The fifteenth series of Call the Midwife has come to an end, closing with a finale set in 1971 and the death of Sister Monica Joan, played by Judy Parfitt. The long-running drama now turns to a prequel, Sisters in Arms, and a feature film that will continue the story beyond series 15.
That makes the ending more than a routine seasonal pause. It marks the first time the show has had to move on without one of its best-known Sisters on screen, while also setting up a new chapter that stretches backward and outward at once.
Creator Heidi Thomas has said she never runs out of stories for the midwives and that, after writing from 1957 to 1971, she wanted to go deeper into the past. She described the Blitz years in east London as extraordinary, shaped by loss, togetherness, courage and joy, with bombs falling, babies still arriving and the Sisters carrying on.
Sisters in Arms will be set during World War II and the London Blitz, and will show younger versions of Sisters Julienne, Monica Joan and Evangelina, originally played by Jenny Agutter, Judy Parfitt and Pam Ferris. The has not announced a precise broadcast date, though the prequel is understood to be due in the upcoming Christmas season.
The move follows a fifteenth series that ended in 1971 and dealt with reforms to the NHS that threatened Nonnatus House with closure. It also comes after the finale showed Sister Monica Joan’s passing, a moment that underlined how much the series has changed since it debuted in 2012 and was first set in 1957.
There is still a second piece to the story. A Call the Midwife movie will pick up from series 15 and take the characters abroad, but the cast has not yet been confirmed. Sister Julienne told the midwives that services at Nonnatus House would change and that the house would become one of prayer and charity while they discerned their next steps.
She also sketched out possibilities for the film’s setting, naming the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, British Columbia and a remote part of Australia as possible locations for a one-year medical mission. That leaves the franchise with a rare combination of endings and beginnings: one familiar era has closed, but the world around Nonnatus House is expanding rather than shrinking.
For a series built on childbirth, social hardship, medical advances and life-threatening illness, that is the central answer to where Call the Midwife goes now. It does not end with a farewell alone. It continues by digging into the war that shaped the women who came before and by sending the modern story far beyond Poplar.
