Rising ever sweeter with every passing season, Netflix’s “Sweet Magnolias” premiered in 2020 and was renewed for season 5 in April 2025. Nevertheless, as followers who’ve saved up with the romantic drama’s twists and turns know, the upcoming fifth season would be the present’s second one with out one of many key gamers of the primary three seasons. Chris Klein’s Dr. Bill Townsend is Maddie Townsend’s (JoAnna Garcia Swisher) former husband who begins out as one thing of an antagonist (being in the course of a turbulent divorce with the principle character will do this). Whereas the 2 later considerably reconcile, Bill stays one thing of a pot-stirrer for his complete time on the present.
Contemplating the position he performs, it is becoming that Bill’s departure options not one, however two surprises. As season 3 involves a detailed, he strikes away from Serenity, South Carolina in a bid to reinvent himself. Such a growth might need appeared prefer it left the door broad open for him to return sooner or later, however that does not occur. Insted, season 4, episode 2 (“Sensible Desires”) bluntly informs us that Bill had a deadly coronary heart assault offscreen.
In an interview with Glamour, “Sweet Magnolias” showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson revealed that the choice wasn’t a case of the actor asking to be killed off to exit the present. As an alternative, Bill needed to die to serve the storyline:
“We needed to simply type of flip the ship 90 levels. It was so arduous to inform [Klein], as a result of all of us love him, and he loves the present. However he understood and took one for the staff, as a result of it allowed us to inform tales that we would not have had had an entrée into in any other case.”
Even in dying, Bill Townsend shuffles the Sweet Magnolias deck
As Anderson famous within the interview, killing Bill wasn’t a alternative made calmly. Nevertheless, it was a vital transfer as a result of the makers of “Sweet Magnolias” needed to infuse the present with a brand new sense of urgency that will trigger everybody to rethink their selections. As Anderson instructed Glamour:
“As a result of it is his dying that makes all our adults, and particularly our males, query what they’re doing with their lives. That theme of tomorrow is not promised. You get to a sure age, and when a good friend of yours, who’s your age, dies, it is at all times too quickly, however particularly if you end up that age. You understand time is not on our aspect and assume, ‘Am I doing what I need to do? Am I with the particular person I need to be with? What different modifications do I have to make in my life?'”
One of the best ways for a present to shake issues up is to kill a distinguished character — that is, in spite of everything, exactly why Yuri Sardarov’s Otis exited “Chicago Fireplace” in season 8. It is solely pure that “Sweet Magnolias” selected the character who was the furthest faraway from the day-to-day life in Serenity, too. Apart from, the best way the present makes use of Bill’s dying to throw the opposite characters’ lives in disarray is a becoming testomony to the character’s position as an agent of chaos.
“Sweet Magnolias” is accessible for streaming on Netflix.