Belly Conklin’s Character Autopsy
People call Belly indecisive because she spends three seasons moving between Conrad and Jeremiah. I think the opposite is closer to the truth. Belly decides very quickly. She just does it before she has fully understood why.
When a feeling becomes uncomfortable, Belly gives it a meaning and acts on it. Conrad is distant, so he must not want her. Jeremiah is open, so he must be the safer future. Laurel rejects the engagement, so she must not trust Belly to run her own life.
The emotion is always real. The conclusion is where things get complicated.
This is also why one of Belly’s most important moments happens far away from either Fisher brother. In Paris, a stranger asks her name and she introduces herself as Isabel.
Everyone in Cousins already has a version of Belly. Susannah imagines her becoming part of the Fisher family. Laurel sees the daughter she is trying to protect. Steven sees his little sister. Taylor believes every feeling deserves a plan. Conrad remembers the girl who loved him first. Jeremiah remembers the best friend who was meant to stay.
Isabel is the name Belly gives people who know none of that.
Belly hates being told who she is
Season 1 begins with Belly wanting everyone to notice that she has changed. It sounds shallow until you remember that she has spent years following Steven, Conrad and Jeremiah around Cousins, waiting to be included. Jenny Han once said Belly had never felt like the main character in her own life. The debutante ball was created for the show to make that change visible.
Belly agrees to the ball partly because everyone thinks she will hate it. Laurel finds it too traditional. Steven laughs at the idea. Conrad does not think it suits her. Susannah is the only person who wants her there. So Belly says yes.
It becomes a pattern. The moment people sound certain about her, she wants to prove that another version exists. In the show, she ends things with Cam herself. She actively pursues Jeremiah at the end of Season 2. In Season 3, she accepts his proposal while the Cabo revelation is fresh. These choices are different, but the instinct is similar. Belly would rather move the story forward than sit in a situation she cannot name yet.
Her point of view works the same way. Han has said Belly is not an unreliable narrator. Her view is simply limited by the information she has at the time. Belly remembers exactly how a moment felt, but she does not always understand what the other person was carrying. Conrad’s silence becomes a complete answer before he explains the panic and grief behind it. Jeremiah’s directness feels permanent because it is easier to understand in the moment. Belly is not imagining either relationship. She is reading both of them too early.
Cousins gives her grief somewhere to go
Season 2 looks like a mission to save the beach house. For Belly, the house is the one loss she can do something about. Susannah is dead. Belly’s grades have fallen, volleyball has gone badly, Conrad is no longer with her and Jeremiah will not speak to her. None of those problems has a clear solution. The house does. There is a sale to stop, furniture to recover and an aunt to argue with. A house can be saved. Grief cannot be talked into changing its mind. Cousins holds the routines that made both families feel permanent. Keeping the house preserves part of the life Susannah created. Her choice of Jeremiah at the end of the season comes from the same need to move towards something that feels alive. Jeremiah is present, affectionate and clear. Conrad often takes several episodes to say what Jeremiah will say in one conversation. After months of loss, that difference matters.
Han described Jeremiah as giving Belly “permission to be happy again.” The season then ends with Belly returning to volleyball while Jeremiah cheers beside the court.
Volleyball is a major change from the books. The series gives Belly a talent, a team and a future outside Cousins. TV Belly also chooses Jeremiah more actively than Book Belly, who moves towards him after Conrad steps back. She asks Jeremiah for a relationship, then asks her coach for another chance. Both decisions are Belly trying to re-enter her own life. The show also lets Belly and Conrad have sex, another change from Jenny Han’s books. Han said the scene was guided by Belly’s desire and what she wanted. That choice changes the Season 3 triangle. Conrad is no longer an untouched childhood fantasy. Belly has known the ordinary, private version of their relationship, including how safe it could feel and how badly it could fail. Jeremiah offers something different, and Belly genuinely loves him. He gives her friendship, direct affection and relief from years of trying to work out what Conrad means. The relationship becomes unstable when Belly expects it to do much more than be a relationship.
It has to keep Susannah close, hold the Fisher family together and prove that her future is settled.
That is too much pressure for any couple. It is especially ambitious for two college students arguing over a $750 cake.
The wedding is about more than Jeremiah
Susannah loved Belly, but she also placed a romantic expectation around her. She imagined Belly with one of her sons, asked her to look after Conrad and made becoming a Fisher sound like the natural ending. Belly grows up wanting that ending while also wanting every decision to feel like her own. Season 3 is where those two desires finally collide. Laurel sees the engagement as a young couple trying to cover a serious problem with a wedding. Belly hears her refusal as another adult deciding that she is too young to understand herself. The wedding then becomes proof that Belly is grown, committed and certain.
