**Spoilers for To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You lie ahead.**
It’s a testament to a movie’s emotional power that it can have you crying alone in your room at 4 in the morning—at least in my eyes. And that’s exactly what happened with Netflix’s To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You. A movie set almost right after we last saw Lara Jean Covey (Lana Candor) and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo), the sequel focuses on Lara Jean trying to understand what it means to be a girlfriend and, specifically, what all her firsts mean when Peter has already gone through them with Gen (Emilija Baranac).
Focusing on herself in a relationship, Lara Jean Covey spends most of To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You making sure that she doesn’t change herself completely for Peter, which ends up weighing too heavily on her. She also reconnects with one of her letter recipients: John Ambrose McClaren. Played by Jordan Fisher, he’s a beautiful addition to the franchise.
Much like Lara Jean has with him, John Ambrose has been in love with her since they were kids, and all her fears about “firsts” don’t exist around him, which causes a problem in her relationship with Peter. Through the two fighting over their friendships with Gen and John Ambrose, Peter and Lara Jean decide to break up.
What I love about this sequel is that it feels very much like young love. They’re passionate and angry and willing to throw it all away because of one fight, but much like young love, they come back together by the end because they realize just how rash their decision was. Throughout the movie, Lara Jean toys with the idea of John Ambrose, but the minute she kisses him, she realizes that her heart still lies with Peter Kavinsky.
And now, here’s where we get to the point where I cried. It’s established in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before that Lara Jean Covey is a bad driver, reinforced by Kitty, her little sister, and her fear of riding in the car with her. In the sequel, not much has changed. Peter just tends to drive her around.
But Lara Jean does say that she’s afraid to drive in the snow. So, after they’ve broken up and he doesn’t have to be there for her, it starts snowing at a dance for Lara Jean’s community service project. When she runs out to the parking lot to get to her car so she can go find Peter, he’s standing there and waiting for her. His reasoning? He knew she didn’t like driving in the snow and didn’t want her to have to drive home.
It’s the reason we all fell in love with him in the first place, and To All the Boys: P.S. I Still Love You plays with our hearts, gives us a beautiful love triangle, and gives us even more of Lara Jean Covey to love—also Kitty, who decides that she’s a match-maker and tries to set up their father. Can I be a Covey yet?
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