Serenity saw some major shakeups throughout Sweet Magnolias season 5 — and series showrunner Sheryl J. Anderson is breaking down every twist for Us.
Warning: Major spoilers below for season 5 of Sweet Magnolias.
For years, Sweet Magnolias has followed lifelong best friends Maddie Townsend (JoAnna Garcia Swisher), Dana Sue Sullivan (Brooke Elliott) and Helen Decatur (Heather Headley) as they navigate love, family, heartbreak and new beginnings in a small South Carolina town.
While season 5, which dropped on Netflix Thursday, June 11, largely showed Maddie and Helen embracing new chapters — with one settling into married life and the other preparing to walk down the aisle — Dana Sue found herself facing unexpected challenges.
Caught between marriage woes as her husband, Ronnie (Brandon Quinn), threw himself into his latest business venture, a devastating house fire, professional setbacks and the looming reality of daughter Annie (Anneliese Judge) leaving for college across the country, the chef-turned-teacher found herself carrying the emotional weight of the season.
Speaking exclusively to Us Weekly, Anderson explained why now was the right time to put the spotlight on the Sullivan family.
“We felt the mounting weight of the missteps she and Ronnie have taken individually and together, but it was also for dramatic contrast,” she shared. “Helen and [her fiancé, Eric (Dion Johnstone) are finally getting married, and that’s so joyful. Cal (Justin Breuning) and Maddie are thriving, so it just felt like this was the moment where Dana Sue and Ronnie could be impacted by that accumulating weight. … It just seemed like all the crossroads had lined up.”
Keep scrolling to read Anderson’s thoughts on this season’s biggest bombshells — and what teases she has for the future of the series:
Ty and Annie’s Shocking Breakup
After Us broke the news that Carson Rowland would not be returning to Sweet Magnolias for season 5 as Maddie’s eldest son, Ty Townsend, it was revealed on the show that Ty left for Europe with his band at the end of season 4 and hadn’t returned for six months — not even for Annie’s prom or spring break.
When he ultimately bailed again for her graduation, she chose to officially end the relationship.
Anderson told Us that after Rowland made the “decision” to sit out of season 5 entirely, she wanted to “make the best out of the situation” by examining “what happens when people leave the people they love to chase a dream.”
Maddie faced similar challenges when she moved part-time to New York City at the end of season 4 for a publishing job, but how she dealt with the distance played out much differently.
“Because they have both left behind many of the same people, we had an opportunity to also contrast how people felt about the two departures and the weight we carry when we want to be happy for somebody, but their happiness takes them away from us,” Anderson explained. “So it’s unfortunate, but I think that Anneliese plays her arc beautifully, and we did do our best to fill that space in her life and in our series with interesting options.”
Anderson said that the breakdown between Annie and Ty was a “slow unraveling,” so by graduation Annie had decided she’d given him enough chances. However, while she found acceptance, Maddie found her son’s actions harder to swallow.
“It’s his mom who is most disappointed, that maternal, ‘I raised him better than this,’” she said. “We just thought that that would be more opportune if it had been happening over time rather than the first pain of, ‘Oh, he didn’t keep his word.’”
Although Ty didn’t make an in-person appearance at all in season 5, he did send Annie a box of things to wish her a happy graduation and apologize. And while she ended the season with an entirely new love interest — keep reading for more about that — she kept Ty’s T-shirt.
In the last few minutes of the finale, viewers saw that Ty called Annie during Helen’s wedding, but she missed the call. As for whether Ty could come back in future seasons, Anderson said the door is “open,” and she looks forward to seeing “who walks through that door.”
Annie’s New Love Triangle
Annie started the season already at peace with her distance from Ty, leaving her heart open for potential new romances before heading off to college. When asked why two new love interests were introduced for the high school senior in the wake of her split with Ty, Anderson explained, “Because she deserves it!”
