Sweet Magnolias' Nicest Character Was a Creep All Along?
The nice woman had a secret she probably shouldn't have told anyone.
When it premiered in 2020, Netflix's Sweet Magnolias quickly became popular with viewers thanks to its positive, quaint, and heartwarming vibes. Following three life-long friends — Dana Sue, Helen, and Maddie — as they try to navigate their work and families, the show has spanned three seasons, the last of which dropped in July.
Besides the main trio, Sweet Magnolias features lots of fascinating characters and explores their compelling life dramas. For many, the most lovable of them was Miss Frances, played by Cindy Karr, but it turns out this character is a bit controversial… or plain creepy, in fact.
Frances was obsessed with Dana Sue's dad
At the beginning of Season 3, viewers learned that Miss Frances had passed away, leaving all her money to Dana Sue — even though she had a living nephew that Helen was in love with. While this plot twist looked very weird, the writers provided fans with the most bizarre explanation, making Frances the ultimate creep of the show.
According to her will, Frances left her money to Dana Sue because she had been in love with her father all her life and felt that they should have been together and that Dana Sue was meant to be her daughter.
While Frances' reasoning is clearly offensive to Dana Sue's mother, her words essentially demonstrate how emotionally immature she was, unable to recover from her youth crush and lurking around the Sullivan family all those years.
Was there a way to avoid this creepiness?
Arguably, there was a way around this creepiness. Miss Frances could have left her money to Sweet Magnolias simply because she had been friends with them, and not focus so much on Dana Sue and her family in her will.
'It would have made a lot more sense that Frances gave the house and money to the Magnolias to invest in the spa that created something for the community and also allowed them to profit from it. Running a bricks-and-mortar business of that caliber takes a lot of work and overhead [expenses],' a fan noted on Reddit.
But alas, the writers have made the unfortunate choice with Miss Frances, and now they can't do anything to fix that.
Source: Reddit.