‘Sanditon’ Season 2 Episode 5 Reveals the Real Reason Lennox and Colbourne Hate Each Other

Sanditon fans have known for quite some time that there’s been bad blood between Charlotte’s (Rose Williams) two Season 2 love interests, Colonel Lennox (Tom Weston-Jones) and Alexander Colbourne (Ben Lloyd-Hughes). In Sanditon Season 2 Episode 5 on Masterpiece on PBS, we finally know why. While it’s true both men fell hard for Colbourne’s deceased wife Lucy, what we didn’t realize is that Lucy was married to Colbourne first, and then fell hard for Lennox. The two had a torrid affair that produced Leonora (Flora Mitchell). Lennox abandoned Lucy and Colbourne ripped into her, telling her things he now regrets. After Leo’s birth, Lucy perished after catching sick while walking in the rain.

So that’s why Colbourne hates Lennox. That’s why Lennox blames Colbourne for “ruining” Lucy. And that’s also why Colbourne was awkward with his own child and Lucy lookalike Augusta (Eloise Webb) for so long. The truth is finally out! Charlotte seems to accept this awful news, but a shot at the end of the episode reveals that Leonora overheard her father revealing this truth.

While it’s a twist that doesn’t seem all that scandalous in modern times, Jane Austen only hinted at pre-marital sex in her books and the dangers of women being left in the lurch by adventuring lovers. The idea that Lennox abandoned a pregnant Lucy who later may have intentionally gotten herself deathly ill is dark for Jane Austen. But it’s a decision showrunner Justin Young defended when Decider spoke with him last month. He mentioned that Season 1’s Esther/Edward storyline was dark in a sexual way that Masterpiece wanted to steer away from in Season 2, but Austen’s own work on Sanditon suggested she was breaking new ground with her own voice.

“It’s interesting to consider Sanditon in terms of Jane Austen’s work because it was obviously such a fragment. It’s so unfinished. It’s very hard to second guess what she may or may not have done with it, but it did feel like a more mature work,” Young said. “There is a maturity that seeps into her later novels.”

“It just felt like an interesting story to be honest with you. And you’re always looking for the cause for the drama of this style of show. You can’t blow stuff up, you can’t have people picking up guns. You’ve got to plot it so it’s big and emotional,” Young said. “And that felt like an interesting, complicated way to explain who Colburne was, to give us a surprise about Lennox, to send the story off in a different direction.”

“And also to give Colburne a clear turning point…” Young added.

Ben Lloyd-Hughes told Decider that he knew quite early on what the background between Colbourne and Lennox was.

“[Justin Young] sent me this amazingly helpful, many page document on Colbourne and everything that’s happened to his life and the backstory. And it was a really powerful revealing read,” Lloyd-Hughes said.

“I think whenever I think of Colbourne, a huge word that comes up is integrity,” Lloyd-Hughes said. “I think he’s a man of huge integrity. Much to his own detriment sometimes, but it was an era where integrity was a huge part of life. Probably way more so than now. And doing the right thing, what that meant to him, was hugely important to him and his values and I can only imagine how difficult and painful it must have been to everything that had happened to him.”

“But that’s not to say that he’s a saint,” Lloyd-Hughes said. “He hasn’t necessarily been the best partner or guardian to these two girls up until the point that he meets Charlotte.”

Justin Young confirmed this to Decider.  “There’s a bit of quality by the end of the series that actually, [Colbourne has] embraced Leo as his child. He’s committed to being a father in a way he hasn’t been able to.”

Tom Weston-Jones also revealed that he, too, was gifted a “very detailed character backstory” before signing on to Sanditon. 

“I wanted to know everything,” Weston-Jones aid. “Sometimes in television, it can feel a little bit like it’s a waste for actors not to know various secrets that a character has. I’ve worked with some people —directors, producers, writers — who, unfortunately just think they can dump something on you. Just a big surprise, a big secret that you’ve been harboring, and to me it feels like wasted ground. It’s stuff that you can really use. It’s what all of us want as an actor.”

Weston-Jones revealed that knowing Lennox’s history with Lucy, Colbourne, and Leo helped him mmensely. As did Young’s willingness to take Weston-Jones’s point of view on “certain details.”

“I wanted to have concrete things in my mind and not be general. I never like to be general with someone’s memories and actions and all that stuff,” Weston-Jones said. “It felt very much like a shared thing that we were building together rather than me being told what to do and where to stand and how to say it, which is not what you want.”

That’s what the men playing Lennox and Colbourne felt about the reveal, but what about the woman they’re fighting over in Sanditon Season 2? Rose Williams says the revelation about Leo’s true parentage was “kind of a double-edged sword” for Charlotte, emotionally.

“She sees Lennox make this decision out of cowardice. Nothing but saving his own skin because he hasn’t got the capability to be a father,” Williams said. “And I think it deepens her respect for how Colbourne has really taken a protector role when it comes to these two children.”

“So it makes her respect Colbourne more and kind of lose even more respect for the nasty Lennox. Spoiler alert,” Williams added with a laugh.

We’ll have to wait until next week’s Sanditon Season 2 finale to find out what little Leo makes of this revelation about her own past…

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