“She has been so focused and so faithful, and we just thought it would be fun to literally open up her world, particularly because one of the reasons, one of the factors, also for when we placed season 5, was to capture her graduation and into summer,” she shared. “And so that last summer before you leave for school, it’s like, ‘Does everything mean more or does everything mean nothing?’”
Ultimately. Anderson felt Annie could experiment with who she “thinks she’s going to be going to college” through two separate choices: fun and free Blake and deep and introspective Noah.
“I will tell you, the writer’s room was divided, really intensely divided between Team Blake and Team Noah,” Anderson said with a laugh. “But it was that combination of the ideal boy: the boy of the moment, the boy with potential. How can we frame this up [into] a good love triangle? It’s just so delicious, and that’s why we gave her two men.”
Annie ultimately makes her choice with Noah, and the pair share a sweet kiss in the finale before she brings him to Helen and Eric’s wedding.
Dana Sue and Ronnie’s Marriage Troubles
While Dana Sue and Ronnie renewed their vows at the end of season 3 — after Ronnie cheated on Dana Sue years prior — their past marriage issues came bubbling back up in season 5, which Anderson said was always the plan for the couple.
“We knew that if we were fortunate enough to go this far down the road, that they had rushed back into being together, and that there would be a price to pay, and so as we went through season 4, in reaction to Bill’s death, Ronnie is the one who has the biggest crisis, of ‘Who am I? Who do I want to be? What have I accomplished?’ We thought it was interesting to watch him sort of overcompensate for that and have that reveal the fact that, well, as Dana Sue tells him at the end of season 5, ‘We’ve got to take it down to the studs and rebuild.’”
Their underlying issues started to show when Ronnie became obsessed with his new business, the Bike Barn, alongside farmer Jeremy and newcomer Courtney.
“They just sort of spackled some cracks and painted over some water damage, and you just can’t do that in a relationship,” Anderson pointed out.
After it was revealed that Courtney had actually botched the business entirely, Jeremy decided to step back — but Ronnie doubled down on the Bike Barn, swearing to keep pushing forward with the failed venture in an attempt to prove his love for his family. His one-track mind — even after their house burned to the ground — only added to Dana Sue’s frustrations, and the pair ended the season with the future of their relationship up in the air.
“Dana Sue is stepping up and saying, ‘This isn’t enough,’ and then Ronnie kind of panics and doubles down in all the wrong ways, and this goes all the way back to him not being sure of who he is. And you see the hints of competitiveness as Cal’s in his groove [with a new baseball team] and Eric’s in his groove [as head chef at Sullivan’s] and even some competitiveness with the women moving on to a new project. He’s the one of the six who’s still like, ‘I haven’t found my thing yet,’ and part of it is that he has not embraced maturity as fruitfully as the other five.”
Although Ronnie’s actions were frustrating, Anderson said that her “heart breaks” for the character, as he “doesn’t mean to be an agent of pain to anybody,” but as an addict, his “impulse control” can cause waves.
“We talked a lot in the room about addicts in recovery sometimes stumbling and then embracing new addiction,” she explained, “and we felt that his chasing an impossible dream and not being able to admit that he was in over his head was a manifestation of that.”
Anderson confessed that while it’s clear Ronnie “loves” Dana Sue, there are “flaws baked into” their marriage, which kicked off years prior in a “rush of young love.” There’s also the troubled home that Ronnie grew up in with his sister, Kathy (Wynn Everett).
“They didn’t grow up in a house that taught love and trust and respect, and so we’re seeing some of those foundational hurts, flaws in Ronnie surfacing here,” she said.
Dana Sue’s Flirtation With Newbie Clark
Amid her marital troubles with Ronnie, Dana Sue formed a surprising new connection with former childhood nemesis Clarke. Although the pair began the season at odds, he eventually agreed to sell his storefront to the Magnolias for their next business venture, using every opportunity he could to flirt with Dana Sue. The pair first bonded over canolis and memories of his time at Sullivan’s with his late mother, and Dana Sue later found solace with Clarke as he lent her a supportive ear.
