Hello, new here. Popping in to say I really liked Lockwood and Co. I plan on reading the boosk immediately from my local library.
Overall I really enjoyed the books and the setting
Full spoilers for all three seasons. You’ve been warned.
Hi. I recently finished Anne with an E, and it has genuinely become one of my top ten, maybe even top five, shows I have watched.
I originally started it because I wanted a sad orphan story. I was looking for something where a child goes through misery, slowly finds a loving home and eventually turns all that sadness into something wholesome. Basically, I wanted a tearjerker.
Instead, I got something much more fun, lively and uplifting than I expected. It still made me emotional, but it was also funny, warm and full of personality. It was not just Anne suffering until things got better. It was about her entering a community, finding a family and slowly changing the people around her.
I am also a sucker for romance, so I was obviously invested in Anne and Gilbert. It takes a long time to get there, sometimes too long, but I am glad it worked out.
Before I start, I am not a professional reviewer. I rarely review anything at all. I normally only write this much when I genuinely love something, which should already tell you how much I enjoyed this show. This is not meant to be a completely fair or objective critique. It is just my personal thoughts: what I loved, what annoyed me and what I wish had been answered.
Good
Season 1 is probably my favourite. I honestly do not have many problems with it.
Anne is kind, hopeful, imaginative and completely full of energy. She is obviously affected by everything she went through before Green Gables. She is terrified of being rejected, reacts strongly when she feels unwanted and sometimes assumes everything is going to go wrong. But despite all of that, she never loses who she is.
She remains curious, outspoken and excited about the world. She does not let the way people treated her completely destroy her personality. That is what made me root for her.
She is not some generic goody-two-shoes character who is kind all the time and never makes mistakes. Anne can be stubborn, dramatic, impulsive and far too intense. She overreacts, embarrasses herself and speaks before thinking. But she feels like a real child.
My younger sister found her annoying, but being a teacher myself, I have seen children behave in similar ways. Some children really do express everything at full volume. They become deeply attached to ideas, get upset very quickly and speak as if every small issue is the end of the world.
So I did not find Anne annoying. I found her charming.
It also makes sense when you remember that she has finally reached a place where she feels safe enough to express herself. Before Green Gables, she had to survive. Now she finally has room to be loud, emotional and childish.
She also has that very real childlike attitude of wanting to grow up immediately. She wants to be treated as mature and intelligent, but she is still emotionally young and figuring everything out.
Watching her slowly build a friend group was one of my favourite parts. At first, she desperately wants people to like her. Then Diana accepts her, and over time more people start seeing what is special about her.
The show gives you enough sadness to make the wholesome moments feel earned, but it never becomes miserable.
The actors completely sell their characters.
I never felt like I was watching people pretending to be villagers from the 1800s. Anne feels like Anne. Marilla feels strict without being heartless. Matthew is quiet but still has so much emotion. Diana, Gilbert, Rachel, Bash and the others all feel natural in the world.
Amybeth McNulty especially had a difficult job. Anne talks constantly, uses dramatic language and can go from joy to despair within seconds. That could have become incredibly annoying with the wrong actor, but she makes it feel sincere.
I also had not watched many shows set in the late 1800s, so the setting felt fresh to me.
Avonlea is beautiful, but the society itself can be harsh and restrictive. That contrast works really well. The scenery is warm and peaceful, but the characters are still dealing with sexism, class, racism and social expectations.
Anne is the perfect character to challenge that world. She is a red-haired orphan with no wealth or status, yet she constantly questions why society works the way it does. She asks why girls should not have the same opportunities as boys, why women are expected to give up their ambitions and why being different automatically makes somebody lesser.
She does not challenge people because she has some fully developed political ideology. She does it because unfairness genuinely makes no sense to her.
Gilbert
I love Gilbert Blythe. Obviously, I like his romance with Anne, but I also like that he has his own journey outside of her.
His future is not just handed to him in a straight line. He loses his father, leaves Avonlea, works on a ship and spends time trying to figure out what kind of life he actually wants. He does not instantly decide, “I am going to be a doctor,” and then follow one simple path. His goals change as he experiences more of the world.
Working on the ship exposes him to life outside Avonlea. Meeting Bash changes him. Mary’s illness then pushes him to think more seriously about medicine and what kind of doctor he wants to become.
He does not just want the title. He wants to be useful.
Mary’s illness shows him that recognising someone is suffering is not enough. That then forces him to think about whether he should go to France or stay in Canada. He has to make choices based on what he believes in, what opportunities are in front of him and what kind of person he wants to be.
That journey hit me personally because real life is not always a straight path. Sometimes you try different things before understanding what you actually care about.
I was completely invested in Anne and Gilbert.
Their relationship works because it starts with rivalry and slowly becomes respect. Gilbert does not only like Anne because she is attractive. He likes that she is intelligent, passionate and never makes herself smaller for other people.
Anne slowly realises that Gilbert is not just the boy who called her “Carrots.” He is kind, ambitious and one of the few people who can actually challenge her.
Their best scenes are when they are competing, teasing each other or obviously enjoying being around each other without admitting why. The dance and the fair were probably some of my favourite moments. Their attraction becomes obvious without either of them needing to explain it.
But the final confession plot started to drag.
