The Worst Things Jeremiah Fisher Does On The Summer I Turned Pretty, Ranked

Every story needs a villain, and on the Amazon Prime original series "The Summer I Turned Pretty," Jeremiah Fisher is about as close to a villain as we're going to get. Played by Gavin Casalegno, Jeremiah, younger brother to Conrad (Christopher Briney) and son of Susannah (Rachel Blanchard) and Adam (Tom Everett Scott), isn't a bad person, per se; he's just, essentially, a very spoiled boy who isn't given a good reason to properly grow up for most of original author Jenny Han's series. (Han, who also penned the "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" novels that got a Netflix adaptation, served as showrunner for the adaptation of "The Summer I Turned Pretty.") 

I can't stress enough that, at heart, Jeremiah is a decent kid who loves his mom, his family, and his friends — and a lot of stuff he does throughout three seasons of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" is actually good. He also does, throughout his relationship with the bizarrely nicknamed Isabel "Belly" Conklin (a truly phenomenal Lola Tung), seem to genuinely love her, despite the inherent weirdness of falling for her after growing up as summertime siblings. (In brief, he backstory behind the Conklin and Fisher clans is that, every summer, Belly and her mother Laurel Park, played by Jackie Chung, abscond to the fictional town of Cousins Beach and spend it with Susannah and her two boys, and Belly is a sister figure to Conrad and Jeremiah alike before she "turns pretty," meaning that she gets her braces removed.) 

Still, there are a lot of times that Jeremiah is a total and complete jerk on "The Summer I Turned Pretty," and there's a reason that, when push comes to shove, Belly doesn't choose him as her life partner. Here are the five worst things Jeremiah Fisher does on "The Summer I Turned Pretty," ranked.

Both Conrad and Jeremiah are, to be fair, pretty rotten to Belly throughout the first few seasons of "The Summer I Turned Pretty" at various points, especially where their mom Susannah's health is concerned. Towards the end of the first season, after a lot of heavy hints, Susannah confirms that she has breast cancer and isn't seeking treatment due to how far her cancer has progressed, preferring to live out the remainder of her days surrounded by friends and family. To be incredibly fair to Jeremiah, he shoulders the burden of caring for an ailing and dying Susannah while Conrad is starting his college career at Brown University — and Conrad kicks things off by pulling away from Belly while the two of them were dating, unable to accept her emotional support — but by the time he "breaks up" with Belly, there's no excuse anymore, because he's now been mourning his mom for years.

Here's how it goes down. At the end of the show's second season, Belly visits Jeremiah's future alma mater, Finch College, and because her grades have slipped precipitously, it's probably the only option left for her own college applications. (That's not me editorializing. Not only is Finch fictional, but this is exactly how it's portrayed on the show.) We learn, in the season 3 premiere, that Belly did end up enrolling at Finch with Jeremiah, and then the series jumps ahead to Jeremiah's senior year. That's when we learn that, just before Jeremiah's senior spring break, he books tickets to Cabo without telling Belly and picks a fight with her when she finds out, unloading about all of his daddy issues and "breaking up" with Belly. When he gets back, he presents Belly with a puka shell bracelet (?!?) to sway her into reuniting. Everything about this trip is mean, unwarranted, and directly leads to his biggest mistake, so put a pin in the whole Cabo thing.

I'm going to circle back to Belly and Jeremiah's seriously ill-advised engagement and its origin story before long, but in the lead-up to the wedding that, spoiler alert, doesn't ever happen, Jeremiah behaves like a total smacked ass. First, he spends all his time in Boston working for his awful dad Adam at Adam's nebulous, so-called successful "business" ("The Summer I Turned Pretty" certainly isn't a show that needs to get into the business side of things like, say, "Succession" did, but the lack of details it does provide while focusing on whatever the hell Adam's company does is genuinely pretty funny), leaving Belly to plan their inexplicably hasty wedding alone. Plus, he makes a huge fuss over their wedding cake, even after Belly tells him that the "two-tier dark chocolate cake with a raspberry coulis filling and a mirror glaze on top" with either 60% or 70% cacao will cost them $750. At this point in the story, Belly can't even legally drink, and she definitely doesn't have $750 for a wedding cake.

Jeremiah throws a tantrum about the mere possibility of not getting his precious cake, insisting that he only wanted "one thing" for the wedding (one would think the "one thing" would be literally marrying Belly, but whatever). After he solves some sort of non-specific numbers issue for Adam's company, though, Jeremiah is suddenly the golden Fisher boy, and Adam, without even considering that Belly might have some input, offers to pay for the wedding if it's held at his stuffy country club. Belly wants the wedding to be at the Cousins' house, but Jeremiah agrees to this massive change without asking her. Belly is ultimately let down by Jeremiah's hasty decision, but hides it pretty well; still, she shouldn't have to hide anything! Bad move, Jeremiah.

