Source: Entertainment Weekly

Are you Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah? It was the question asked on every talk show, red carpet, and social media Q&A this year. And it all stemmed from the third season of Jenny Han’s teen drama The Summer I Turned Pretty, which managed to penetrate the pop culture zeitgeist with its brotherly love triangle.

A week after the season 3 finale, Amazon released viewing numbers, revealing the final season had garnered 70 million viewers, a 65 percent increase from season 2. So it was not all that surprising when the streamer also announced that the show isn’t quite done yet: There will be a finale movie at some point in the future. But until then, it’s time to look back at what the drama has already achieved.

To honor the series as one of EW’s Entertainers of the Year, we asked one of the show’s biggest fans, Malala Yousafzai, to share why she loves it so much.

In August, I got a text from a friend: You’ve got to watch The Summer I Turned Pretty! I started with the pilot and blew through 17 episodes in a weekend, catching up to the third and final season. Like so many women around the world, I was hooked by Belly’s transformation from awkward adolescent to self-possessed adult, by the complicated family dynamics, by the pining, the brooding, the yearning. We love a love story — and Jenny Han gave us one for the ages. A girl down bad for two brothers? What an exhilarating mess.

As melodramatic as that might sound, the show worked because the cast portrayed first love as formative, not something to be trivialized or dismissed. Christopher Briney gave us a layered, complex hero in Conrad — tortured and sulky, sure, but also devoted, trustworthy, thoughtful. And Briney conveyed so much with his eyes, fleeting emotional flickers that told us everything his character couldn’t bring himself to say.

Gavin Casalegno brought genuine warmth and joy to younger brother (and romantic rival) Jeremiah. Given the hard job of presenting a plausible alternative to Conrad, Casalegno’s natural charisma made it easy to see why people were drawn to Jeremiah.

Ultimately, though, this is Belly’s story — and Lola Tung captured her coming-of-age with nuance and vulnerability. From her first appearance as a gawky, wide-eyed 15 year-old, she made us feel every flutter of hope, sting of disappointment and the emotional confusion that marks so much of our teens and 20s. By the final episode, I wasn’t just rooting for Belly — I felt proud to see her as an independent woman, striding down the streets of Paris in pursuit of her dreams.

How did a teenage love triangle keep millions of people (some, like me, nearing 30 years old) glued to our screens this summer? Because its creator, cast and crew channeled what it feels like to be young, still growing out of the children we were while making choices that determine the adults we will become. I can’t wait to see what Chris, Gavin and Lola do next… starting with the TSITP feature film, of course.

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