The debutante ball and the wedding echo each other. Both are public ceremonies associated with becoming a woman. Both start with other people questioning what suits Belly. She uses each event to announce that she has changed, even while she is working out what that change means. Taylor immediately starts helping because that is how Taylor supports Belly. Laurel refuses because that is how Laurel tries to protect her. One starts planning the wedding. The other asks whether there should be a wedding at all. Belly needs some of both, but she is not interested in the second part yet.
The mirror-glaze cake becomes funny because it exposes how strange the planning has become. Jeremiah is completely certain about the exact chocolate percentage and raspberry filling. Belly is far less certain about the marriage attached to it. Jeremiah recognises that on the wedding day. He understands that Belly loves him but is not fully with him, and he refuses to marry under those conditions. An earlier detail already warns us this is coming. After Conrad tells Belly he loves her on the beach, she uses the childhood knock through the bedroom wall to reach Jeremiah. He does not answer. Their oldest way of finding each other no longer works. Then there is the haircut. Earlier in the season, Jeremiah asks Belly never to cut her hair. In Paris, she chooses a bob. Lola Tung described it as a physical sign of a decision Belly makes for herself. It is a small moment, but it is one of the few changes Belly makes without using anybody else’s reaction to measure it.
Paris lets Belly meet herself without the history
Belly does not arrive in Paris looking particularly independent. Her wedding has just collapsed, her place in the study programme was a misunderstanding and she loses her backpack almost immediately.
The decision to go is classic Belly. She leaves first and works out the details later.
The important choice is staying.
She finds work, studies, learns French and makes friends. She dates Benito, but his real purpose in Belly’s story is not to create another love triangle. He meets her without knowing Conrad, Jeremiah, Susannah or the infinity necklace.
That is new.
The book sends Belly to Spain and moves quickly through her life abroad, Conrad’s letters, graduation and their eventual wedding. The show turns that missing period into a full part of her character. Han said Paris had to test Belly and help her understand that she could be fine on her own.
By the finale, Paris belongs to Belly. She has the apartment, friends and plans. Conrad is the visitor waiting to be invited into them.
Tung called this a role reversal: Belly is cautious while Conrad is finally clear about what he wants.
Belly also says aloud what has been bothering her. She worries that Susannah’s death is the reason she and Conrad keep finding their way back to each other. She wonders whether choosing him will undo the person she became without him.
Her answer comes on the train. She shows Conrad the infinity necklace and says she chooses him “of my own free will.”
It sounds oddly legal for a love confession, but the wording matters. Belly’s childhood wish, Susannah’s hopes and the family history may all point towards Conrad. Belly chooses him only after she knows she can live without that ending.
He is no longer proof that she turned pretty. He is part of the life Isabel has chosen.
What this means for the movie
The confirmed movie details remain limited. Jenny Han is directing it and co-writing with Sarah Kucserka. The official announcement describes the film as the final chapter and says Belly has “another big milestone” ahead.
Filming began in North Carolina in April 2026 and finished by late July. There is no confirmed plot or release date.
A Belly and Conrad wedding after a time jump remains the strongest prediction. We’ll Always Have Summer ends with their marriage. Han has called the movie a “gift” for readers of the books, and the show left out the book’s wedding epilogue.
Most importantly, Belly has not opened the letter Susannah wrote for her wedding day.
The time jump will matter. If Belly becomes engaged again immediately, the movie risks repeating the decision Season 3 spent undoing. A later wedding would let the audience see that Belly and Conrad have already built a working relationship.
Tung has said she wants to explore a happy, healthy version of the couple, which sounds more interesting than giving Belly another romantic option after three seasons of this.
The most likely conflict is where their shared life belongs. Paris is now important to Belly. Conrad has his medical career. Belly has her studies, work and friendships.
The movie can test whether Conrad supports the life she built instead of expecting her to return to the version of herself he knew at Cousins.
Susannah’s letter should sit at the centre of that story. Younger Belly treated Susannah’s hope that she would marry a Fisher as fate. Reading the letter as an adult would let her receive Susannah’s love without treating the letter as an instruction.
Belly and Jeremiah also need a proper ending. The finale starts repairing the relationship between the brothers and hints at something new for Jeremiah with Denise, but Belly and Jeremiah never decide what they are to each other after the wedding.
The book lets him attend Belly and Conrad’s marriage after moving on. The film has room to give him that closure.
Public filming details offer clues, although Jenny Han has made them difficult to trust. Local reporting described Fourth of July scenes, boats, a town hall and filming around a jewellery shop.
Han previously shot fake Belly and Jeremiah scenes in Paris to mislead people watching the set. A jewellery shop is interesting.
It is not a confession under oath.
The wedding is the safest prediction. The better question is whether Belly reaches it without using marriage to prove that she is certain, grown or finally worthy of the Fisher future Susannah imagined.
In Paris, she introduces herself as Isabel.
The movie should let her return to Cousins without leaving that version of herself behind.