In the very first season of "The Summer I Turned Pretty," we learn one important thing about Isabel "Belly" Conklin: she's head-over-heels in love with Conrad Fisher, she always has been, and she believes that she always will be. For a while, Jeremiah isn't even an option, even though, partway through that debut season, Jeremiah tells Belly that she's his best friend but that he's been quietly pining for her for a while. (Whether or not this is even true at the time is, to my mind, debatable, because it could simply come down to the fact that Jeremiah feels inferior to Conrad and is trying to one-up him by stealing the girl who's clearly in love with him.)

This jealousy over Conrad, Belly, and any potential union between the two of them comes to a head halfway through season 1, after a relatively disastrous July 4 party at the beach house, where Belly drinks too many margaritas and knocks over an enormous tiered cake made by Susannah. After she sobers up, Belly meets up with Conrad and apologizes for her drunken behavior, and the two are about to finally kiss when Jeremiah sets off fireworks, purposefully interrupting them. (Setting off fireworks conspicuously close to the beach house is a dubious part of the Fisher family's July 4 traditions.)

This is such a bratty, petulant move, especially because Jeremiah makes his own move on Belly in the very next episode, and even though Jeremiah is pretty young and immature at this point, there's truly no excuse for his behavior. While this doesn't stop Belly and Conrad from locking lips by the end of season 1, it definitely throws a wrench into their relationship timeline.

Jeremiah should have never, ever, ever proposed to Belly before she even turned 21 years old, but the way it all unfolds just absolutely sucks. At this point in the story, Belly and Jeremiah are broken up over a shocking betrayal on Jeremiah's part (sorry to do this twice, but I'll also circle back to that whole thing), but they're suddenly brought back together when Belly's brother Steven Conklin (Sean Kaufman) is seriously injured in a car accident. Because he doesn't understand boundaries, Jeremiah spends all night at the hospital to support Belly, but unfortunately, because she's young and in shock, this totally works on her. Outside of the hospital and without even bothering to get down on one knee, Jeremiah asks Belly to marry him, and because she's in the midst of some sort of psychosis, she accepts.

To make everything that much worse, Jeremiah eventually presents Belly with the world's dinkiest ring to commemorate their intended union; when they announce their engagement to a shocked and horrified dinner table that includes Laurel, Adam, Conrad, and a freshly recovered Steven, the naysayers practically have to squint to even see the damn thing. Not only is this engagement a truly terrible idea in the first place, but the way Jeremiah proposes — hastily, spontaneously, and without thinking about his actions for more than one single second — is genuinely embarrassing for both him and Belly. The wedding never happens, and the only reason that Jeremiah's absence the morning of his intended nuptials isn't on this list is because, frankly, it's a little understandable that he didn't want to marry a girl clearly holding a torch for his older brother ... but at the end of the day, it's a huge relief that these two crazy kids don't tie the knot.

Remember that trip Jeremiah takes to Cabo over spring break without telling Belly beforehand, and how they have a fight and briefly split up right before his trip? Well, Jeremiah takes that opportunity to cheat on Belly with Lacie Barone (Lily Donoghue), a gossipy sorority sister of Belly's lifelong best frien,d Taylor Jewel (Rain Spencer). To make matters worse, Jeremiah doesn't tell Belly about his indiscretion. So how does she find out? Well, in the season 3 premiere, Jeremiah and Belly go to a huge party where they run into Lacie, and while she's in the bathroom, Belly overhears Lacie bragging about how she hooked up with the Jeremiah Fisher. Horrified, Belly confronts him right away, and Jeremiah not only admits that he slept with Lacie, but that he slept with her twice. Even worse, he tries to use the Ross Geller (David Schwimmer) excuse from "Friends," saying they were on a break (although he doesn't reference "Friends" directly, presumably because everyone on this show is too young to have even seen it).

After being sick and running away, Belly is understandably crushed and furious, and the only reason she even considers forgiving Jeremiah is because of Steven's aforementioned accident. Still, Jeremiah's indiscretion has a ripple effect. During Jeremiah's bachelor party in Cousins Beach, a lovelorn Conrad overhears Jeremiah's friends giving him a hard time about the hookup with Lacie ... and before that, Conrad had no idea that Jeremiah ever stepped out on Belly. This drives him to confront a drunken Belly on the beach while an incredibly intoxicated Jeremiah is indisposed, and allows Conrad to throw one of the worst betrayals of Belly's life to date in her face as he's begging her to run away with him and marry him instead. Basically, my point is that when Jeremiah cheated on Belly, he did something so bad that it literally managed to mess up everybody's life somehow.

Jeremiah sort of redeems himself by the time "The Summer I Turned Pretty" comes to a close, but still, the Lacie Barone thing is pretty unforgivable. "The Summer I Turned Pretty" is streaming in its entirety on Amazon Prime Video now, and if you've already binged the whole thing, here are some other shows you might like.