By that point, it was obvious they both liked each other. Their friends knew. The audience knew. Practically everyone except Anne and Gilbert knew.
Then we got the destroyed letter, badly timed conversations and more misunderstandings just to keep them apart for longer. I have seen this too many times in anime and dramas, so it became a chore.
I loved the ending. I loved the kiss, the confession and them agreeing to write to each other. But I did not love the journey to get there.
I think it would have worked better if the relationship had developed more naturally from the dance and the fair instead of relying so much on a missing letter.
Still, when they finally got together, I was extremely happy. I waited three seasons for it, so of course it worked on me.
Issues with seasons and story:
The beginning of Season 2 worried me. The gold-scam plot was boring to me. It felt disconnected from Anne and from the things I was actually watching the show for. For a few episodes, it felt like the show had suddenly become about strangers tricking the town instead of family, school, friendship and growing up.
I genuinely thought the whole season might revolve around it.
Thankfully, it ended after a few episodes. Once that plot was over, the show became much better again. Gilbert’s travels, Bash arriving, Cole’s story and Miss Stacy joining the school all made the season more interesting.
A big complaint isn’t with the show itself. It’s that there’s no Season 4. Anne and Gilbert finally get their moment, but nearly every other relationship is left open. I need closure.
I do not only care about the main romance. Sometimes I become more interested in the side relationships. Watching Naruto seems to have given me permanent secondary-romance syndrome, because I regularly become more invested in the background couples than the main one.
The biggest unanswered questions for me are:
These aren’t issues, simply unfinished plot points.
Billy
Billy is one of my biggest frustrations. I do not just hate him because he is a bad person. I hate how his development is written. The show gives him small moments where it looks like he might be maturing. Not becoming a good person instantly, but at least beginning to understand that his actions have consequences. Then he immediately does something horrible again. Why spend time showing those small signs of change if they are going to throw them away within seconds? It feels like redemption bait. The writers show a few crumbs that make you think he may start changing, then pull it away before anything happens. His final scene suggests that he might try to make up for what he did, but then the show ends. So now it is just another Season 4 plotline that goes nowhere. Even if Season 4 existed, I would not fully trust the setup because the show had already hinted at him changing before and then instantly made him worse again.
Elijah
Elijah getting a redemption storyline was strange to me. I do not necessarily dislike it, but he is a fairly minor character. There were other characters I wanted to see developed much more. For example, Diana’s father. You can tell he changes somewhat after the gold scam and through his interactions with Bash and Mary’s family, but most of it happens in the background. I wanted to see the aftermath of the gold scam properly. How did he rebuild trust with his wife? How did it affect his relationship with Diana? Did he become less controlling? How did he slowly become more accepting of Bash and his family? There was clearly a lot of potential there. Instead, we have to assume most of his development happened off-screen. Elijah’s redemption is not bad, but I would rather have spent that time developing characters who had been important since the beginning.
Cole
I like Cole, but I think the show wastes some of his potential. My problem is not that he is gay, it’s that once the show establishes that he is gay and moves him in with Aunt Josephine, he does not do much else. I wanted to see more of him as an artist. What did he want to create? Was he going to continue studying? Would he meet other artists? How would his friendship with Anne develop as they got older? Would things with his family ever improve? His sexuality should be part of his character, but it started to feel like it was the only major thing the show wanted to say about him. There was more they could have done.
The Indian storyline
Why are there Indians in this story? Or to elaborate, What purpose does the Mi’kmaq storyline have on Anne or Avonlea. It feels like a separate show. It does not really change Avonlea’s relationship with the Mi’kmaq community. Most of the main characters are not involved. Anne sometimes feels like she is only placed into the plot so the audience has a familiar character there. Then it ends at the darkest possible point.
This feels awful but I don’t want that to be a major plot point. At this stage, should it not centre around well the entire genre of coming of age? All characters growing up and settling down? The native Indian story feels important but disconnected from the story.
How much of this is actually from the books?
While watching, I kept wondering how much of the show comes from the books. I want to know whether things like Diana and Jerry, Ruby and Moody, Cole, Bash and the Mi’kmaq storyline appear in the books or whether they were created entirely for Anne with an E. Some of my unanswered questions might have answers in the books or another adaptation. Others might never have an answer because they only exist in this version.
Final thoughts
Despite everything I criticised, I love this show.
Season 1 is almost perfect for me. Season 2 starts with a plot I disliked but becomes much better. Season 3 gives me the Anne and Gilbert payoff I wanted, but it also makes it obvious how much story was still left. The ending is satisfying for Anne and Gilbert, but it does not feel like the end of the full story. I want more
Hi, so after watching Anne with an E, I'm looking for more Anne media to digest. So what is everyone's recommendation? What else is worth watching or reading?
Anime? Any specific books? There's so much media, so it is hard to choose.
Hi, new here. I will post my views about the Anne series later [As by God I have many], but I want to say hi for now.
A question I'm pondering is whether Anne is a 'big' thing in media? After finishing the Anne with an E Netflix series, I discovered upon digging that this story spans a century and multiple generations, yet this is the first I've heard about it and nor do I see craze.
Is there a genuine reason, or is this due to me being a tourist and unaware of how famous Anne is in the book
Why is that? Please do Answer thank you.