“That’s why we brought him into the story, because [Dana Sue] has been pretty selfless — always a mom first, and then a wife, but then also a boss and a best friend, and she has been, as all three of our ladies tend to be, but pouring into other people, and the main impasse in her relationship with Ronnie has been that he doesn’t listen, he’s always excited, he’s always got a great idea, but every time she tries to get him to slow down, he takes it as a rebuke.”
Anderson confessed that she and the fellow writers had “passionate and heated” conversations over how “sexy it is when a man listens to you,” something Clarke did multiple times for Dana Sue throughout the season.
What will come of Dana Sue’s marriage to Ronnie and her new dynamic with Clarke is up in the air, but Anderson confessed that Clarke brought an enticingly “different energy” to the group than the rest of Serenity’s men.
“It’s sort of this insidiously disruptive energy,” she quipped. “When we filmed our first scene with Clark, Dion and Justin [who play Eric and Cal] both came over to me and were like, ‘Poor Ronnie.’”
Helen and Eric’s Wedding and Potential Future
Season 5 of Sweet Magnolias gave fans what they have been waiting a long time for: Halen and Eric finally saying “I do.” It wasn’t, however, all smooth sailing when Eric started to get cold feet about how his buttoned-up family may feel about his colorful and bold wedding plans. There was also the introduction of Eric’s niece, Jessica, who showed up to her uncle’s house while running away from her parents’ divorce news.
Anderson explained that with the potential of Helen and Eric fostering teenagers down the line, Jessica provided a perfect lead-in to their possible next chapter.
“They talk at The Nutcracker in season 5 about children of the heart, and look at who we’ve seen them interact with, mostly teenagers and then in the [Sullivan’s and Friends] kitchen men in their 20s, so we thought the most organic way to set that up would be to bring a teenager into their lives in season 5.”
Anderson also wanted to make sure Jessica interacted with the Mini Magnolias — Cece (Harlan Drum), who formally lived with Helen, Annie and Lily (Artemis) — and someone who could help reveal more about Eric’s past.
“So in our discussions about Eric’s family and who Eric is outside of Serenity and where he came from, and expectations, and how you get this fabulous combination of this passionate man who is dedicated to craft, is incredibly loving, but also has this interesting reserved piece to him, we wanted to be able to say, ‘Well, this is how he was raised, and this is where it comes from.’ I am always fascinated by those moments where you think you know another adult, and then somebody pushes one of those childhood buttons, and they just change before your very eyes.”
Anderson stressed that despite the road blocks, it was important for all the conflict to resolve itself for the wedding date, “So that sense of, ‘I need to stop looking at this man as my son and start looking at this man the way the rest of the world sees him,’ as [Eric’s] dad says at the [wedding] toast,” she explained.
Now, will there be more “revelations” and “realizations on all sides” if Sweet Magnolias get a season 6? Anderson said that there will “definitely” be more teenagers in Helen and Eric’s lives, as well as “unexpected challenges and the joys of opening those doors.”
Speaking about Helen finally finding The One, she also shared why Ryan (Michael Shenefelt) was such an important stepping stone in the character’s love life before that door closed for good.
“I think we all have very strong feelings about Ryan, and Ryan’s purpose in our universe was to show that even smart women make bad choices, but now she’s making better choices, and she has a true partner,” she said.
Maddie and Cal’s Steamy Season 5 and Potential Future Hurdles
After the unexpected death of Maddie’s ex-husband, Bill Townsend (Chris Klein), in season 4 derailed them, Maddie and Cal finally got to take their honeymoon in Savannah when Cal surprised his wife at the end of Helen’s bachelorette weekend.
Anderson told Us that season 5 was the right time to give the couple some peace after dealing with job loss, anger management, death, ex-relationships and the initial bumps and bruises of blending their new family together. That, mixed with their honeymoon, resulted in some of Sweet Magnolias’ steamiest scenes yet.
