Tina Fey has cancelled soulmates.
Let’s take a step back to the moment in Netflix’s new dramedy The Four Seasons when Nick announces – mid-anniversary celebration, no less – that he’s leaving Anne after 25 years of marriage, it’s a gut punch. Not just to Anne, who’s blindsided, or to their college-era friends gathered at their lake house in the opening episode of about long-term relationships. Being freshly divorced, it hit me, too. The question left hanging in the air? Are soulmates real?
Over eight episodes – one for each trip the trio of couples takes across spring, summer, fall, and winter – The Four Seasons offers a subtle, often funny meditation on the kinds of relationships we expect to last forever, and the quiet heartbreak of realising that nothing – not even love – is guaranteed.
When I was younger, I believed in soulmates. But somewhere along the way – probably around the time I realised my marriage wouldn’t, and shouldn’t, last a lifetime – the shine wore off. There’s also the fact that there are over 8 billion people in the world. What are the odds that only one person out there is made just for you? And that you happened to meet them on a night out near where you live?
It doesn’t hold up.
Nick (played by Steve Carell) trades in his long marriage for a younger partner named Ginny, who brings oat milk, an eco-resort, and a slightly manic optimism to a group still clinging to actual books and actual feelings. Is he happier? Maybe, briefly. But novelty fades fast. By winter, Nick’s alone at a Gen Z New Year’s Eve party, surrounded by ring lights and strangers, longing for the intimacy he left behind.
Anne, played by Kerri Kenney-Silver, doesn’t collapse under the weight of her grief. She reflects. She recalibrates. She changes. When she shows up months later with a new boyfriend – and his regrettable acoustic guitar – it’s not just a rebound, it’s a reclaiming of joy. She’s not trying to replace Nick. She’s not waiting for another soulmate. She’s simply moving forward.
The genius of The Four Seasons is that it resists easy narratives. Nick isn’t a villain. Anne isn’t a saint. Everyone is messy, a little selfish, deeply human. And the show’s clearest philosophy comes from Tina Fey’s character Kate, who announces when someone calls her lucky for finding her husband, Jack. “We’re not lucky,” she says. “We’re dedicated.”
That line rattled something in me. Because that – more than soulmates – is the truth. Soulmates aren’t discovered. They’re built. Or maybe they’re tended to. Left alone too long, and they’re gone.
If you’re lucky – there’s that word again – you grow alongside your partner. If not, you grow apart. And growing apart doesn’t make you a failure. It just makes you human.
The Four Seasons doesn’t romanticise marriage or monogamy. It holds up a mirror to the “meh” years – the ones people don’t post about – and reminds us that love isn’t all grand gestures and destiny. Sometimes it’s just someone bringing you tea the way you like it. Or quietly unloading the dishwasher. We mistake those things for soulmate magic. But maybe they’re just signs of someone paying attention.
And if someone else, later, can learn your tea order – does that make them your soulmate, too? Or just another person capable of loving you well?
The idea of “the one” starts to seem less like a romantic ideal and more like an exhausting myth – a story that sets us up to fail. Maybe there’s not one perfect match. Maybe there are dozens, or hundreds, of people you could love, at different stages of your life, in different ways. Maybe the real miracle isn’t finding “the one” but continuing to choose someone, day after day, even when it’s hard. Especially when it’s hard.
That doesn’t mean it’s simple. One of the show’s biggest insights is how easily long friendships – and long marriages – can morph into a mix of comfort, resentment, loyalty, and boredom. The people who know you best can also drive you up the wall. Sometimes in the same conversation.
The Four Seasons doesn’t try to answer whether soulmates are real. It simply shows what happens when people stop taking love for granted. What they do when the myth cracks open. How they mourn it. And how, sometimes, they find something messier – but more honest – in its place.
Soulmates aren’t real. But that doesn’t mean love isn’t. It just means we have to stop waiting for it to arrive fully formed, and start building it ourselves.
