Netflix has released the third and final instalment of the teen romcom franchise and fans are desperate to know how it all ended.

By Lauren Morris

Published: Wednesday, 11 August 2021 at 12:00 am

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It’s been quite the journey for Netflix’s The Kissing Booth – the marmite of teen romcom franchises – starring Joey King, Joel Courtney and Jacob Elordi.

The trilogy’s third and final film landed on Netflix today, with Elle (King) having graduated high school and deciding whether to accept a place at Berkeley, where her best friend Lee (Courtney) will be going, or following her boyfriend Noah (Elordi) to Harvard.

Based on Beth Reekles book series of the same name, The Kissing Booth 3 wraps up the franchise and answers all the questions fans have been asking since the first film premiered in 2018: Will Elle and Noah end up together? Can Elle and Lee maintain their close friendship?

If you’ve sat through the two-hour comedy and are still a bit confused as to what happened, we’ve broken down everything you need to know about The Kissing Booth 3, from its ending to whether Elle and Noah rode off into the sunset together.

The Kissing Booth 3 ending explained

Throughout The Kissing Booth 3, we watch as Elle agonises over whether to go to Berkeley with her best friend Lee or Harvard with her boyfriend Noah, and since she’s been offered a place at both, she needs to make a decision ASAP.

Having just graduated from high school, Elle decides to spend one last summer at Noah and Lee’s beach house before their parents sell it and whilst cleaning out its playroom, Elle and Lee find a beach bucket list they’d written as children, detailing everything they’d hoped to do before heading to college.

She decides to accept the place at Harvard, disappointing Lee, who’d always hoped to live with Elle whilst studying at Berkeley – however, she promises Lee that she’ll spend the summer completing the beach bucket list with him before they go to separate universities.

However, with Elle juggling her new waitressing job with babysitting her younger brother while their father spends time with his new girlfriend, she finds herself becoming overwhelmed and forgets to turn up to a number of plans with Lee.

To make matters worse, Marco (Taylor Zakhar Perez) – who kissed Elle in The Kissing Booth 2 – gets a job at the local waterpark and continues to chat to Elle, making Noah jealous. When the two clash at Noah and Lee’s Fourth of July party, Noah hits Marco in the face with a volleyball during a match and Marco punches him in the face, causing Noah to flee.

Later on, Noah reveals to Elle that he found her acceptance letter from Berkeley – having previously been under the impression that she was just on the waitlist – and breaks up with her to prevent her from attending Harvard just to be with him.

Noah ending things with Elle causes Elle to miss the final bucket list activity with Lee, which was dancing on the arcade’s Dance Dance Revolution machine before it’s discontinued. As a result, Lee and Elle get into an argument, with Elle telling him to grow up and the pair parting ways.

After seeing how difficult Elle and Noah’s long-distance relationship has been, Lee’s girlfriend Rachel (Meganne Young) decides to break up with him before they head to college, saying that if it’s meant to be, they’ll find their way back to each other.

Elle visits Noah and Lee’s mother (Molly Ringwald), who tells her that she should take some time to figure out what it is she’d like to do instead of just going along with Noah and Lee’s university plans. Having become a keen Mario Kart enthusiast, Elle applies to University of Southern California to study video game design and gets in, while Noah and Lee’s mother decides not to sell the beach house after all.

At the end of the film, we fast-forward to six years in the future, with Elle, Lee and Rachel reuniting at their high school’s charity fair. Elle is now sporting a short hair do and is designing her own video game, while Lee and Rachel did eventually get back together and are now engaged.

They stumble across the Kissing Booth stand, surprised to find that the students kept it going even after they left. They bump into Noah, who is deciding whether to accept job offers at law firms in either LA or New York, and suggests to Elle that they go for a motorcycle ride while he’s in town. The film ends with a shot of the two of them riding their motorcycles across California.

So do Noah and Elle end up together?

The answer is – we don’t really know! After three films centered around their romance, Noah broke up with Elle in the summer after her high school graduation in an attempt to stop her from following him to Harvard.

However, there’s still hope for fans of #Nelle – the pair bump into one another six years later at their high school’s charity fair and the chemistry between them is still definitely there. While there’s no confirmation as to whether they ended up together, we watch them ride motorcycles off into the sunset together and it’s very possible that Noah could have accepted the job in LA to be with Elle.

At least this ambiguous ending leaves the franchise open for a fourth film if Netflix decides to revisit the Kissing Booth characters in the future!

The Kissing Booth 3 is available to stream on Netflix. Check out our lists of the best series on Netflix and the best movies on Netflix, or see what else is on with our TV Guide.

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