Anna Kendrick stepped back to a minor role in HBO Max's Love Life Season 2, but the show had a very good reason for abandoning its original star. Love Life was always developed as a romantic anthology series, with each HBO Max season planned to pivot to another love-seeker, exploring each's journey love lifes through the years, leading up to finding happiness.
Pitch Perfect star Anna Kendrick launched Love Life as Darby Carter and explored her journey toward finding "the one," who was finally revealed in Season 1, Episode 10. Beyond just leading the freshman outing, Kendrick was a key player behind the scenes as an executive producer - a role she carried into Season 2 despite taking on a greatly reduced role in the story.
For Season 2, Love Life's focus shifted to The Good Place star William Jackson Harper's Marcus Watkins to follow his journey toward love. Of course, this meant Darby wasn't as present since Love Life was no longer her story, and she did not appear close with Marcus, but she did still appear for some cameos.
Kendrick appears three times in Love Life Season 2 in Episodes 1, 7, and 10.
Love Life's Season 2 premiere introduced Marcus Watkins as a party guest, before delivering the unexpected revelation that he was, in fact, attending Darby's wedding to Magnus (a marriage that would ultimately fall apart).
Mia and Marcus' relationship came to a tragic end in Episode 7 after she cheated on him and he, unknowingly, threw her a surprise birthday party. At said party, Darby cameoed once again as a guest.
Finally, Darby returned for the finale, where she had an unexpected reunion with Marcus at the Natural History Museum, and they had a heartfelt chat where she gave advice on parenting and other struggles. This chat proved important, as it pushed Marcus to finish his book, which eventually got published.
While Love Life was, unfortunately, cancelled by HBO Max after that finale, the show is peaking up some steam again as both seasons arrived on Netflix.
Anna Kendrick Would've Been Important in Love Life's Future
During an interview with Deadline, Anna Kendrick noted she was "shooting a movie while they shot [Season 2]" and was unable to be around the set. While her cameo-limited role may have been an intentional choice to keep the focus on Marcus, one has to wonder if she may have otherwise had more of a role.
Before the series' cancellation, Love Life's producers revealed some Season 3 story possibilities, revealing a somewhat-joky goal that "every future protagonist will have been a guest at Darby and Magnus’ wedding."
Had the romantic anthology not been cancelled, there's every chance that Kendrick may have continued to play a minor role in future seasons. Furthermore, the Pitch Perfect star presumably would have remained involved behind the scenes as an executive producer.
