'Sister Wives' No More: How Kody's Relationships With Meri, Christine And Janelle Fell Apart

It appears that fans of the Brown family from "Sister Wives" will have to prepare for the show's ultimate end, as Kody Brown is no longer with any of his wives except for Robyn, following confirmations that Janelle and Meri had split from him as well. However, some may be wondering just how things fell apart after years of denials that their marriages were in trouble.

Fans were initially stunned when Kody's third wife, Christine Brown, announced her split from Kody in Nov. 2021, but in the last week, they've also learned that his second wife, Janelle, and first wife, Meri, had also left him. Now, Kody's fourth wife, Robyn, who is also the only one he is legally wed to following his 2014 divorce from Meri, is the last one standing. News broke that Janelle and Kody had separated in a preview clip for the upcoming "Sister Wives: One on One" special, which shows each member of the family sitting down for individual interviews with Sukanya Krishnan, and another clip released to People from the three-part special also revealed that he and Meri had also separated.

The splits seem to still be a sore point in the clips, with Robyn and Kody seemingly seething at accusations that she was the "favorite wife" and that Kody's treatment towards her might have played a role in his other marriages coming to an end.

"They handed him to me!" Robyn says in one of the clips. "And said, 'We don't want to spend time with him' basically."

The splits are also likely to cause some tension for Robyn and Kody, as Robyn has previously admitted on an episode of the show that aired in January 2022 that she had turned down monogamous relationships prior to Kody because she wanted to be part of a plural family.

"If I wanted to live monogamy. I could have. I mean, it's not like I had no other choices..." she said at the time. "...I had proposals before Kody, and I turned them down and I said, 'No, I want to live plural marriage,' and here I am. And I'm like, 'Hey guys, I want to live plural marriage!'"

Fans have long suspected that Robyn was the catalyst that led to Kody's other marriages disintegrating, and also blamed her for the family's move to Flagstaff, Arizona, from Las Vegas. A clip from a 2019 episode of the show where Robyn tells Kody she wants Flagstaff to be their "permanent" home after the move didn't help matters. Since the move, the family was plagued by money problems which prevented them from ever building the homes they planned to on their Coyote Pass land, and the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic further complicated matters.

The decriminalization of polygamy in Utah and Christine's desire to move back there—and Kody's reluctance to uproot the family again and go back to the state they fled years ago—seemed to be the final straw when it came to their troubled marriage, with Christine admitting in a 2021 episode that it was hard for her to watch his functional relationships within the marriage when theirs hadn't been that way for a long time.

"Kody and I have been struggling for a while. We're not close. It was actually painful, emotionally to be there, to be honest," she said at the time. "It's hard to see him with everybody. It's really hard to see him in functional marriages when we don't have one. It sucks."

As for Janelle, differing views on how to distance during the pandemic seemed to be what made cracks more visible in their marriage and led to their separation, as Janelle initially asked Kody to stay away from her home because her sons Gabriel and Garrison were still working outside at the time, and she felt it better that he did not risk coming to see them and then going back to the other houses with younger kids. The two continued to butt heads throughout the pandemic, and Kody even had a falling out with his sons as a result.

It's unclear if that was what ultimately led to the pair's separation.

As for Meri, fans had long suspected the pair would eventually split, following not only their divorce so he could legally marry Robyn, but Meri's catfishing scandal one year later. Since then, they had mostly lived separate lives and rarely acknowledged their marriage in a positive light, with Kody often sharing on the show that he had no romantic inclinations towards the first woman he married.

In the clip confirming her split, Meri indicated that things never improved, and shared that Kody didn't want to go public, but that he ultimately was the one who decided to officially end their spiritual union.

"Well, he's already made the decision. You just saw him say that," she said.

Fans may learn more about the situation during the three-part special.

"Sister Wives: One-on-One" airs beginning Sunday, Dec. 18 at 10 p.m. EST on TLC.