Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah? Bollywood’s been here before

Love triangles are a trope as old as time. It seems like a woman having to choose between two love interests, usually men, is eternally fascinating to everyone. And for good reason, too. Over the years, popular love triangles like Twilight (2008) and The Hunger Games (2012) separated people into factions.

Your choice of love interest reveals a certain aspect of your personality. Choosing Team Jacob or Team Gale was as good as a Myers-Briggs test result or your zodiac sign. 

As the world yearns for nostalgia and simpler times, it was only a matter of time before the evergreen love triangle made its comeback. Now, instead of choosing between Chuck and Blair or Dan and Blair from Gossip Girl (2007–2012), people are declaring allegiance to either Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah.

Jeremiah Fisher (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad Fisher (Christopher Briney) are brothers on the hit TV show The Summer I Turned Pretty (2022–2025). Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve definitely heard of this show streaming on Amazon Prime. It follows the life of Isabel “Belly” Conklin (Lola Tung) as she tries to choose whether she loves Conrad or Jeremiah more.

Sound familiar? A beautiful girl torn between two men who love her, especially if those two men share a close bond, has been portrayed more than once on celluloid in Bollywood’s cinema houses. Karan Johar’s Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) raised an entire generation of movie-goers and educated them on the art of not one but two love triangles. Though Shah Rukh Khan’s Rahul is the love interest being fought over, it is Anjali, played by Kajol we relate to.

The girl is the centrepiece of the love triangle. She has to be plain enough for viewers to project onto but interesting enough to explain why she’s being fought over.

Like Belly, what do we really know about Shanaya (Alia Bhatt) from Student of the Year (2012)? Other than the fact she is rich, beautiful, and has the attention of two winsome boys? Abhimanyu and Rohan… Sorry, I meant Conrad and Jeremiah may be brothers, but they are poles apart. Conrad is sensitive and thoughtful while Jeremiah is carefree and impulsive. The decision should be easy right?

Bollywood has always loved itself a love triangle but can it really be called that? Two opposing love interests does not a love triangle make! Often, the newly introduced love interest doesn’t even get a chance to woo the girl.

He is there as an obstacle to the greatest love story ever told. You cannot help but despise him for keeping your favourites apart. It doesn’t matter if he’s the nicest guy ever (and is actually good for the girl), à la Aman (Salman Khan) in Kuch Kuch Hota Hai. He is just a placeholder in Anjali’s life, the man she settles for because she cannot have Rahul (yet).

For fans of The Summer I Turned Pretty, the love story between Jeremiah and Belly felt very much like an obstacle to the mythic epic of Belly and Conrad. Passionate fans across social media bemoaned that too much of Season 3 was wasted on Jeremiah. Still, it’s one of the trending romantic TV shows of 2025 for its honest portrayal of emotional messiness and teenage longing.

Now, as the final episode has aired and there is an undefined amount of time before the The Summer I Turned Pretty movie comes out, our Wednesdays have become a little emptier.

The show proves that love triangle tropes in media aren’t going anywhere, especially when done with nuance, nostalgia, and complex characters. Before you get back to scrolling mindlessly through the options on Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+ Hotstar, why not try a few Bollywood love triangles instead?