[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for Call the Midwife Season 14 Episode 1.]
Call the Midwife‘s Season 14 premiere furthered the romance between Megan Cusack‘s Nancy Corrigan and Conor O’Donnell‘s Roger Noble, a couple who got together in the 2024 Christmas special. While some fans weren’t very moved by this new pairing in December, the series clearly had serious plans for it.
Call the Midwife returned on Sunday, March 30, at 8/7c on PBS. It rang in a new decade in Poplar, and with the 1970s comes considerable social unrest. Citizens of the Isle of Dogs were protesting for their independence throughout the premiere episode, causing travel delays on the only bridge to and from the island. This threatened to make a high-risk birth even more dangerous as Nurse Rosalind Clifford (Natalie Quarry) and Nurse Crane (Linda Bassett) tried to get emergency services to a laboring mother on the island. She was at risk of death due to potential for uterine rupture following a C-section in her second pregnancy. A vaginal delivery in this third pregnancy posed serious risk to her health and the baby’s. Thankfully, the baby girl was delivered safely without the need for a C-section in the woman’s home.
The other primary dramas of the episode were Nancy’s engagement to Roger, whose mother (Andrea Irvine) strongly disapproved of their union over the couple’s religious differences (and Nancy being a single mother), and a 14-year-old girl’s pregnancy that her too-devoutly religious parents couldn’t comprehend. In the former story, Roger stood his ground and declared his love for Nancy and her daughter, Colette (Francesca Fullilove), and the episode ended with a celebration of their engagement that Roger’s mother, Esther Noble, attended, signaling her warming up to the union. In the latter tale, the young girl’s father eventually came to his senses about forcing his scared daughter to go through an exorcism-like ritual with their church’s leaders. He also realized how grave an error it was to deny their daughter any kind of sexual health education due to their religious beliefs.
After an episode full of him and his wife denying the possibility that their daughter was experiencing anything but an immaculate conception, the father told his terrified daughter to run to Nonnatus House to seek help from Nurse Joyce Highland (Renee Bailey) and the other women of the organization. The young girl was sent to spend her pregnancy at a boarding house that cares for pregnant teens. The girl’s mother eventually came around and supported her daughter as she left town.
Could Nancy and Roger be leaving town next? Thanks to the fact that Call the Midwife airs in the U.K. before it premieres in the U.S., we already have an answer about whether this was Cusack’s final episode of the series.
Cusack confirmed to U.K. outlet Radio Times in February that Call the Midwife Season 14 is her final season. She first joined the series four years ago, and Nancy’s story began to end in the 2024 Christmas special. While she will seemingly be absent for much of Season 14, Episode 1 might not be the last fans see of Nancy this season. Her relationship with Roger, plus her renewed job offer from a previous season that she’s now chosen to accept, will be what takes her away.
“There are lots of things happening,” Cusack told Radio Times in January 2025 as new episodes came out in the U.K. “Nancy’s got lots going on. A job offer, an engagement, an overbearing mother-in-law to be. It was lovely [to explore all of that]. I never thought Nancy would have a romance, so it’s a new element of that character. And it’s been lovely in the sense that it feels like the community of Poplar has allowed her to let her guard down and experience someone loving her.”
Nancy informed the Nonnatus House women of her and Colette’s plans to leave with Roger in the premiere.
“Sometimes, you’ve got to step out of your comfort zone to grow,” Cusack told Radio Times in February. “I’ve learnt so much, but I’m at the start of my career and I need to take a leap of faith.”
“It’s bittersweet, really. I’ve made lifelong friendships there and I get to take those with me,” she added. “But when I think about not rocking up to set and seeing Tim, who’s part of the grips team, with his guitar hanging out of his van and serenading people at half six in the morning… It really has been like a family.”
Call the Midwife, Sundays, 8/7c, PBS
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