Anderson, Garcia Swisher and Bruening talked a lot about what Cal and Maddie’s relationship would look like in season 5, as the trio wanted to make sure the spark remained alive and well.
“Even though you’re married and parents and busy, there’s still heat and there’s still passion, and maybe you have to carve out the time a little bit more, but you can find time,” Anderson told Us, adding that the two actors have known each other for “a long time” and therefore felt more than comfortable shooting spicier moments for the show. “They knew each other before our show started, and so they have a nice comfort with each other, and when we were like, ‘Let’s turn it up,’ everybody was ready.”
She added, “Those two were really committed to showing that a happily married couple can be passionate and steamy, and so we were happy to oblige.”
As for what the future could hold — especially after a controversial face from Cal’s past, Javier, popped up to work with him on a new baseball team based in Serenity — Anderson said: “Cal going back into baseball is going to be challenging. We’ll just say that.”
Noreen and Jeremy’s Love Story Deepens
Season 5 saw Noreen (Jamie Lynn Spears) and Jeremy’s (Chase Anderson) romance deepen as they became a true family living under one roof and navigating obstacles together, like the disastrous Bike Barn. The twosome spent the 10 episodes in cohabitation bliss, and Anderson teased that viewers could see them take the next step — a.k.a a potential engagement — should the show continue.
“We love them together, because there’s a sweetness and a gentleness to the two of them together that stands out more than the dynamics of the other couples,” she gushed, “and I certainly think that there is a way for them to keep deepening their relationship and find new levels of happiness. Wink, wink, wink.”
Kyle and Lily’s Conflict, Upcoming Long Distance Romance
Maddie’s younger son, Kyle (Logan Allen), and Lily found themselves at a crossroads in season 5 when new face Timothy attempted to ruffle their feathers when playing Lily’s love interest in the community play. While Anderson explained that Timothy wasn’t exactly trying to break the pair up, they were forced to figure out how to navigate around a challenging personality as a team.
“In Timothy’s mind, he is just the king of whatever space he’s in, so he is going to try to dominate who whoever he’s interacting with,” Anderson explained of the character. “But because he’s such an egomaniac at the beginning, it comes off like he’s hitting on her. He’s just being like, ‘I’m better than your boyfriend,’ and certainly, if she had responded to that, he probably would have been game. But our more overarching desire was to have the two of them work together to confront an obstacle and not push him out of the way, but teach him to be a better person as they’re both striving to be better people, so that they could end on a great note for the season.”
Kyle and Lily have been in a long-term romance since finding love in season 3, but a potential season 6 would likely see them dealing with long distance as Lily leaves for college and Kyle finishes his senior year of high school. As for what could happen between them, Anderson said, “If we’re lucky enough [to make more episodes], I think every once in a while long distance works out.”
Isaac and Michael’s Next Steps
It was important to Anderson to wait for the right time when it came to cooking wunderkind Isaac (Chris Medlin) finding romance, but season 5 saw him and his boyfriend, Michael (Kyle Findley), taking things to the next level by having Michael relocate to Serenity.
“It was always in our arsenal, but the way that I discussed it with Chris is that we want you to be in a place where he knows who he is and then is ready to open himself to a relationship,” Anderson told Us. “But the beautiful thing about Michael is that Isaac’s just starting to open himself up, and Michael is like, ‘Hello,’ and Isaac’s like, ‘Oh my gosh!’ We always knew we wanted to get there, we just wanted him to be in a great place.”
Who Runs Serenity Secrets?!
Anderson wouldn’t reveal who runs the gossip page, which was introduced in season 1, but confirmed she knows who does.
“We know who, why we know why it started when it did, and when it went quiet when it did,” she teased.
When asked if viewers will finally get answers should the show get another season, she replied, “Sure! Maybe.”
