Netflix Walks Away From the Meghan Markle Cinematic Universe
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Netflix Walked Away.
As Ever Still Looks Expensive.
A soft, sun-drenched look at what happens when a lifestyle brand has lovely jam, beautiful lighting, a $64 candle, a $27 million inventory glitch, and almost no structural reason to exist without its backer.
There are only so many times you can relaunch the same woman before the audience starts noticing the scaffolding.
Netflix has now stepped away from As Ever, Meghan Markle's lifestyle brand, after serving as its launch partner and backer for approximately eleven months. The official statements from both sides are polished in the specific way that statements are polished when the decision has already been made and neither party has any interest in relitigating it publicly. Netflix "looks forward to celebrating how she continues to bring joy to households around the world." As Ever is "grateful for Netflix's partnership through launch and our first year." Everyone is delighted. Nobody is staying.
The Hollywood Reporter put it most efficiently: "You can probably read between the $14 tea leaves here."
We are going to read them carefully, with full receipts, because the As Ever story is not simply a brand story. It is a compressed version of the entire six-year Sussex post-royal arc — beautiful on the surface, structurally uncertain underneath, and carrying a question about the brand beneath the brand that has never quite been answered.
What As Ever Actually Was
As Ever launched in April 2025, coinciding with the premiere of With Love, Meghan on Netflix. The inaugural collection: teas, jam, honey, baking mixes — a raspberry spread, a shortbread cookie mix, a crepe mix, flower sprinkle garnishes. Later additions included a Napa Valley rosé wine and, yes, a scented candle retailing at $64.
The brand's website describes it as "a love language." Created by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, As Ever "welcomes you to a collection of products, each inspired by her long-lasting love of cooking, entertaining, and hostessing with ease." In a letter on the site, Meghan writes: "As ever, for me, is an extension of how I love."
The visuals did most of the heavy lifting. Sun-drenched kitchen counters. Beige linen. Soft-focus domesticity filtered through the specific aesthetic that suggests a woman who owns olive oil in a beautiful decanter rather than a supermarket bottle. The whole thing looked like a lifestyle mood board by someone determined to let you know the cooking is thoughtful, the entertaining is effortless, and the pantry has been carefully curated.
Then came the products. Jam. Honey. Flower sprinkles. A $64 candle. What the Hollywood Reporter called "the most expensive honey ever produced by bees."
"As it was always intended, Meghan will continue growing the brand and take it into its next chapter independently."
— Netflix spokesperson, March 6, 2026. "As it was always intended" doing substantial work here.The Inventory That Accidentally Got Honest
In early 2026, a glitch on the As Ever website briefly allowed visitors to view the brand's inventory numbers. This was not intended. It is almost certainly the most commercially significant thing that happened to As Ever in its first year, and it happened entirely by accident.
What the glitch revealed, according to reporting at the time, suggested As Ever had generated approximately $27 million in sales from its jam and pantry products — a figure that prompted William Sitwell at The Telegraph to argue, in high dudgeon, that Meghan's jam sales were evidence of societal freefall. It also prompted observers to note that if the numbers were accurate, the sellout strategy had been doing considerable commercial work.
The sellout strategy is worth examining separately because it has been the subject of significant criticism. As Ever's products have sold out rapidly at almost every launch — a fact that Meghan has publicly celebrated ("Our shelves may be empty, but my heart is full!"). Critics, including a sharp piece in the Royal News Network Substack, have argued that the sellouts appear intentional: that deliberately under-stocking creates artificial scarcity to make the brand appear more successful than its actual supply chain suggests. Emma Grede, interviewed alongside Meghan, reportedly noted she had never experienced sellouts like Meghan's despite running multiple successful companies with a net worth of $320 million — and was visibly skeptical of the dynamic.
The counter-argument is that the sellouts are simply what happens when a global celebrity with millions of followers launches a new product with limited initial inventory. Both things can be true simultaneously. What the sellout strategy cannot do, on its own, is answer the deeper question about what As Ever is beyond the scarcity and the aesthetic.
