The Other Elliot Sister: Everything We Know, and Who Anne's Sisters Really Are

BBC just teased a second Austen spinoff is coming, working title The Other Elliot Sister, following the same overlooked-sister format as The Other Bennet Sister, this time pulled from Persuasion instead of Pride and Prejudice. The announcement is only hours old as I write this, which means there isn't much locked down yet. But there's already plenty worth saying about the 2 sisters actually in the running for the spotlight, because Austen wrote both of them with a lot more going on than a press release is ever going to capture.

What's Actually Confirmed So Far

What isn't settled is the actual subject. The coverage breaking this news hedges between "elder sister Elizabeth" and "younger sister Mary," which tells you something useful on its own, this got announced before every detail was locked in, not after. No casting, no release window, no confirmed title beyond the working name. So instead of guessing at plot details nobody has, I want to spend the rest of this on what we actually do know, which is what Austen already wrote about both women.

Elizabeth Elliot, the Sister Who Never Left Kellynch

Elizabeth is the eldest of Sir Walter's 3 daughters, and the only son Sir Walter and his wife had died in infancy, which is the entire reason the Kellynch estate is entailed away to a distant male cousin instead of staying in the family. Their mother died when Anne was still a teenager, and Elizabeth, only a little older, effectively became mistress of the house from that point on. By the time the novel opens she's been running Kellynch for well over a decade, competent at it, and 29 years old, a detail Austen doesn't let you skip past. In the world of this novel, 29 and unmarried is starting to read as a countdown.

She shares her father's vanity almost exactly, the same fixation on rank and appearance, and Austen is fairly blunt that Elizabeth has inherited his blind spots along with his looks. Years earlier she came close to an understanding with William Elliot, the cousin who stands to inherit Kellynch, only to watch him marry a wealthy woman instead and cut the family off entirely. She still hasn't quite let go of the idea of him. Her closest companion by the time the novel opens is Mrs. Clay, a sharp, socially beneath-her widow who is, as everyone except Elizabeth and Sir Walter can see, maneuvering for a much bigger prize than friendship. And through all of it, Elizabeth barely registers Anne as a person worth consulting about anything.

If the show ends up centering Elizabeth, I think there's real material there, more than "vain older sister" suggests on the surface. Here's a woman who did everything her world actually asked of her, ran her father's household well for over 10 years, kept up appearances, waited her turn, and still ends the novel with nothing to show for any of it while the sister she overlooks the entire time gets the ending. That just sounds fun to me!

Mary Musgrove, Married Off and Still Miserable

Mary is the youngest of the 3, married to Charles Musgrove, who had actually proposed to Anne first and was turned down before he ever met Mary. She lives close by at Uppercross, among her husband's family, and Austen gives her one of the most specific comic instincts in the whole novel, she is, by any reasonable measure, a hypochondriac, forever unwell in some new way whenever attention is scarce and suddenly recovered the moment company arrives. She's just as consumed by rank and precedence as her father and sister, only aimed at smaller stakes, exactly which seat she's owed at a Musgrove family dinner.

She also, genuinely, cannot function in a crisis. When her young son dislocates his collarbone in a fall, Mary is instantly and completely useless in the sickroom, and it's Anne who ends up nursing him while everyone else goes off to a party Mary had been desperate to attend herself. That single scene does more to establish who actually holds a household together than anything Mary says about herself the entire book.

It's not a coincidence that this is one of the few moments in the book where anyone praises Anne to her face, and it happens at the Musgroves', not at home with her own sisters. Mary's household runs on Anne's competence the same way the piano keeps the evening's dancing going, essential, unremarked, and entirely taken for granted by the family enjoying it.

I'll say this with real affection, Mary is one of literature's earliest cases of main-character syndrome, a woman with a functioning marriage, healthy children, and a comfortable home, entirely convinced she is the most ill and overlooked person in Somerset. If the show goes with Mary, I want the writers to lean all the way into that instead of softening her into something more sympathetic, because an honest Mary is a much funnier and more interesting choice than a redeemed one. I've personally always found her to be one of Austen's funniest characters, and I like her enough that I gave her her own essay.

Either sister works, honestly, and that's rare for a spin-off premise built this early. Elizabeth gives you a slow tragedy about doing everything right and still losing. Mary gives you a comedy of a woman who has already won and refuses to notice. I'll update this the moment BBC/Britbox actually tells us which sister!