Netflix has sent Meghan Markle a memo in the final cut of her With Love, Meghan holiday special, which dropped today on the streaming platform.
Its medium is a passing shot of her elderly beagle, Guy, padding mournfully through the frame—like a ghost of contracts past.
Guy died last year. This presumably means that this “holiday special,” touted by Meghan as evidence of her strong and productive ongoing relationship with Netflix, was filmed at the same time as previous episodes—long before the couple were released from their mega-bucks contract in favor of a first-refusal clause.
Guy’s appearance in a supposedly “new” project would be the kind of mistake an inexperienced producer might make when stitching together leftovers.
Netflix does not make mistakes of this kind. They permitted it. They wanted it seen. It is their way of telling investors, advertisers, viewers or anyone else inclined to ask awkward questions that no one spent any new money on Meghan Markle. No new cameras have rolled. The content tap is off.
Woof.
From that revelation, everything else in the holiday special tumbles into place with grim inevitability.
There is a British saying that you can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter. And there is glitter everywhere in this painful hour of TV, which clanks and groans under its own faux-festive earnestness. Humorlessness weaves itself through every frame.
Meghan insists that a Christmas tree is an opportunity to honor one’s family history, seemingly forgetting that she has spent years erasing half of hers—and urging her husband to amputate all of his.
One guest, tasked with assembling a cracker, announces that “intentional and orchestrated fun” helps people feel “seen,” as though cracker-pulling were a group therapy exercise rather than something British families do half-cut after lunch.
In most contexts, “orchestrated fun” is an insult—an accusation of over-management, a sign the host is trying too hard.
It all makes sense when you consider Guy’s Lazarus-like cameo. Once you understand you’re watching reassembled offcuts, the special’s emptiness becomes easier to understand.
No children appear—not even fleetingly—which is odd for a holiday program about family.
Of course, Meghan will never permit her children to be filmed. But she still tries to harvest their symbolic value, showcasing a reusable advent calendar filled with affirmations allegedly meant for them. To be clear, any British child confronted with an advent calendar filled with fluffy, feel-good mantras would ask the only question that matters: “Where’s the chocolate?”
This is the core contradiction. Meghan wants the aura of family without exposing the thing itself. She wants the credibility of motherhood without the chaos, the sentiment without the reality.
In the final minutes, Harry appears.
The timing feels algorithmic: wait long enough and the prince will arrive. When he does, the interaction is brittle. Harry jokes that he hates the salad his wife made because it contains everything he dislikes—and for a moment the mask slips. Petty, yes. But also real. A glimpse of resentments usually lacquered over.
Then Meghan says, with strange formality: “Thanks for coming.”
It’s the sort of thing one says to a neighbor over for lunch, not a husband. It lands like a Freudian slip—a moment where the performance forgets itself, revealing shaky scaffolding beneath. The relationship feels staged, as though they are guest stars in each other’s lives, united by branding obligations rather than domestic instinct.
It is the perfect encapsulation of the Netflix-Sussex venture. What began as a promise of unguarded authenticity has devolved into a pageant of managed moments stitched together. The emotional register feels second-hand. The footage literally is.
Christmas, fundamentally, is gloriously unhinged—noise, overcooked turkey, dodgy hats, wrapping-paper avalanches, arguments, weeping aunties, snoring uncles.
It is the least curatable day of the year.
Meghan has tried to turn it into a lifestyle seminar, but the glitter falls off long before she’s done.
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