How to Build an Empire Out of Vibes
Ingredients
- One duchess-shaped mystique, previously used
- Considerable quantities of beige linen
- Something preserved artisanally in a jar
- A light dusting of flower sprinkle garnish
- Heavy use of words like "intention," "joy," "elevate," and "love language"
- A major streaming platform as launch partner and financial backer
- Controlled scarcity to simulate demand signals
Method
- Launch simultaneously with a television series about the same subject
- Photograph everything within an inch of its life
- Treat the aesthetic as if it were the strategy
- Sell out deliberately to generate press about selling out
- Allow a website glitch to accidentally show the real numbers
- Exit the streaming backer after eleven months, citing "meaningful and rapid growth"
- Prepare the next pivot while the first one is still warm
The Netflix Relationship, From Both Sides
It is worth documenting exactly what Netflix said about As Ever, and when, because the contrast between the August 2025 statement and the March 2026 exit is instructive.
In August 2025, when Netflix announced it was extending its partnership with Archewell Productions to a first-look arrangement — a significant downgrade from the original deal — chief content officer Bela Bajaria said: "Harry and Meghan are influential voices whose stories resonate with audiences everywhere. More recently, fans have been inspired by With Love, Meghan, with products from the new As Ever line consistently selling out in record time. We're excited to continue our partnership with Archewell Productions."
Seven months later, in March 2026, Netflix said: "Meghan's passion for elevating everyday moments in beautiful yet simple ways inspired the creation of the As Ever brand, and we are glad to have played a role in bringing that vision to life. As it was always intended, Meghan will continue growing the brand and take it into its next chapter independently."
"As it was always intended" is a phrase that deserves quiet contemplation. The arrangement had been announced seven months earlier specifically as an expansion of the Netflix-Sussex partnership to incorporate As Ever. The reframing of the exit as the original plan requires accepting that the expansion announcement was always a launching pad rather than a commitment. That framing is coherent. It is also the kind of framing that press statements produce when the underlying reality is more complicated than either party wants to discuss publicly.
The broader Netflix-Sussex fallout is documented in detail elsewhere and As Ever is one piece of it. But it is the most concrete piece — the one with a product range, a price list, an inventory glitch, and a clearly documented timeline of backing and exit. It is the part of the story that can be held and examined.
The Brand Problem That Jam Cannot Solve
The original Sussex media identity was built on one genuinely compelling product: the royal exit. The rupture, the family drama, the inside access, the global story. That product had real commercial value and was successfully extracted through the Harry and Meghan documentary. Everything since has been the search for a second act proportionate to the first.
As Ever represents the lifestyle chapter of that search. And the lifestyle chapter has a structural problem that no amount of beautiful packaging can resolve: it requires the audience to believe in Meghan as a domestic tastemaker independent of the royal backstory. Not as the woman who left the palace. As the woman whose jam recipe and flower sprinkle aesthetic are worth $14 to $64 per item on their own merits.
The Tig — Meghan's lifestyle blog that ran before her relationship with Harry — is the reference point here. As CNN noted in its As Ever coverage, With Love, Meghan and the brand are "in keeping with a familiar lane for her." She had the instinct before the royalty. She has the instinct after. The question is whether the instinct, without the royal currency amplifying it, can sustain a premium-priced consumer brand at meaningful scale.
If the inventory glitch was accurate and As Ever generated approximately $27 million in its first year, that is a commercially impressive number for a new lifestyle brand — and considerably more than most celebrity product launches achieve. This should be stated clearly before the analysis continues.
It is also a number that, in the context of the original Netflix deal's reported scale and the infrastructure costs of launching a consumer brand with celebrity-level production values, needs to be weighed against margins, distribution costs, Netflix's financial contribution to the launch, and what sustainable growth looks like without a streaming platform's marketing machine behind every new product release.
Revenue is not profit. Sellouts are not a business model. A $27 million first year is a foundation. Whether As Ever can build on that foundation independently — without the Netflix halo, without the With Love, Meghan show driving product discovery, without the streaming-to-commerce pipeline that the partnership was explicitly designed to create — is the question that the "meaningful and rapid growth" statement does not fully answer.
The Clean-Up Questions
Why is "as it was always intended" doing so much work?
