguity, nor should it. In the world of the show, the question of which brother would prevail was a zero-sum game, and now it had been answered: Belly chose Conrad, period. At a time when Hollywood's addiction to intellectual property guarantees that many stories just keep going indefinitely, much to their detriment, here was one that seemed poised to end decisively and unambiguously.

Joke's on me, I guess? Midday Wednesday, Prime Video announced that it had greenlit a Summer I Turned Pretty movie. “There is another big milestone left in Belly's journey, and I thought only a movie could give it its proper due,” said Jenny Han, the show's creator and the author of the books on which it's based. (She will also direct the film. She is also now sort of my enemy.) Personally, I'm having trouble imagining any path the movie could take that wouldn't cheapen the so-called ending we just got. Let's say the movie keeps Conrad and Belly together and it's about them getting married. The series was defined by a love triangle, so I'm not exactly excited by the prospect of a conflict-less movie in which these two are living their happily ever after—boring and majorly lacking in the yearning that has been so central to the show. But if the movie is about them breaking up or, worse, Belly zigzagging back to the other brother, then what was the point of it all?

I truly think an underdiscussed aspect of the show's oversize success this season was that it was going to end. I was dumb enough to admire what I thought the show was doing, recognizing that three is the upper limit of television seasons you can wring out of one love triangle. It even seemed a rare improvement on the old model of television: Where TV shows used to hope to get renewed at the end of each season, usually with an eye on staying on the air as long as possible, TSITP 's creative team could dispense with filler episodes and uncertainty and plan for three seasons, one for each book in the trilogy on which the story is based. Would the show have achieved phenomenon status this summer if it hadn't been for the audience's false belief that it was building toward an actual conclusion? People like stories that end! A proper ending suggests a narrative that's been planned out with care in a way that best serves the characters and their arcs. A surprise movie suggests the cha-ching noise, and poor Lola Tung being held hostage by Amazon Prime for another year, and honestly not much else I'm interested in seeing, though I'm sure Liquid IV will be very excited about more sponsorship opportunities.

But there I go, getting all worked up about a show I absolutely should not be getting worked up over. The Summer I Turned Pretty is hardly the first media property to execute this sort of fake-out, and it won't be the last, because these tactics effectively grab audiences' attention. I have now calmed down enough to the point that I can admit that it would be kind of nice to see all these chuckleheads again, despite everything, so it's not as if I won't be tuning in when this cinematic event eventually happens. All I'm saying is that a nice thing about summer is that it ends, or at least it used to. Global warming and The Summer I Turned Pretty : two absolutely equally oppressive forces that don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon.