To All the Boys—a Netflix movie series based off the popular romance book trilogy of the same name by Jenny Han—recently released its final installment, To All the Boys: Always and Forever. Both the books and movie adaptations follow Lara Jean Song-Covey, a girl who writes letters to all her crushes but never sends them until her younger sister decides to do so on her behalf without Lara Jean’s knowledge. Because of this, chaos follows Lara Jean both at home and at school. 

“‘It’s called To All the Boys… It’s been about the boys. From Day 1. We get it,’” said Lana Condor, the actress that portrays Lara Jean in the Netflix adaptations, in an interview with The New York Times.

In the interview with The New York Times, Condor revealed that, for the last installment of the To All the Boys movie trilogy, she pushed to have Lara Jean be more independent and care less about the boys. 

“I wanted nothing more than to finish it in a way that I would be super proud of Lara Jean. So I was just hellbent; I was constantly talking to the director and the producers and writers and everyone like, ‘You guys, we need to show her stepping into the world as a young woman choosing herself for the first time,’” said Condor.

In both versions of the story, Lara Jean decides to choose herself and go to a different university than she and her boyfriend, Peter, had originally planned. This choice makes their relationship long-distance instead of the more stable, short-distance they had hoped for. However, in the book, Peter’s mom makes a decision—that she forces onto Lara Jean to execute—for their relationship that was not included in the movie. Instead of Peter’s mom making a decision that Lara Jean ultimately follows through with, in the movie, Lara Jean stands by her decision to choose herself when she is forced with a tough decision between her dreams of a stable relationship with Peter and the university that is best for her.

“She’s come a long way from the hopeless romantic who wrote down her feelings in sweeping love letters rather than acting on them,” said The New York Times.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Condor revealed that she is “very happy” with Lara Jean’s ending in the final movie of the Netflix series. She also said that her director, Michael Fimognari, was pleased with it, too.

“That was so important to [Michael Fimognari] that it was really tight on just Lara Jean in this new world because he wanted to make sure that the ending was like, ‘[Lara Jean is] a woman now and she can go out and do anything she wants and achieve anything that she wants,’” said Condor. 

Photo courtesy of BOOKSTACKED.COM