Global Fallout: How The Summer I Turned Pretty’s Finale Shook Markets, Memes, and Melting Ice Caps

The Summer I Turned Pretty Ends—World Braces for the Aftershocks
By Diego Morales, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker

COPENHAGEN — Somewhere between NATO’s latest communique on Arctic troop rotations and the IMF’s grim warning about synchronized recessions, a modest beach house in fictitious Cousins, USA, closed its shutters for the season. The Season 2 finale of “The Summer I Turned Pretty” has landed, and—because the 21st century refuses all compartmentalization—its emotional tremors are being felt from Lagos boardrooms to Seoul skincare counters.

Let’s be frank: the show is a confection spun from saltwater, Spotify playlists, and Lana Del Rey’s discarded diary pages. Yet its finale, in which protagonist Belly chooses Jeremiah over Conrad (spoilers travel at fiber-optic speed, deal with it), triggered a synchronized global eye-roll so powerful it briefly registered on seismographs in Reykjavik. Analysts at Deutsche Bank, ever vigilant for market-moving sentiment, noted a 0.7 percent uptick in “sad-girl summer” playlist streams in Frankfurt—correlated, they insist, with a parallel dip in German consumer confidence. Cause or coincidence? In 2023, the difference is merely academic.

Meanwhile, in Jakarta, local café chain “Kopi Konflik” launched a limited-time “Team Conrad Cold Brew”—extra bitter, obviously—only to sell out in 42 minutes. A barista shrugged to our correspondent: “People like to grieve communally. Also, the roast is single-origin Sulawesi, so geopolitics in every sip.” The queue spilled onto Jalan Sudirman like pilgrims seeking absolution for caring too much about fictional teenagers.

Across the Mediterranean, Greek tourism boards are quietly furious. The series’ sun-drenched cinematography has convinced millions of Gen-Z passport-holders that the Aegean exists purely for their montage-ready heartbreaks. Hoteliers report a 28 percent surge in “crying-on-the-beach” package bookings—complete with curated Spotify codes and a discreet therapist on call. The therapist, Dr. Eleni Papadakis, confided over retsina: “I studied trauma in Syrian refugee camps. Now I deconstruct why Conrad’s jawline triggers abandonment issues. The irony is not lost on me.”

In South Korea, where soft power is measured in sheet masks and streaming minutes, the finale sparked a minor diplomatic incident. China’s Weibo censors briefly banned the hashtag #BellyLovesJeremiah for “promoting unhealthy relationship models,” prompting Seoul’s Ministry of Culture to tweet a subtitled clip of the kiss scene captioned, “Freedom tastes like sunscreen and bad decisions.” Within hours, the post was ratioed by North Korean propaganda accounts claiming the show proves American moral decay. Somewhere, Kim Jong-un is taking notes on how to weaponize teen melodrama.

Back in Washington, think-tank interns have already produced a 37-page memo titled “Post-Pretty Power Vacuums: Implications for U.S. Cultural Hegemony.” Sources say the Pentagon is less concerned with who Belly kisses than with Amazon Prime’s algorithmic reach into 240 territories. Soft power, after all, is cheaper than aircraft carriers—though both leak fuel eventually.

And let us not overlook the climate angle. The show’s endless beach bonfires have apparently inspired a 12 percent spike in illegal coastal firepits from San Sebastián to Goa. Environmental NGOs now refer to it as “the Belly Effect,” which sounds like a digestive disorder but is arguably worse for the planet.

Still, the finale’s most chilling global repercussion may be existential. In an era when glaciers calve like overworked stagehands and AI can deepfake your ex’s apology, the show dares to suggest that summer love is still the gravest risk we’ll ever take. That, dear reader, is either the height of delusion or the last honest thing left on Earth—depending on whether you’re watching from a Maldivian atoll about to disappear or a Moscow high-rise where imported sunshine now sells by the kilowatt.

As the credits roll and Taylor Swift’s latest heartbreak anthem swells, one truth remains: the world’s real superpower isn’t the dollar or the drone—it’s the collective sigh of 200 million viewers realizing their own summers were never this cinematic. And yet, tomorrow, we’ll board planes, swipe right, order oat-milk cortados, and pretend the stakes are just as high. Because if we stop believing in the mythology of summer, what else is left to believe in? Winter, presumably. And she’s a ruthless bitch.

Fin.