Warning: This article contains spoilers for the show “Anne with an E.” Read at your own risk!
Have you ever watched a show so beautiful, so touching, so dear to you just for it to be cancelled? Well, I have, and let me tell you, I’m still mourning.
“Anne with an E” is a four-season series that first premiered in Canada on CBC in March 2017, and then later on Netflix. This show is an adaptation of the original “Anne of Green Gables” book. The book was published in 1908, and a live-action movie adaptation came out in 1985.
In the 2017 adaptation, Anne is played by Amybeth McNulty. Anne is a young orphan girl who has endured a number of tumultuous experiences living in and out of an orphanage. She is adopted by an older pair of siblings, a reserved farmer and a hard-shelled woman, when she discovers her adoption was actually an accident. Despite the slip-up, Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert decide to keep Anne, and their unconventional family flourishes from there.
Girlhood and coming of age
The label “coming of age” is a perfect way to characterize this series, as it follows Anne through her middle to late adolescence and documents the hardships of becoming an aspirational young woman in a conservative society. Avonlea, where the Cuthberts’ farm is located, is a quaint town that values tradition; being confident and outspoken as a woman is greatly looked down upon. Unfortunately, Anne is exactly that. She is bright and creative and loves to learn, and when she has a thought, she speaks it.
Anne’s shameless personality gets her into trouble countless times throughout the series; so much so that when she meets Diana, her first true friend, she mutes herself to impress Diana and Diana’s strict parents. She wishes so badly that Diana likes her, only to find out that coming out as her true self is what prompts her and Diana’s unbreakable bond.
Diana is quite the opposite of Anne. She sticks to the status quo and rarely speaks out of turn. She is also less academically inclined compared to Anne, and late in the series is projected to attend a lady’s school where she is to learn how to be a proper, submissive wife instead of attending university like her classmates. Because of these expectations set by Diana’s parents, she sometimes has a hard time seeing eye-to-eye with Anne.
Despite their differences, Anne and Diana’s relationship shows the most beautiful parts of female friendship and girlhood. Diana is sometimes the only one to stand up for Anne as she is often picked on for her quirkiness. They get into trouble together, they cry together and they giggle with each other in a way only two best friends could understand.
In addition to a relatable female friendship storyline, this series includes a painful, yet rewarding slow burn love story. We all know the feeling, the one you get when you’re playing eye-tag with a classroom crush, the one where you think about a romantic love interest so often it starts infiltrating your dreams, the one where the relationship is so complicated that it hurts. The slow burn between Anne and Gilbert Blythe gives you the butterflies as if you were Anne herself.
Gilbert is the only classmate who can match Anne’s aptitude for reading and writing, creating a sort of rivals-to-lovers pipeline. He challenges her throughout the series, while also being one of two students who regularly defend Anne when she’s under fire — the other being Diana, of course. Unfortunately, when Anne and Gilbert finally reveal their love for one another is also when the series ends. We never truly get to witness their future together. While their confessions were extremely satisfying, it was devastating to see the last of them on screen. However, in the original book, the story of Anne continues, including her future academic career.
Another aspect of the series that makes it so easy to relate to Anne on a girl-to-girl level is the representation of appearance insecurity. It’s no secret that the beauty standards held for women are relentlessly damaging to women’s mental health. Too tall, too short, too fat, too skinny, too big of a nose, too small of lips — there are endless negative thoughts we can think of to describe ourselves.
Anne is repeatedly ridiculed by boys, other girls and even adults for her bright red hair and thinness. Even before coming to Avonlea, she felt poorly about her appearance, but the reinforcement of these thoughts made it worse to the point where she tries — and fails miserably — to change her appearance drastically. Due to her insecurities, she often talks poorly of herself. She feels like she would never become someone’s wife, and that she’s too “homely” to find romance. Fortunately, her loved ones reassure her by reminding her how brilliant she is and how she has so much potential for her future.
Through the ups and downs of the series, I find myself consistently relating to Anne and her experiences of growing up. She often proves herself to the people of Avonlea by showing them that despite her eclectic demeanor, she is just as, if not more so, competent than they are.
The progressiveness of Anne with an E
On September 19, 2026, Amybeth McNulty posted photos for a 10th anniversary post of when they started filming “Anne with an E.”
Now being out for nine years, this show was culturally ahead of its time, expressing unapologetic themes of anti-sexism, anti-homophobia and pro-individuality. While these more left-leaning sociopolitical views were not unheard of in 2017, they certainly are far more widespread nowadays.
Within the first episode, Anne is already countering sexist ideology by telling Marilla and Matthew that she is just as capable as a boy. For context, the siblings chose to adopt to have an extra farmhand at Green Gables, and they had a boy in mind when they sent for the adoptee. When Anne was the one who showed up, Marilla was immediately against the idea of having a girl help on the farm. Anne retaliates by saying a girl can do anything a boy can, and more.
