'Miss Austen's' Final Episodes Reconsider Jane's Past

As it must, everything in Miss Austen turns out well in the end. Well, for a given value of "okay" at any rate. Cassandra commits some literary vandalism, Jane's legacy is preserved, and we're given an explanation for why one of those things needed to happen to ensure the other, even if the (admittedly interesting) answer comes entirely too late in the story. In other words, the show concludes as it lived, confused about the tone it wants to strike and unsure about the larger points it wants to make.

The show is strongest when it leans into the bond of sisterhood at its center. Whether in the past or the present day, it is evident that her relationship with Jane is the North Star of Cassandra's life, and while your mileage may vary on whether this is a necessarily healthy thing, it's hard to deny its emotional heft. It's such a strong throughline that the present-day segments struggle under its weight; they simply cannot match the heart and warmth that colors virtually every moment we see onscreen between the Austen sisters.

Miss Austen isn't a bad drama, per se. There's a genuinely compelling historical drama about Jane's life here, with the central relationship with her sister at the heart. The idea that the great author wrote so profoundly about the bonds of sisterhood precisely because of her complicated (and, yes, co-dependent) relationship with Cassy is eminently watchable, and frames the creation of her works in a new way. Yet, Cassandra is the series' titular character and the figure who gets the least clear, or even remotely coherent, emotional arc.