Susannah Fisher: How She Became The Most Important Character Of The Summer I Turned Pretty – And How Even In Death, Her Presence Is Still Felt

While The Summer I Turned Pretty puts most of its focus and attention on the teen characters, the adult figures in the teens’ lives also play a vital component of the storytelling. Even when they’re not physically present, they’re somehow strongly felt – either through their mention or through their emotional essence. This could especially be said about Susannah Fisher, played by Rachel Blanchard. Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother was a main character in the first season. By the second season, she died of cancer. In season 3, she’s only seen through flashbacks. And yet, her presence is always felt. All throughout the series, throughout the episodes where she doesn’t physically appear, her presence is always felt.

Susannah’s story, though short, was truly beautiful. In hindsight, she’s the glue to that keeps everyone together – even in her death. She’s the heart of the summer gatherings, known for her warmth, free spirit, and generous nature. She’s a beloved figure, especially to Belly, who she sees as the daughter she never had. In turn, Belly sees her a maternal figure; a second mom. Susannah’s cancer diagnosis and struggle with it are a major plot point, particularly in the first season. She initially keeps her illness a secret, hoping for one last perfect summer, but eventually shares it with her close circle. 

The entire first season focused on the triumph of one having to go through their own individual grief of being forced to lose someone they love. We see Conrad and Jeremiah grieve over the eventual loss of their mother, and even though they both were losing their mother, we saw them grieve VERY differently. Conrad, having found out about his mother’s cancer diagnosis, struggled with anxiety and clinical depression. He had to overcome his grief alone and in silence. Jeremiah found out about his mother’s diagnosis after stumbling through paperwork on a trial treatment Susannah had previously decided she wasn’t going to get. He was more angry that Conrad already knew about their mother’s cancer and didn’t tell him. And when the boys both begged their mother to seek treatment, she changed her mind about it.

Obviously, the treatment didn’t work. Susannah passed away in the second season. At the very beginning of the first episode, Belly revealed through voiceover that she passed. Through Belly’s eyes, we got to see how Susanna’s passing affected those who were closest to her, including Belly. She, too, felt like she lost a maternal figure. She, too, struggled with the her new reality of losing someone that meant so much to her. And not only that, but she also felt the pressure of having to be there for Conrad and Jeremiah; to help through their own individual grief.

Perhaps that pressure was the main reason why the love triangle between Belly and the two brothers. Perhaps that was what made the love triangle so freaking unnecessary and even out of touch. Belly was always in love with Conrad; no doubt about that. Jeremiah was her second choice; mostly because Conrad wasn’t ready for her when she was ready for him. Jeremiah should’ve let her go and moved on with his life. Instead, he spent years being someone’s option. He was too blind to see that he was just an option for Belly because he was too stupid in his own grief. So much so that, because he was so afraid to lose her, proposed to her.

Belly, through losing Susannah, felt like she lost the entire Fisher family. Belly’s grief is intertwined with her romantic feelings for both Conrad and Jeremiah, leading to confusion and further emotional distress. I’d say that some, maybe even most, of her actions are driven by her grief and the pain of her breakup with Conrad following prom. She was petrified at the mere thought of losing Conrad after already losing Susannah that she jumped at the chance of getting into a relationship with Jeremiah when the time came to make a move. And Jeremiah, in turn, though petrified at the thought of getting hurt all over again by the person he loved, jumped at the chance of being with her – even if he was just the second option. Belly insisted that he wasn’t; that it was him that she wanted. But who the f*ck is she even kidding…

By season 3, we got to see that Belly grew to love Jeremiah as the years went by. She was, indeed, in love with him. But for all the wrong reasons. Even when push came to shove and she had every right to end her relationship for good and move on to bigger and better things, she didn’t. She forgave him for the hurt that he’d caused her. Not only that, but she also apologized to him, which was diabolical and absurd; at least to me. I personally see their engagement as part of their respective grieving efforts. It’s rushed and not in their best interest. It’s obviously not going to work, but they’re willing to do everything they can to make it work because they feel like each other is all they have.

The Summer I Turned Pretty is certainly not the first mainstream TV series to show the impact of grief. Shows like This Is Us and Never Have I Ever are two of the numerous other shows who’d dealt with grief and the trauma it entails. But The Summer I Turned Pretty is unique because it showcased that the fact that grief doesn’t follow any rules you don’t have to lose a parent to experience grief and you don’t have to lose your mind either. It acknowledges that grief isn’t limited to a person’s closest relatives and friends—and it’s not even limited to one type of loss, as well as that feeling okay doesn’t mean you’re past your grief, because there’s no time limit to mourning.

