June Diane Raphael Says Elle Won’t “Exactly Line Up” With Legally Blonde Lore

Spoiler alert: This post discusses the finale episode of Elle Season 1.

Ever since the first trailer for Elle dropped, fans of Legally Blonde have wondered how this new prequel will fit into the world of the beloved 2001 legal comedy. And after its first season, that question kind of still remains. Sure, the Prime Video series is peppered with little hints of Elle’s litigious future, but the show also seems to be teasing some major diversions from the movie. The most notable detail comes in the finale, when Elle’s mom, Eva, tells her husband, Wyatt, that she’s unhappy in their marriage. June Diane Raphael tells Elite Daily that fans shouldn’t assume Elle’s parents will remain together just because they are married in Legally Blonde.

The finale scene, in which Eva returns to Seattle after realizing she’s spent years trying to avoid confronting her marital struggles, heavily implies that the Woods family may experience a separation in Season 2. This would likely be a fundamental story alteration from Legally Blonde, which presents Elle’s parents as being happily (albeit superficially) married. But Raphael sees it as a necessary move to better explore the nuances of Eva, who is a two-dimensional, briefly seen character in the movie.

“I think the show does such a beautiful job of paying its respects to the movie and starting us off on that journey, but also, like any of the Marvel movies and those multiverses, I think it would be crazy for everything to exactly line up,” Raphael says. “And I don’t think people need that, necessarily.”

As much as Elle is a coming-of-age story for its teenage protagonist, Raphael also wanted to represent that it’s never too late to make a pivotal, life-changing decision.

“So many women in the middle of their life and are looking around like ‘What happened? Did I give everything over to my husband and child? Where do I fit in? Is there any time left?’” Raphael says. “So, I think that it’s a coming-of-age story for Eva, too. She and Elle are on parallel tracks.”