‘Call the Midwife’ season 3 finale review (PBS): Is Jenny Lee really leaving?

Obviously, we’ll start out this “Call the Midwife” episode review with a pretty obvious warning: Stop reading now in the event that you want to avoid spoilers until after you watch the episode. There are some big things ahead!

That is where we’ve gone through some of the specific events from this episode, including the measure of hope that Shelagh and Dr. Turner have for their relationship, and also what good things are in store for Trixie. In some ways, this finale was a little bit of a happy episode for some, and sad for others. It was about closure, and much of it came out of nowhere.

This is where we come to the main event of the hour: Saying goodbye to Jenny Lee. The way that the character was written out in an interesting and almost-heroic way: After realizing the pain and suffering that she went through with Alec, she realized that her future would be better served by helping those grieving than those welcoming a child into the world. Therefore, she left Nonnatus House.

Is this a believable way to get rid of the character? We believe so at least based on logic. The only problem that the show really runs into is that it all felt very sudden, and they needed more buildup to have it feel like something other than a dagger. (At the link here, you can at least see some explanation as to why Jessica Raine is leaving the show.)

We suppose that there are still better ways to do away with a major character, but this one is especially problematic given that the entire show is told through Jenny’s lens. We were okay without her for two episodes, but the future here for “Call the Midwife” could be a rocky one.

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Photo: BBC