Netflix’s The Kissing Booth 3 closes out the teen romcom’s film series, but not without including plenty of nitpicky plot holes, mysteries, and questions that were never answered. The Kissing Booth premiered on Netflix in 2018 as a new teen movie involving a pair of childhood best friends, Elle Evans and Lee Flynn. Elle and Lee’s loyalty is put to the test when Elle falls in love with Lee’s older bad-boy brother Noah after sharing a smooch at their high school’s fundraising Kissing Booth. The Kissing Booth 2 then put Noah and Elle’s romance in jeopardy when he went off to college at Harvard, while a new boy showed obvious affection for Elle back in Los Angeles.
The Kissing Booth 3 picks up immediately after the events of The Kissing Booth 2, where Elle has to decide if she wants to go to Harvard with Noah or UC Berkeley with Lee. The teens spend the summer at the Flynns’ beach house, which is being put on the market during their stay. The Kissing Booth 3’s drama involves Elle’s heightened indecisiveness between Harvard or Berkeley as well as what it means to close a chapter of best friendship with Lee and her heartbreaking romance with Noah.
The final movie in Netflix’s series brings back all of the characters who contributed to drama in Elle’s high school progression, including The Kissing Booth 2’s Marco and Chloe. Just as quickly as many of these characters are introduced, The Kissing Booth 3 says goodbye to them without giving a concrete understanding of their futures. Keeping up with the first two movies, The Kissing Booth 3 takes a lot of liberties with its storylines that lead to unresolved conflicts, plot holes, and questions that likely will never get an answer unless Netflix decides to make The Kissing Booth 4.
Why Were Harvard And Berkeley Both Calling Elle?
Unless Elle is the princess of a country, these top universities won’t be calling one student who doesn’t even have a declared major to inquire about her decision. Sure, it gives the film more drama, but The Kissing Booth easily could have been more accurate to real-life in showing her indecisiveness by having her stress over the “accept” or “decline” buttons on the admissions portal. UC Berkeley and Harvard are two of the most competitive schools in the United States, so spending their limited time and resources on repeatedly calling one prospective student over the summer doesn’t make sense - especially when she kept denying their calls. In the real world, the schools would have just waited to see Elle’s college choice at the deadline and moved on.
Similarly, Elle couldn’t have waited until nearly July to give each school her decision. After digging into the schools’ admissions policies, UC Berkeley gives its deadline to accept an admission offer as May 1, meaning the bulk of The Kissing Booth 3’s drama never should have happened. Similarly, for the 2021-2022 school year, Harvard’s deadline for accepting an offer of admission is May 3. Sorry, Elle, your indecisiveness would’ve meant taking a gap semester either way.
Elle Couldn’t Have Lived With Noah Off Harvard’s Campus
For making the entire crux of the plot revolve around the nuances of one going off to college, The Kissing Booth’s creators struggled with understanding the actual policies of the universities. While Elle and Lee could have possibly lived off-campus at UC Berkeley with their laws, Harvard requires first-year students to live on campus in the university’s residence halls. Unless Elle had extremely extenuating circumstances, there’s no way Elle and Noah could have lived in an apartment in Boston together. What’s more, as a rising second-year who already lived in the dorms, Noah would have already known this policy, so looking up apartments would have been counterintuitive. The Kissing Booth 3’s characters also never mention that Harvard is in Cambridge, Massachusetts - not Boston. Looking for apartments in Boston would be fun for living in the city, but commuting isn’t the way Elle would want to spend her freshman year.
Why Did Elle Keep Living At The Beach House?
After The Kissing Booth 3’s dramatic climax, which echoes the same conflict from The Kissing Booth 2, Noah breaks up with Elle and she and Lee have a significant fight. Noah, Elle, Lee, and Rachel had all been living in the Flynns’ beach house for the summer, but it was unclear what the living situation turned into when the going got rough. One thing is certain, Elle kept living at the Flynns’ beach house, even though it would have been easier for her to just move back into her own house. It seemed like Noah and Lee may have decided to spend some time away back at their main house, but Rachel and Chloe were still at the beach house after the breakups. Since the beach house was not hers and she had ruined both of her relationships with the Flynn brothers, the logical move would have been for Elle to move out, not the boys. It’s possible The Kissing Booth characters simply don't understand what giving space after a fight means.
How Did Lee Get The Dance Dance Mania Game?
To truly signal the end of The Kissing Booth series, Lee and Elle discover the arcade is getting rid of their beloved Dance Dance Mania, which played integral parts in the first two Kissing Booth movies. After showing up too late for her final Dance Dance Mania round at the arcade with Lee, the best friends get into a huge spat that leads to an uncomfortable gap in their friendship. The Kissing Booth sequel then has Elle reflect on the errs in her way and amend where she went wrong this summer. Elle and Lee finally make up when she comes back to her dad’s house to find the Dance Dance Mania game in the garage. While it’s a sweet gesture, it begs a lot of questions. For one, how on Earth did Lee find the game when it had already been moved before he and Elle’s fight? Secondly, that’s an expensive set-up to quickly buy and just place in Elle’s dad’s garage, so unless Molly Ringwald’s character flipped the bill, Lee has much more access to expendable finances than previously imagined.
Did Elle And Noah Get Back Together?
The ending of The Kissing Booth 3 featured a 6-year time jump following Elle and Noah’s breakup and her acceptance into USC. When they first meet again outside of the now annual Kissing Booth, they imply there may be lingering feelings, but nothing is explicit. Elle tells him she bought a motorcycle, so the next time he’s back in Los Angeles, they’ll go on a ride together. The Kissing Booth 3 then ends ambiguously with Noah and Elle riding around Los Angeles on their motorcycles, hopefully not ending in the same way as Easy Rider. Netflix's The Kissing Booth 3 essentially concludes with how the viewers themselves hope Elle and Noah’s future progresses. If they’re truly meant to be like Lee and Rachel, maybe their motorcycle ride led to a romantic reconciliation. Or, if their relationship was just an extremely dramatic high school romance, maybe they’re better off as friends going into the future.