Laurel, Belly’s mother and Susanna’s best friend, tells Belly, ‘You don’t get to use Susannah’s death as an excuse.’ To Belly, Susanna’s passing wasn’t an excuse. Had Laurel paid more attention instead of bottling her own grief up and hiding in it, she’d know that this much was true. Through her own grief of losing her best friend, Laurel hadn’t been there for her, whether to talk about Susannah’s tragic death, or simply showing up to her volleyball games. There’s certainly no right or wrong way to grieve someone, but belittling someone else’s grief isn’t right either.

I, too, felt the same belittlement from my mother that Belly received from Laurel. It was when my grandfather passed away. My parents were in Israel at the time to be with family while I stayed behind in Canada – alone. My husband wasn’t really there for me. He mostly concentrated on having fun while my parents were away. And when I didn’t meet his needs, he’d be looking for other ways to obtain that fun. At one point, I communicated with him that I needed him to stay home with me; that I needed his support. He didn’t seem to give a sh*t. He still went out to go golfing with his mother’s sperm donor (that’s what I call my father-in-law now). I wasn’t angry. I was enraged. I called his cellphone while he was in the car and told him that if he didn’t come home right at that instant, the next time he’d come to my door would be to pack his sh*t. He came that instant.

My mother was too into her grief for losing her father. She didn’t care when I told her I was struggling. She cared for her sister’s grief. She cared for my cousins’ griefs. But not mine. My grief seemed to have on the back burner. It was shelved; deemed unimportant and unworthy of discussion. She even seemed to care more about getting $400 of a plane ticket that wasn’t to be used due to the circumstances, as well as having me make sure that money was returned to the rightful owner – her.

Zainib Abdullah, a Toronto-based psychotherapist, said of grief, ‘Oftentimes, we associate grief with tragedy, and [we are] more focused on the loss of a human being to death. But, grief really is just the response to loss in all its forms.’ My mom lost her father and, in her own grief, forgot that other people grieve him too. Experiencing this type of dismissal in my grieving my grandfather made me resonate with Belly’s feelings of loss and abandonment in season 2. That’s never that Laurel is a bad mother, because she most certainly not. And neither is my own my mother. That’s just to say that, in Laurel’s case in particular, she’d gone through, what I call, grief avoidance. She was bottling up her own emotions to avoid feeling sadness or anything else relating to her best friend’s death; and that included her own children’s affairs and everything she’d gone through.

In season 2 episode 1, Steven seems to be unbothered by Susanna’s passing. Instead, he seemed happy. He was a high school graduate and was headed to college. Guilt ran through him as he was excited for the next chapter in his life. He was conflicted because he was taught that grief was supposed to always come in sadness. From the moment Steven popped up on screen in season 2, his signature smug smile and witty humour brightened the mood. Though the year held great sorrow, he’d finally graduated, reaching a great milestone in his life, one that he was proud of and didn’t know he’d achieve in such circumstance. As he confidently delivered his valedictorian speech, ‘There are times where it feels like the world is happening to you, but remember you are also happening to the world.’ This marked to be a true reflection of what he was going through during that time in his life. Particularly as he’d gone through very conflicting emotions. His breakup with Shayla seemed so small compared to the rest of his life’s developments.

As Taylor told Steven when he opened up to her about the guilt he was feeling, grief and joy can co-exist. This, in essence, was exactly what he was experiencing. Grief doesn’t only play out the way Belly was experiencing it. Compared to Steven, she was a buzzkill. In her eyes, Steven’s upbeat mood was insensitive, and she went as far as to accuse him of not caring or being sad about Susannah’s death, unlike her, who was finding life lonelier and more miserable. Grief can be a process that one goes through. There’s no ‘metric’ as to how someone grieves or makes sense of a loss.

Regret was something that heavily played out in season 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty when portraying grief and all its glory. It was in Susannah’s estranged sister, Julia. Julia emerged as the antagonist following Susannah’s untimely passing. She was seen as the ‘bad guy’ because she had plans to sell the beach house that everyone loved and called home between June and August. To be honest, that entire storyline was absurd and diabolical. It was HER house to sell, and she planned to sell it because she couldn’t afford to continue paying for it – simple as that. Nevertheless, the portrayal of Julia’s grief for her sister was the icing on the cake that the second season needed. As she began the process of selling the property, it quickly became clear that she was doing so in an effort to get rid of the regret and pain she felt. Julia was distant with her sister, and it hit her that her time had run out and she could no longer try to make amends. ‘I never wrote back,’ Julia, through tears, told to Laurel as they talk about Susannah.

