For the latter half of the summer, chatter about the final season of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” consumed social media. Fans from their tweens through their late 30s obsessively theorized how the love triangle between Belly, Conrad and Jeremiah would conclude, driving the Prime Video YA series to its biggest audience to date.
After debuting the first two episodes of the season to 25 million viewers globally in their first week on Amazon’s Prime Video, viewership for the series has tallied up a cumulative 5.21 billion minutes during its Season 3 rollout, according to Nielsen streaming figures for the nine out of 11 episodes available.
While the Jenny Han-created series already had an existing fan base from its first two seasons and readers of Han’s trilogy, the third and final season activated its fandom in a way that surpassed previous seasons — or other YA series — by meeting its Gen Z audience where they’re at: TikTok.
The approach underscores the kind of benefits a show stands to gain when the people behind it have a clear strategic approach and understanding of the audience. By changing to a weekly release, fostering social media activity with in-show TikTok dances and, of course, elements of Taylor Swift, Amazon was able to steadily build momentum throughout its final season.
“There were so many aspects that Jenny Han and her team clearly built for a TikTok audience,” Emily Singer, senior director of strategy for Reach Agency, a creator-focused firm focused on influencer campaigns, told TheWrap. “It was a show made for the next generation.”
The decision to loop in social early on could be considered the “gold standard for a new model of how people should be marketing their shows,” said Laura Jalaie, SVP of strategy and communication for Metro PR, a consulting firm that has worked for a variety of entertainment and sports companies.
Jalaie told TheWrap that Amazon had given “an incredible amount of trust” to its social team, developing social-first marketing campaigns designed to connect with the target audience.
In addition to its focus on social media, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” ditched the binge model, instead opting for a weekly release that Jalaie said enabled the fandom to have the space to connect and obsess about each episode’s biggest moments in a way that felt reminiscent of YA shows of the 2000s, like “Gossip Girl” or “The O.C.” Except this time, fans convened on social media rather than fan blogs.
Han told TheWrap in an interview last month that Prime Video carefully considered the release options for the season, but ultimately said the weekly drop worked as intended, explaining it “enhanced the experience and it certainly prolonged the suspense.”
“It made people a little bit crazy to have to be in that sort of uncertain place for so long,” Han said. “But I think that’s the deliciousness of TV … in the old school way, that you would have to wait a week, and then it kind of builds and builds, and we, as an audience, are longing just as much as our characters are to see completion.”
From a ratings perspective, the weekly scheduling also enabled a gradual growth of viewers in the lead-up to the finale, especially after Han went off-script from her book, “We’ll Always Have Summer,” for the last three episodes of the series with Belly heading from Cousins to Paris, leaving fans in uncharted territory.
The debut of the first two episodes boosted viewership to 639 million minutes the week of July 14, before leveling off at 567 and 595 million minutes for the following two weeks, respectively. Season 3 saw its viewership spike with the debut of Episode 5 — which featured Conrad’s POV — with 665 million minutes viewed. Viewership climbed again with 717 million minutes during the week of Aug. 25 with Episode 8, which isn’t surprising given that episode featured Belly and Jeremiah’s wedding day, which was eventually called off. And it grew again with 736 million minutes during the week of Sept. 1 with Episode 9, which kicked off Belly’s Parisian adventure.
Given the delay for Nielsen’s streaming lists, viewership for the final two episodes is not available yet.
Unlike 2000s YA shows’ weekly premieres, “The Summer I Turned Pretty” dropped its episodes at 12 a.m. PT/3 a.m. ET on Wednesdays — a strategy that was initially bemoaned by fans. But the most hardcore viewers quickly adjusted to the schedule and flooded social media with reactions and new edits of Conrad into the wee hours of the night.
While the midnight release strategy didn’t quite mirror the appointment television of HBO’s biggest Sunday shows, it ultimately created a “built-in” FOMO, according to Reach’s Singer, who explained, “You already feel behind, say, at 7 a.m. PT … it really does entice you to watch as soon as possible.”
The “The Summer I Turned Pretty” can’t be discussed without acknowledging Swift, whose multigenerational fandom overlaps nearly perfectly with the show’s, according to Singer. It wasn’t just Swift’s music that attracted fans, but also the level of detail that Han put into the series.
And even when fans finally got their happily ever after for Belly and Conrad in the series finale, Han and Prime Video had another trick up their sleeve to keep the hype going: a movie that will serve as a conclusion to “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” The news was announced just hours after the finale dropped on Prime Video during the show’s Paris finale event and a day ahead of the finale press day, giving Han an opportunity to finally lay out her plans and the cast a chance to weigh in.
While Han said it’s too early to say whether the movie will get a theatrical release, Jalaie noted hitting the big screen would help “eventize” the movie, giving fans the opportunity to gather as they did for watch parties all season.
“The thing that Amazon needs to do now is just keep capturing that attention,” Singer said. “Now the goal becomes: How do you keep people tuned in and wanting more for the next potentially year or two?”