While all of Avonlea is quite traditional, Marilla is especially set in her ways. Over time, however, Anne softens her and somewhat radicalizes her. Anne reminds Marilla that she herself is a capable woman who has never needed a man to succeed. The series depicts Marilla as having taken care of her brother Matthew when their older brother died during their childhood, and their mother became incapable of taking care of her children. She is strong and independent, and she shouldn’t discredit herself due to her patriarchal ideals.
While Anne constantly resists misogyny throughout the series, she also tackles other discriminatory ideologies. In the second season of the series, Anne befriends one of her classmates, Cole. Cole is quiet and artistic, somewhat of an outcast as he keeps to himself, but Anne admires his art and character, and he ends up becoming one of Anne’s closest friends. So close that Cole ends up trusting Anne enough to come out as gay to her, and without surprise, she accepts him with reassuring love.
When Cole is confessing to Anne, he also explains his theory about their school teacher. Mr. Phillips, the cold and unrelenting teacher, is hard on his students. However, he seemingly targets Cole when problems arise. In one scene, Cole and Mr. Phillips end up uncomfortably close in a room alone together, to which Mr. Phillips says that Cole “disgusts” him. Before these hurtful words, Mr. Phillips looks at Cole in a way that doesn’t signify disgust at all— quite the opposite, actually. Cole explains to Anne that he believes Mr. Phillips is like him, but he hates himself for it, so he singles Cole out since he cannot punish himself.
Again, while LGBTQ+ representation wasn’t unheard of when this show debuted, this depiction of internal homophobia isn’t very common. It’s a great example of destigmatizing the commonality of homosexuality. While straightness is still considered the societal default of sexuality, there are people all around us who aren’t heterosexual, and that doesn’t make them any different from anyone else.
Marvelously, Cole finds a support system away from his home. Aunt Josephine, Diana’s rich great aunt, holds a party in celebration of her late soulmate. Aunt Josephine is a progressive older woman who is well-traveled. She lived in Paris and has befriended people from big cities all around the world. Her adventurousness has exposed her to different cultures and societal norms. At this party, there are all sorts of characters with all sorts of backgrounds that exemplify the spectrum of sexuality and gender identities. Anne and Diana attend this party with Cole as their male chaperone.
Diana has a hard time discovering the reality of Aunt Josephine and her soulmate’s relationship. She knew that they were close, but it’s inferred during the party that the two women were lovers. Initially, Diana can’t seem to face this truth. However, Cole’s exposure to this party and the attendees helps him come to terms with his feelings. This specific episode shows how important representation is, and that being surrounded by people you can relate to can make it so much easier to battle your insecurities.
Another large issue this series tackles is racism and xenophobia. Avonlea is a town on Prince Edward Island in Canada. This show is also set during the late 1800s when there is very little, if any, racial diversity in these parts of Canada. In the third season, Anne is introduced to Ka’kwet, an indigenous girl of the Mi’kmaq native tribe. Anne, with her indiscriminate nature, befriends Ka’kwet despite Avonlea’s disdain for the natives.
Unfortunately, the people of Avonlea take advantage of the native people and their lack of knowledge about education. In order to seemingly eradicate the indigenous people’s culture, they offer a free “education” to Ka’kwet and tell parents that it will be beneficial to them in the long run for her to attend school. Unbeknownst to them, this school is more of a detention camp that weaponizes religion against foreigners. Ka’kwet, among other native children, is forced to cut her hair, speak only in English and reject her culture; otherwise, she is at risk of physical abuse.
This show represents the somewhat modest reality of colonialism and the conditions indigenous people have had to endure throughout history, and even today. In addition to the exemplification of colonialism, this show also portrays other examples of racism and xenophobia. In season two, after his father passes, Gilbert leaves Avonlea to explore the world and follow in his father’s footsteps. He travels to several different places by steamboat where he works as a stoker and meets a man from Trinidad, Sebastian.
Sebastian, affectionately known as Bash throughout the series, shares his culture with Gilbert by taking him back to his country. Here, Gilbert is exposed to the realities of what it’s like to be a Black man in the late 1800s. Gilbert witnesses Bash being treated as if he were a slave, despite being a free man. He also meets Bash’s mother, who works as a helping hand for a rich white family in Trinidad. Bash explains to Gilbert that his mother valued the validation from a white man more than she valued being a true mother to Bash. While she still loves Bash, she doesn’t give him the time of day so as to not risk her position as a white man’s maid.
Gilbert decides to share his culture with Bash by taking him back to Avonlea to start a new life. Here, people are wary of Bash’s presence, and even mistake him for being hired for help. Anne, of course, is the first to welcome Bash with open arms and admires his difference, a little too fervently, might I add. Despite the initial prejudice toward Bash, he finds his place in Avonlea living with Gilbert and connects with some of the other townspeople.
Last thoughts
If you’re looking for a cozy new series to binge, “Anne with an E” is the one for you. It’s a heartfelt story about a young girl who, against all odds, succeeds and finds the love she deserves. It makes you feel all warm inside while simultaneously prompting you to look inward at how you can be as open-minded and ambitious as Anne.