Because the narrative of a planned, mutual exit is considerably cleaner than the alternative. The alternative — that Netflix backed As Ever as part of an expanded partnership, watched With Love, Meghan's second season crater in viewership, assessed the return on its investment in the brand, and decided the relationship had run its course — is what the "as it was always intended" framing is designed to preempt.
Both framings may contain truth. Partnerships of this kind typically have planned wind-down structures. They also typically wind down faster when the commercial metrics don't support continuation. The eleven-month timeline — from expansion announcement in August 2025 to exit announcement in March 2026 — is on the shorter end of "always intended."
What does As Ever look like without Netflix?
Structurally, it loses the most important thing the partnership provided: a built-in distribution and discovery engine. The Netflix-As Ever arrangement was explicitly designed as a commerce-to-content pipeline. Audiences watching With Love, Meghan encountered the products in context — they were not being sold at, they were being inspired. That mechanism is gone. As Ever must now compete as a standalone direct-to-consumer brand against established premium lifestyle players who have years of brand equity and distribution infrastructure that As Ever does not.
The sellout strategy also looks different without a Netflix show generating continuous awareness. Without regular television content pulling audiences to the brand, the scarcity mechanism becomes dependent on social media alone — which has a different ceiling than a streaming platform's reach.
Is the brand actually in trouble, or just transitioning?
Transition and trouble are not mutually exclusive. As Ever may successfully navigate the exit from Netflix and build a sustainable independent operation. There are lifestyle brands that have done exactly this. The question is whether the specific combination of premium pricing, limited inventory, and a founder whose commercial appeal is inseparable from a royal narrative that is now six years old can sustain the growth trajectory the brand is claiming.
The "meaningful and rapid growth" statement needs to be compared to the next twelve months of independently generated revenue and margins. That comparison will be more informative than any press statement either way.
What is the missing ingredient?
Clarity. Not aesthetics, which are strong. Not celebrity reach, which is real. Not even product quality, which by all accounts is adequate to premium for what the category is. The missing ingredient is a clear answer to the question: what is As Ever for, beyond being an extension of how Meghan loves?
The strongest lifestyle brands have a clear point of view that survives the departure of the founder's celebrity context. If Meghan were not the Duchess of Sussex, if there were no royal backstory, no Netflix deal, no global recognition — what would As Ever be? The answer to that question is what the brand still needs to find. The jam is pretty. The honey is expensive. The flower sprinkles are photogenic. None of that is a thesis.
Pantry Labels for the Season
The Tig existed before Harry. It was a lifestyle blog that Meghan ran as a working actress, and it had a genuine following among people who found her cooking and entertaining content appealing on its own terms. It was shut down when the royal relationship became public.
As Ever is, in many ways, The Tig with a budget and a Netflix partnership. The instinct is the same. The question is whether the instinct, which was genuinely hers before the palace and appears to be genuinely hers after it, can carry a premium consumer brand at the scale As Ever is implying with its pricing and its positioning.
If the answer is yes, then the Netflix exit is genuinely what the statements say it is: a natural graduation to independence. If the answer is no — if the brand cannot maintain its current trajectory without the streaming discovery engine — then the exit is the beginning of a harder chapter that the press statements are not designed to acknowledge.
The $14 tea leaves, as the Hollywood Reporter noted, are there to be read. We are all reading them.
Maybe the next version will finally know what it is.
Then again, that has been the sales pitch every time. Six years of the Sussex project have produced one genuine cultural event, a first-look deal that nobody is visibly excited about, an Instagram unfollow that became its own news cycle, a lifestyle brand that sold $27 million of jam before its backer quietly departed, and a candle that costs $64.
As Ever is now independent. It may thrive. The instinct behind it is real and the aesthetics are genuinely strong. The jam is probably good. But a brand built on "an extension of how I love" needs to become, at some point, an extension of a clear commercial identity. Love is not a distribution strategy. Beige linen is not a moat. And $27 million in first-year sales, however impressive, does not answer the question that the Maison Markle catalogue keeps raising: what is this, exactly, when the headlines leave the room?
The shelves may be empty. The thesis still needs filling.
