Lara Jean Covey and Margot Song’s relationship

Lara Jean Covey and Margot Song’s relationship is both a continuing source of guidance and a place where the sisters can admit what change costs. Margot’s return to a family that has gone on living without her leaves her feeling excluded; Lara Jean, in turn, longs to confide in Margot as she prepares to leave for college. Their late-night conversation connects Margot’s resistance to Trina’s place in the family with grief for their mother and anxiety about losing Korean cultural ties. It offers neither sister a way to stop change, but helps them recognize what they are trying to preserve—and to imagine a family that can grow without erasing its past.

Sisterly Counsel and Separate Paths

The sisters’ relationship includes practical advice as well as affection. Margot tells Lara Jean to make her own friends at college rather than relying on Peter’s social world, shaped by his lacrosse connections. She urges her to find people who suit her and join an Asian association, describing the college search for racial identity as an experience she missed while studying in another country. Lara Jean promises to follow that advice. Margot’s counsel recognizes that her younger sister’s future will be distinct from Peter’s and that finding community can be part of claiming it.

Their closeness also appears in the way they approach cultural questions together, even when they do not agree. While discussing an idea for Trina and their father’s wedding, Margot objects to bringing an Asian tradition into the ceremony simply because the sisters are Asian: Trina is not Asian, and the tradition would not be hers to appropriate. Lara Jean counters that Trina wants them to feel included and has wondered how to acknowledge their mother. The exchange shows the sisters negotiating both cultural identity and family belonging, without reducing either question to a single rule.

Culture, Memory, and Belonging

For Margot, Korean food is more than a matter of preference. When she worries that their father might stop cooking Korean food because Trina dislikes it, she calls food their biggest link to Korean culture and insists that Korea belongs to the family package Trina will join through marriage. Lara Jean answers that Margot knows Trina understands this, and points toward their planned July trip to Korea: the sisters will have the chance to eat Korean food every day that summer. Kitty wishes their father and Trina could come too, making the trip both a connection to cultural heritage and a reminder that the family’s members will not all share the same experience of it.

The sisters’ disagreement about Trina is not simply a contest between acceptance and rejection. In a conversation in Lara Jean’s room, she is painting her nails mint green for the bachelorette party while Margot lies on the bed looking at her phone. Lara Jean asks whether Margot wants her to do her nails; Margot says she does not care. Lara Jean then tells her that she has to stop being in a bad mood about Trina, because Trina and their father are getting married. Margot says the problem is not just Trina herself: the family feels different.

Margot explains that she came home to what seemed like a whole new family in which she had no part. Lara Jean does not pretend that nothing has changed. She recognizes that life at home kept going while Margot was away in Scotland, just as it will keep going when Lara Jean leaves in the fall. The parallel gives the sisters’ conflict a shared frame: both departures expose the unsettling fact that love and belonging do not make a family stand still.

Grief and Reciprocal Confidence

As Margot cries, she admits that she misses their mother and wishes Kitty had known her. She had imagined their father might date or have a long-term girlfriend, but had never pictured him marrying again. Lara Jean responds gently that she had not imagined it either; after Margot left for Scotland, though, their father having someone began to make more sense to her. Margot acknowledges that the marriage is good for Kitty. Lara Jean observes that Kitty has a special bond with Trina, while Margot laughs shakily at how fiercely Kitty loves her.

Lara Jean connects these feelings to Margot’s anger about Korean food: she suspects Margot fears that if their father stops cooking it, Kitty will lose her connection to Korea, and that forgetting Korea would mean forgetting their mother. She reassures Margot that they will never forget either. The moment does not undo Margot’s grief or make her earlier objections disappear; instead, Lara Jean gives the fear beneath them a name and answers it with a shared commitment to remembrance.

The conversation then turns toward Lara Jean’s own private unease. Margot notices that she has seemed melancholy since returning from Beach Week and asks whether something happened between her and Peter. Lara Jean longs to tell her everything and to have her older sister decide what she should do, but knows Margot’s likely response: do not be the girl who goes to college with a boyfriend. She recognizes the advice as something both her mother and Margot have told her. Her wish for Margot’s direction shows the intimacy of their bond, while her restraint marks the difficulty of making a choice that must ultimately be her own.

A Family That Expands

The sisters’ care also takes practical form as the family prepares for Trina and their father’s wedding. At home, Trina is at SoulCycle, their father is setting up chairs, Margot is steaming the bridesmaid dresses, and Kitty is cutting paper flags for the dessert table. Lara Jean ices the wedding cake: yellow cake with buttercream, as promised to Trina. It is her second attempt, after she discarded the first because she had not trimmed the layers enough and the stacked cake looked hopelessly lopsided. The new cake remains slightly uneven, and she covers it generously with frosting. The shared preparations place the sisters’ changing family in concrete work: dresses, chairs, flags, and a cake remade after a flawed first try.

As Lara Jean passes Kitty, she teases her about the last three crooked flags. Later, she tells Margot that this is the last time it will be just the sisters. Margot smiles and says she is glad it will not be just them anymore; Lara Jean is fairly certain that she means it. The exchange gives their changing relationship a quiet resolution. Their closeness is not dependent on keeping the family exactly as it was, and Margot’s earlier sadness can coexist with genuine welcome for what comes next. The sisters’ bond holds both truths: the old family remains worth remembering, and the new one can still become theirs.