The Love Triangle Made Being Team Somebody a YA Tradition
YA love triangle movies and shows for different generations, different crushes, and the same completely reasonable need to pick a side.
At some point, every YA romance fan is asked to make a choice. Team Conrad or Team Jeremiah? Team Edward or Team Jacob? Tubi’s Teen Movies & TV collection knows the feeling, with plenty of crushes, complicated relationships, and reasons to pick a side. And now shows like Sterling Point and My Life With the Walter Boys are keeping one of YA romance's most reliable tropes, the love triangle, alive: introducing two romantic possibilities and politely asking the internet to remain normal about it.
We will not.
Long before comment sections started keeping score, teen romance movies and shows were already making us pick sides. And somehow, no matter how many times we go through this, the formula still works. One person represents comfort. The other represents possibility. Everyone has chemistry. Nobody communicates enough. Suddenly your casual viewing experience has become a campaign.
So while today's YA romances keep the team discourse alive, we're going back through five love triangle movies and shows on Tubi that understand one crush simply wasn't complicated enough. Choose carefully. Your fictional allegiance may follow you longer than expected.
Pretty in Pink
Before hashtags, fan edits, and comment sections, there was Blane vs. Duckie, one of the classic teen movie love triangles. Pretty in Pink puts Molly Ringwald's Andie between wealthy, soft-spoken Blane and her eccentric best friend Duckie, whose feelings for her have been considerably less secret than he seems to think.
What makes the love triangle endure isn't simply “which boy is better?” Blane represents a world Andie isn't sure will ever fully accept her, while Duckie represents the friendship and familiarity she already knows. Molly Ringwald makes Andie's uncertainty feel painfully teenage, and Jon Cryer gives Duckie enough wounded charm that people are still arguing about him decades later.
Twilight
Then came the YA love triangle that turned choosing a side into merchandise. Bella Swan moves to Forks, falls for extremely mysterious classmate Edward Cullen and discovers that he is a vampire. Twilight starts the relationship that would eventually bring Jacob Black fully into the equation and launch Team Edward vs. Team Jacob, one of YA pop culture's defining debates.
And if you were there, you remember. It was either or. There was no Switzerland. Robert Pattinson's brooding Edward and Taylor Lautner's warmer, more openly devoted Jacob offered two completely different romantic fantasies, while Kristen Stewart's Bella became the person an entire generation debated on behalf of. The Twilight fandom may have grown up, but ask the right millennial their team and watch how quickly the answer comes back.
Daydream Nation
Some teen love triangles make picking a team fun. Daydream Nation makes you want to gently take Caroline by the shoulders and ask whether perhaps neither is also an available option. Kat Dennings plays the restless 17-year-old, who moves to a small town and becomes tangled between a classmate and her teacher while trying to escape the boredom and isolation of her new life.
Dennings gives Caroline the sharpness and self-awareness to make the mess compelling even when her choices are very clearly messes. This is the darker indie cousin of the glossy YA love triangle, where romance is wrapped up in loneliness, wanting to feel older, and making decisions you may understand very differently once you actually are. Team Caroline Making Better Choices has entered the race.
My First Love
Forget two brothers. My First Love finds a considerably more complicated romantic rival: yourself. The Korean fantasy romance series sends Shin-woo ten years into the past, where he gets another chance to change what happened with his first love, Ji-soo, only to find himself competing with his teenage self.
It's a love triangle, time-travel romance and the ultimate “what would you tell your younger self?” fantasy rolled together. But underneath the wonderfully ridiculous romantic geometry is something deeply relatable: looking back at your first love and believing that if you could just return knowing what you know now, maybe you'd finally get it right. Unfortunately, Past You also has feelings. Awkward.
DannyBoy
Small-town Ireland in 1981 isn't exactly Forks or Cousins Beach, but teenage feelings remain teenage feelings. DannyBoy centers on Daniel, a stuttering teenager navigating family chaos, growing up, and romantic attention from two very different girls.
The triangle here feels smaller and more awkward in a way that suits the teen coming-of-age story. There are no vampires, time machines, or fandom armies waiting outside. Just a teenager trying to work out who he likes while also figuring out who he is, which might be the most realistic love-triangle complication of all.