I felt her pain as she spoke. Not because I was grieving my sister. I don’t even have a sister. I’m an only child. I felt the same regret that Julia felt when I had 3 of my friends pass away due to different circumstances. One particular friend, let’s call her M, struggled with epilepsy, and passed away due to mixing her anti-seizure medications with antidepressants. At the time of her passing, M and I were estranged. She was offended by something I’d said during a random conversation and completely ghosted me without explanation. We were so far from each other that I found out about her death months, almost a year, later.

Hearing of M’s death was absolutely devastating. The circumstances of her passing made me feel so much loss and, pain, and grief. Those were all weird feelings for me, and I didn’t know if I even had the right to feel all those emotions. I hadn’t spoken to her in years by the time that she passed. ‘Do I even have the right to feel this way?’ – this was a question that kept my heart and mind racing. While I felt a sense of loss, pain and grief, I also felt regret. I felt regret that I didn’t reach out to her; that I didn’t try harder to maintain a friendship with her. I felt that maybe I could’ve helped her in her time of struggle; that maybe she would’ve been alive if I’d tried just a little harder. Guilt was followed by regret. More particularly, survival’s guilt. I kept asking myself, ‘Why did she pass away and I survived?’ She was the one that helped me through my struggles with seizures during the worst years of my illness. She guided me. She mentored me. And yet, here I was – alive. And she was…dead.

All the same feelings rushed in when I heard the news that my friend, let’s call her Z, was charged with first degree murder for the death of her son. To me, it felt like another death of a friend; as though she died. Just the same as it was with M, I hadn’t been friends with Z for years when it had happened. But nevertheless, we periodically talked from time to time on social media. We always made sure we wished each other a happy birthday and wished each other well on special occasions; like pregnancies and baby arrivals. She was my best friend, but certain circumstances forced me to keep a distance from her; mostly because of who she was married to. The love I had for her, however, never faded. I tried my best to keep showing her that in every way I possibly could. On New Years 2024, I was chilling at home with my husband and son. When 12 AM hit, I was messaging my family and friends wishing them a happy New Year. I was about to message Z to wish her a happy and healthy New Year, as well as to ask her if she was interested to get together for a girls day after years of not seeing each other in person. Something stopped me and I didn’t end up messaging her at all. Just 4 days later, news broke of what had happened.

To say that I was devastated would be a disservice to myself in communicating how I felt at that moment. I was shocked. So much so that I felt like I was having a heart attack when I was first told of Z had done. I, too, had gone through a severe postpartum depression in the midst of my first year of motherhood. I didn’t know if I’d come out of it alive, but I did. The odds weren’t in my favour, but I survived nonetheless. I came to a point in my journey where I questioned whether motherhood was even for me; whether I did the right thing by deciding to become a mother. I didn’t think I had it in me anymore. I loved my son with all my being. But I didn’t know if I loved being a mother. Z, on the other hand, was always maternal. In all the years that I’d known her – that I’d loved her – I always thought that she was meant to be a mother. Every time I looked at her, I kept thinking to myself, ‘This is the one woman who’s meant to be a mother.’

And yet, motherhood, in hindsight, became the worst thing to ever happen to her. Unlike me, she didn’t survive mother, and that made me feel utterly helpless. Just like I did with M, I felt a sense of loss, pain and grief, as well as regret. I felt regret that I didn’t reach out to her; that I didn’t try harder to maintain a friendship with her. I felt that maybe I could’ve helped her in her time of struggle; that maybe she would’ve been okay if I’d tried just a little harder. Guilt was followed by regret. More particularly, survival’s guilt. I kept asking myself, ‘Why did she pass away and I survived?’ She was the one that helped me through my struggles with seizures during the worst years of my illness. She guided me. She mentored me. And yet, here I was – alive. And she was…in jail.

Grief and friendship were two main themes of The Summer I turned Pretty. Perhaps the greatest love story told on the show isn’t the one told about Belly and Conrad’s; and not even Belly and Jeremiah. But rather, it’s the one between Laurel and Susannah. Laurel and Susannah were first introduced  lifelong best friends. Laurel, Belly and Steven’s mother, and Susannah, Conrad and Jeremiah’s mother, have a close, sister-like bond that has endured since childhood. They spent every summer together at Susannah’s beach house in Cousins Beach. Susannah’s cancer diagnosis, and her decision to not go further with the cancer treatment so that she could spend one last summer with the ones she loved, deeply impacted Laurel, who struggled to cope with her friend’s impending death. A closer look into the friendship entails the following breakdown:

• Lifelong Friendship: Laurel and Susannah had been best friends since they were young women, and their bond is a central theme in the story. 

• Support System: They are each other’s confidantes and offer support to each other’s families. Susannah often spoiled Belly with gifts, while Laurel maintained some boundaries due to differences in wealth. 

