At the heart of To All The Boys: Always and Forever is a group of high school seniors making their big college decisions. While some of the characters know exactly where they want to go and what they want to study, the movie’s lead Lara Jean Covey (Lana Condor) finds herself split between two choices.
The series To All The Boys follows the budding relationship between Lara Jean and Peter Kavinsky (Noah Centineo). The two met after a love letter, written by Lara Jean, was delivered to Peter, despite that being against her intentions.
In Always and Forever, it is revealed that the couple wants to go to the same school, Stanford University located in California.
Lara Jean has idealistic dreams about attending the same college as her beau. She is convinced that it’s where their life is going to begin— they are going to graduate together, move in together, decorate their new place together and then both attend Stanford. All of this is revealed in a quick montage while a voiceover uncovers her intentions.
At the beginning of the movie, Peter gets into Stanford on a sports scholarship, to nobody’s surprise. However, Lara is left waiting for her results.
To her dismay, she gets rejected and is suddenly left in a state of panic.
The one thing consistent about the character is that she’s reliable and intelligent, she’s a top student and never appears to be concerned about her grades or extracurriculars. Lara Jean goes to school and stays out of trouble, this rejection clearly isn’t the end of her life.
Where does Lara Jean decide to go to college?
Lara Jean reveals that she applied to a few “safety schools” that are in close vicinity to Stanford, in addition to other popular schools like New York University. She decides to settle on Berkley which is less than an hour away from where her boyfriend will be attending.
They decide that the distance is totally do-able and they would commit to visiting each other every week. Then, Peter suggests that Lara Jean transfers to Stanford after one year — that’s a common practice by college students as it is believed that transfer students have less competition than first-years.
However, during a school trip to New York City, Lara Jean and her best friend Chris (Madeleine Arthur) bump into their friend-turned-enemy Genevieve (Emilija Baranac), also known as Gen, who is touring with New York University. The two friends find themselves invited to a college party by Gen’s tour guide.
The group ends up having a great time and reconnecting with each other. They come to the agreement that they could imagine living in New York City together.
Lara Jean returns to school with a completely different perspective and once she finds out that she was accepted into NYU, she decides to accept the offer and change her plans. She commits to studying English Literature at NYU.
What about her relationship?
This presents a drawback for the young couple, but they end up working through it. The two break up after a prom night misunderstanding but they end up reconnecting at Lara Jean’s father’s wedding.
The movie ends with a short montage of Lara Jean and Peter’s summer together; they graduate, go bowling, have pancake dinners, and then, the screen jumps to quick cuts of the NYU campus. Lastly, we see Lara Jean decorating her dorm room.
She leaves her audience with the words, “I do know that love, real love, is choosing each other through all of it, every single day. Beginning, middle, and end..” while hanging up a photobooth strip of her and Peter.
Then in a callback to the origin story of their relationship she says, “Do you know what 3,000 miles is good for? Writing love letters.”
To sum the ending up: Lara Jean and Peter are still together. Peter decides to attend Stanford in California while Lara Jean commits to NYU, located on the other side of the country.
To All The Boys: Always and Forever is currently streaming on Netflix.