Elle and Noah have just one more summer together before they go off to college, and all the plans Elle had in mind for her future are slowly slipping away, one missed phone call from admissions at a time. As her deadline to commit to a university approaches, she avoids it all by reminiscing on the past with Lee as they chase their childhood dreams: Completing a beach house bucket list from when they were younger. 

From flashmobs to real-life Mario Kart races, they chase the joys of their past in TheKissing Booth 3 while the future lingers over all three of the leading teenagers’ heads, especially Elle’s. Vince Marcello, director and co-writer of the franchise, wanted the last film of the series to tie up all of the loose ends and encapsulate what makes a story a coming-of-age narrative. 

“We were looking for something that connected back to what I believe is the core of the story, which is the coming of age of three friends — teenagers,” he says, “and for that coming of age to occur, these very fun-loving kids who have this kind of youthfulness to them, which is contagious and people love; part of the process of growing up is relinquishing some of that.” 

To amplify and push the coming-of-age story forward, Marcello used the list as a materialization of their aging. He said the list is “never as sweet as when it was conceived.” Sure enough, as the childhood duo embarks on completing their list, they realize that the age of games and silly antics is far behind them with the unknown future ahead playing a much bigger role. 

“It became a metaphor for them letting go of their childhood,” Marcello says. “That's really where that idea came from; some sort of physical representation of acknowledging that you have to let go of some of these things as you progress.”

The franchise based on Welsh author Beth Reekles' series of the same name offered some freedom and challenges to Marcello as the screenwriter. The first film took directly from the novel. However, for the other two, Marcello says he added more detail to Elle’s story beyond the journals written in the books. One of the biggest things that shaped the films we know is Elle and Lee’s love for video games. 

“A lot of what is sort of the DNA of Elle and Lee’s relationship is their love of video games; all of those things were cinematic things that were added to make a more visual film,” Marcello explains. 

Writing a cathartic closure to Elle’s story took some balancing, as well. Throughout the installments, Marcello and co-writer Jay Arnold create a romantic triangle that Marcello considers more of “a four-point, multi-sided object.” Marcello was concerned some fans may be upset if Elle ends up with one boy over the other. Instead, she ended with herself. 

“The challenge was, how do we make the end of it fulfilling?” he says. “Maybe it's not the end that every person wanted, because that'd be impossible, but it's a fulfilling one.” 

After spending more time catering to other people’s wishes than her own, Elle finally focuses on herself. Marcello said this is her version of growing up. Behind the antics and laughs of The Kissing Booth 3 is the story of a girl growing and learning to follow her passions. 

“She wants everyone in her life to be happy and she makes these compromises to her own happiness in order to try to protect people around her,” he says. “Ultimately, by the end of the film, she makes a decision — a realization — that she's gonna find out what she wants to pursue.” 

A common story trope in young adult fiction is the leading character being raised by a single parent. In Elle’s case, her mother died when she was 11, prior to where the trilogy picks up. Marcello wanted to highlight her relationship with her mother, and grieving, to add a new layer to her story in The Kissing Booth trilogy. 

“I like it because this girl is about to navigate this romantic part of her life — boys now coming into her life in her junior year in the first film — but there's no mother figure to help direct that,” Marcello says. 

When things got rough and she needed advice from other women, she turned to people like Rachel, her friend and Lee’s girlfriend. Surprisingly, a more prominent support throughout the trilogy is Lee’s and Noah’s mother. Played by Molly Ringwald, Mrs. Flynn fills in the holes left behind by Elle’s mother and adds to her journey to adulthood. 

“As the franchise progress, Molly became more and more of a mother figure to Elle until the final one, which we just said, let's just call it out,” Marcello says. “Let’s just have Elle tell her that she feels that way, which to me was a lovely moment.” 

Even after Elle has chosen her own path, Marcello didn’t want to end it with her leaving for college to pursue game design. He wanted to take her and the rest of the friend group back to where it all began: The kissing booth.  

“What we wanted to show was that each of them in their own way had matured,” he says. 

Returning years later, Elle has come of age and pursued her dreams without the input of others, something she struggles with through The Kissing Booth 3. She meets everyone again, including Noah, the same way she did years before. The scene wasn’t part of the books and was something Marcello wanted to add so that the franchise rounds out with a look forward. 

“Each of these people with different character arcs is landing in this place where Lee and Rachel are now together and get married, Noah has come through the other side of this, and Elle is in charge of her own life,” he says, “and we see two people that could now possibly be ready to be in each other's lives.”