• Impact of Cancer: Susannah’s cancer diagnosis and her decision to stop treatment deeply affected Laurel, who kept the secret and struggled to accept her friend’s fate. 

• Grief and Coping: Laurel grappled with grief after Susannah’s death, even lashing out at Belly, before eventually finding a way to move forward and honor her friend’s memory. 

• Parental Figures: Laurel also became a second mother figure to Conrad and Jeremiah after Susannah’s death. 

I myself never experienced such a deep connection with a friend as the one The Summer I Turned Pretty portrayed in Laurel and Susannah. The love shared between them was one for the books – literally. Following Susannah’s passing, Laurel released her memoir based on the duo’s long-lasting friendship and adoration for one another. It was called, It’s Not Summer Without You, which was practically the entire premise of the second season.

Ultimately speaking, Laurel has been a representation of suppressed grief; of hiding behind her feelings and avoiding having to face her emotions in grieving her friend. She wrote an entire book, but refused to promote it or talk about Susannah’s memory with her fans. She’s deeply affected by the death of her friend, but wants to keep a strong font, particularly for her children. Laurel’s grief and her attempts to stay composed created a barrier between her and Belly, who also experienced her own grief. She struggled to connect with her mother on a deeper level. Belly felt like her mother wasn’t there for her. Belly felt like her mother was unsympathetic to her grief, especially when Laurel said to Belly can’t use Susannah’s death as an excuse. It almost felt like a stab in the heart.

Laurel’s grieving process began when Susannah was still alive. One particular flashback scene revealed Laurel’s vulnerability, showing her having a difficult time writing her book while Susannah was present, symbolizing their shared struggle with bottling up emotions. As a result of Laurel’s bottled emotions, those around her were affected too. The funeral scene and subsequent events that followed highlight the tension between Laurel and Belly, with Belly acting out and Laurel struggling to manage her own emotions while dealing with her daughter’s behavior. Laurel struggled to understand Belly’s behaviour. Belly, in turn, needed her mom, but her mom couldn’t be there for her as she couldn’t even deal with her own issues.

While Susannah was alive, Laurel was trying so hard to avoid writing her book. She was aiming to change the circumstances of her friend’s illness; to have her live. But the fact of the matter remained the same – Susannah was dying, and absolutely nothing would ever change it. She did everything she could to stay strong for her kids…until she just couldn’t. Her story mirrored the grief that Conrad had endured at the hands of his mother’s death. He knew of his mother’s illness when no one else knew; when Susannah herself was trying to keep it from her kids. In Conrad’s mind, keeping his grief bottled up inside, the pending death of his mother could be stopped. This leads him to struggle with clinical depression and anxiety. But just like in Laurel’s own grief, it was still happening – no matter what. Susannah’s untimely death was unavoidable. The only person that made peace with it was Susannah herself.

At the heart of it all, Susannah was, or shall I say is, a pivotal character in The Summer I Turned Pretty. I’d even go as far by saying she’s the most important character in the entire show. She’s the heart of the summer house, the mother figure to both her sons and Belly, and her illness and eventual death from cancer shapes the narrative arc of the story. She provides a sense of warmth, love, and stability that the characters rely on, and her absence forces them to confront difficult emotions and navigate significant life changes. 

Susannah is the central figure of the show, even in death. She’s the glue that holds the families together, creating a welcoming and loving environment at the beach house. Her illness and eventual death serve as a catalyst for character development and relationship shifts among the main characters. Her death has a profound impact on everyone, forcing them to confront their grief and learn to live without her presence. She embodies love, warmth, and stability, and her absence highlights the fragility of these things. Even in death, Susannah’s influence continues through the letters she leaves for the characters, guiding them through their struggles and shaping their choices in life following her passing. Whether they’re right or wrong choices is solely up to them to decide.

Here’s hoping they actually wind up making the RIGHT choices; ones that don’t destroy their futures. So far, at the time of the blog entry’s publication, it seems like it’s exactly what’s happening. BUT only 4 out of 11 episodes of season 3 have been released thus far, so there’s still plenty more to do. Belly once said, ‘I wondered if it was possible to take someone’s pain away with a kiss.’ You can’t. But you can always make someone’s pain hurt a little less. And that’s the entire point of The Summer I Turned Pretty. That essence is told through the eye’s of Susannah’s passing and everything that’s happened to everyone that she loved and loved her back because of her passing and having to cope with the circumstances even years after that fact. I’m excited to see what the future holds for each character on the show. At the end of the day, no matter what, love can conquer all. And sometimes, pain is the price you pay for love. The pain that each character has felt since Susannah’s death is a testament to how loved she truly was, as well as how much she loved them…