“I might have. I didn’t care.” That is how Janelle Brown answered when PEOPLE asked whether she had deleted the email telling her that Kody and Robyn Brown were quitting Sister Wives. After nearly 30 years of marriage, the biggest news of the season arrived the way a shipping update does. Season 21 is no longer about one man’s four marriages. It is about five relationships being rebuilt from the wreckage — and they are not all holding up equally well. Here they are, ranked from shakiest to strongest.
No. 5 — Kody and His Three Ex-Wives: The Apology Tour That Went Nowhere
Kody ended Season 20 promising a pilgrimage of apologies, and the Season 21 premiere showed him making them. It did not land. David Woolley called Kody a “quitter” and said the apologies looked like a play for “brownie points” from Robyn. Janelle told PEOPLE she has not spoken to Kody and Robyn since the family sold the Coyote Pass property — she learned Kody and Robyn were leaving by email. She also estimated that Kody is “alienated from 90 to 95 percent” of his children. A relationship conducted by email and apology tour is not a relationship. It is a press release.
No. 4 — Meri and Ron: The Friend Zone, Entered on Purpose
Meri met Ron at a speed-dating event last year, and in the October 18 episode she was clear about where they stand: “comfortable in the friend zone.” “He and I have become really, really good friends. It’s really cool,” she said. That honesty is why this ranks fourth, not fifth. But a friendship is not a romance, and Meri knows it: on November 8 she walked into a tantra yoga speed-dating night in San Francisco, where women signal interest by dropping a bead into a man’s pouch. She also admitted she still does not know whether to find her place first or find her person first.
No. 3 — Christine and David: Married, in Love, and in Therapy
On paper this should be the strongest relationship on the show: a wedding in Moab in October 2023 and a husband who defends Christine in public. But Season 21 has put the marriage on camera in a therapist’s office, and the sessions have been raw. David has said he is tired of the same conversations about Christine’s exes, and in episode 4’s “Let’s Get Deep” game he turned a shared hall pass — actress Elizabeth Hurley — into a polygamy joke that Christine shut down on the spot. None of that means the marriage is failing; couples who go to therapy are couples still trying. But until Sunday’s Moab campfire plays out, third place is the honest spot.
No. 2 — Janelle and Pete: The Blind Date That Actually Worked
Janelle was not looking. A mutual friend named Alice set up a blind date in Las Vegas — dinner at The Stratosphere — and Janelle went without even seeing Pete’s photograph. Pete had never watched Sister Wives, which Janelle called “the best thing ever,” because here was a person with no preconceived idea about who she is. Pete, 62, remembers what she says, asks about her day, and opens doors. “When I am with him, my nervous system just chills,” Janelle told PEOPLE. “He’s like my rock. I feel so stable and protected.” Her kids have met him and love him. The only thing keeping this from No. 1 is geography: she lives in North Carolina, he lives in Las Vegas, and they are working on getting him to the East Coast.
No. 1 — Meri, Janelle and Christine: The Only Relationship That Got Stronger
The strongest relationship in Season 21 is not a romance at all. It is the three ex-wives. In the November 1 episode they melted down their wedding rings together — Meri joked it took the rings as long to melt as it took her to leave the marriage — and a week later, in “Therapy by Fire,” they sat down together to share old photographs and burn the jewelry from their marriages. The campfire talk that followed was blunt: Christine said Janelle had “defended it super strong” on polygamy, and Janelle answered, “I wasn’t defending polygamy.” That is the point. They can fight about the thing that defined their lives and still sit at the same fire. Sixteen years ago these three women shared a husband. Now they share the freedom from him.
YOU MAY LIKEMykelti’s Truth Bomb: Are You Watching Sister Wives for the Moms — or to Yell at Kody?So who lasts: Janelle and Pete’s long-distance love, or the three ex-wives’ friendship? Tell us which relationship you would bet on, and which one falls apart first.
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