Elizabeth Olsen's Underrated Drama With A Star Wars Actor Is A Must-Watch On Prime Video

When he isn't busy being a totally normal human who definitely likes Guinness, Mark Zuckerberg is busy changing the world with the hugely popular Metaverse and those really cool Meta AI Glasses. He's also coming up with inspired ideas like Facebook Watch, which was a thing for about six years. During that time it gave us a "Real World" reboot and that show where Jada Pinkett Smith sat around a table with her family, overshared, and made us all very uncomfortable. But what you might not realize is that Facebook Watch also gave us a critically-acclaimed Elizabeth Olsen series that also featured Kelly Marie Tran, who's best known for playing Rose Tico in the "Star Wars" sequel trilogy.

Yes, it turns out this now shuttered video-on-demand service was not just a Tik Tok precursor filled with the kind of dopamine-producing short-form video to which we're all now addicted. Facebook Watch actually had original programming and at one point hosted Olsen's drama "Sorry for Your Loss."

The series starred the Scarlet Witch actor as an advice columnist struggling with the death of her husband, who passed away three months prior. You won't be surprised to learn that Olsen did a magnificent job in the lead, earning widespread critical praise for her sensitive portrayal of the grief-stricken wife. Indeed, /Film acknowledged how "Sorry for Your Loss" suggested that even Facebook could make peak TV. If, like most people, you had absolutely no idea this show existed, but are intrigued to experience Olsen's overlooked performance, then you'll be pleased to know that both seasons of "Sorry for Your Loss" are now streaming on Prime Video at no extra cost to subscribers.

"Sorry for Your Loss" was created by playwright Kit Steinkellner, whose only TV experience prior to the show was as a staff writer on Prime Video's "Z: The Beginning of Everything." Before that, she wrote a short story inspired by a night where she thought something had happened to her own husband. Originally Showtime was planning to develop the project, then known as "Widow," before it finally ended up at Facebook, which according to Steinkellner was the perfect venue. As she told the Washington Post, "Facebook is a place where I hear about most deaths, most births, most marriages. It made sense for them to do a series about these life events."

"Sorry for Your Loss" debuted on Facebook Watch on September 18, 2018, with "The Spectacular Now" director James Ponsoldt overseeing multiple episodes. Unlike your typical streaming drama series, the show consists of 20 half-hour episodes spread across two seasons. Elizabeth Olsen plays writer Leigh Shaw, who lost her husband as a result of causes that aren't made clear at first. Having quit her advice column job, Leigh has moved in with her mother, Amy Shaw (Janet McTeer) and adopted sister Jules Shaw (Kelly Marie Tran). Jules is a recovering alcoholic who works alongside Leigh at their mother's fitness studio, Beautiful Beast. But while Leigh is trying hard to move on she is, she's also struggling. Things only get harder when she realizes how much she didn't know about her husband, in a show that's not only well-written and acted, but actually unsettles with its suggestion that we can never truly know the people we love. Yes, the Facebook Watch series you never heard of was actually one of the best streaming series of 2018.

Elizabeth Olsen has several hidden gems in her filmography. Her 2025 sci-fi on Hulu that was easily one of that year's best thrillers and Olsen's 2023 true crime miniseries should be on your Netflix watch list. "Sorry for Your Loss" is another example. Take a look at the show's Rotten Tomatoes critic score, which at the time of writing sits at an average of 97% for both seasons. Season 2 even managed a 100% score based on six reviews.

You wouldn't expect the first Facebook Watch original to be a stark, fearless exploration of grief, but that's exactly what it was, and the critics loved it. Lucy Mangan of The Guardian praised Olsen for "doing fine work in every sense," and the show for managing to "banish schmaltz and sentimentality from its environs" and feeling "absolutely authentic" as a result. Mangan wasn't the only one impressed, either. Emily St. James of Vox called the show "delicately observed and emotionally acute," and The Atlantic's Sophie Gilbert went further, calling it "the kind of series that's instantly so fully formed, so funny and candid and wrenching right from the start, that you almost question the emotional propriety of it all."

Sadly, following the end of Season 2 in November 2019, "Sorry for Your Loss" was canceled as Facebook made a sinister lurch towards unscripted video. Four years later, Facebook Watch was shuttered altogether. But since this was the platform that gave us the series "Cardi Tries" with Cardi B and "Post Malone's Celebrity World Pong League," it's hard to grieve for its loss — even if we did have to sacrifice a hugely underrated Elizabeth Olsen series to rid the world of such horrors. Thankfully, that series is on Prime Video right now.