how we can still have a good ending
I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks the pacing has been a little off in episodes 9 and 10, enough that I’m worried an ending where Belly and Conrad get together will now feel nice but unearned.
But!!! There’s actually a way it could still work and not feel rushed!
We know Conrad is on his way to Paris, we know they spend time together there. (Unless they fake us out and he shows up while she’s in Mexico, and the time together in Paris is later… I’m choosing to think they won’t do that.)
They could spend time together in Paris, maybe a few days, maybe just a day, and they finally get to talk. They FINALLY get to say some very important things: he gets to reiterate that he loves her (even though she’s not with Jeremiah anymore, which I’m sure matters to her since she was convinced he was only confessing to break up the wedding); she gets to admit to him that she does have feelings for him too (a very important step the whole season has been building up to! My girl’s denial has been a paid cast member since season 2!), and that she probably never stopped.
But!!! They don’t get together yet.
Maybe they kiss, maybe they don’t, but Belly says she’s not ready yet to go home, her time is Paris is not over, she still has more self-discovery to do. He agrees. He loves her, in a truly healthy and selfless way, and he wants her to find herself. So they reconcile, and they know how the other feels, but they don’t rush back into a relationship.
Conrad goes back home, Belly stays in Paris. She breaks up with Benito, she goes on with her French life… but she and Conrad keep in touch.
Think the flashbacks in season 2, when they were talking on the phone so much, knowing how they both felt even though they weren’t together. I loved that part, I thought it was an amazing way to show their connection, to prove to us that their relationship was based on much more than mutual attraction and summer vibes. No, they think of each other when they’re apart, they want to share their thoughts with each other, they want to truly KNOW each other.
Those flashbacks lasted for maybe ten minutes of screen time, but they CARRIED the emotional development of their relationship. It wouldn’t take that much time, and it would mean so much.
So I want the same in episode 11. In episode 7 Belly accused Conrad of not knowing her anymore. Even if that’s not completely true, she’s right that it has been years since they were close. Let them get to know each other again! Give them time to be comfortable talking, to show that they’re making space in their life for each other again!
Show us Belly, happy in Paris, figuring herself out and growing up, while she also stops running from this connection with Conrad that has always meant so much to her—because that’s also part of her arc. She needs to let go of the fear of getting hurt, because as she told Taylor, she’s afraid of hurting someone else, but that only applies to other people than Conrad. Belly hurt Jeremiah and feels awful, she doesn’t want to hurt Benito… and she would, because any person she is with and that isn’t Conrad? That’s a lie. She’s not being honest when she’s with anybody else, and the only reason she does that even now is because after all these years she is still afraid that Conrad will break her.
She needs to become comfortable with the idea of him in her life again, she needs to accept that she can handle love without being terrified of losing it, and frankly she needs this time to shed some of the preconceptions she’s always had about Conrad, even while they were together: that he’s cold, that he plays with people, that he doesn’t care. She needs to look at Conrad and SEE him for who he is, and I do think after all these years she’s finally ready to do that, if she gives herself the time and space to.
So they talk on the phone, they text. He keeps opening up the way he did in episode 5, she gets to be honest about some things too, she gets to have someone who wants to know every single one of her thoughts about Paris, the ones she can’t share with her local friends. He gets to support her through her dreams even though they keep her away from him, he gets to prove he cares more about her than about the short-term satisfaction of having her close.
(We get to see him happy and smitten on the phone, we get to see that giddiness of hopeful love I’ve missed so much. He’s been grieving and heartbroken for so long! The man is like 25 at this point, let him have a crush! Let Agnes tease him for being such a simp!)
There’s only one episode left. Belly and Conrad haven’t even talked for two entire episodes, and in the show it’s been almost a year. They won’t have time to show us much of an established relationship between them, so I’d rather they built up the ending so that we KNOW they’ll be solid, instead of a cheesy epilogue that isn’t earned. I do want a big kiss! But I want it to mean something, I want it to be a new beginning instead of a rush of feelings in the moment, instead of just being there because it’s the end of a romantic show with a love triangle and the rules of the genre say we need to see a kiss.
My main hope is that they get to know each other, the versions of themselves that they are now AND the versions of themselves that they always were but couldn’t see in each other.
So they get to know each other without being together, and without jeopardizing Belly’s personal arc…
And then, Belly comes home. We see her packing, we see her saying goodbye to her friends, we see her completely settled and happy with her adventure in France, but ready to go home and be herself there too. She’s not afraid anymore! She’s excited!
And who’s at the airport, waiting for her when she lands? Conrad, obviously. And in THIS airport scene she does go to him, bringing all of herself with her, completely confident.
If it went like that? I wouldn’t even need a big romantic kiss at the end. Because we wouldn’t need it to know that they made it, that they’re ready for each other now.
(A kiss would be nice, though.)
And then maybe we can see him take her luggage and put it in the trunk of his car. We see them put their seatbelts on. (Can you tell I have a soft spot for their easy domesticity whenever they share a car? Don’t even look at me. 😭💕)
They get on the road, and we know they’re driving to Cousins because it’s the beginning of the summer and they’ll always go back to Cousins.
Boom, parallel to the very first episode of the show. Full circle, arc completed.
