Award-winning actress, producer, and PATTERN Beauty founder Tracee Ellis Ross, long celebrated as a style icon, is setting out on a personal adventure, taking viewers along as she journeys alone through Morocco, Mexico, and Spain to share the beauty and freedom of traveling solo.
Tracee Ellis Ross’ ‘Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross’ is a three-episode exploration of Morocco, Mexico, and Spain. What it delivers, however, is something both more personal and more polarizing than the average celebrity travelogue.
From the opening moments, it’s clear Ross is in control of the visual narrative. Morocco’s medina glows under golden light, Mexico’s beaches are postcard-perfect, and Spain’s Andalusian streets unfurl like a cinematic backdrop. Every frame feels considered, sometimes meticulously so, making the series as much a mood board as it is a travel show. This precision is a double-edged sword: it creates a lush, escapist atmosphere, but can also feel curated to the point of distance.
Three Countries, Three Versions of Ross
- Morocco is the season’s visual triumph. Ross mingles with Berber artisans, wanders the souks, and luxuriates in the Royal Mansour, all while radiating an almost anthropological curiosity. Still, the cultural encounters sometimes feel more observed than lived in, leaving viewers wishing for deeper immersion.
- Mexico is the warmest of the three episodes, balancing indulgence with an accessible joy. Here, Ross’s ease is infectious, whether she’s learning cocktail techniques or surrendering to unstructured downtime. It’s the closest the series gets to feeling like a shared experience rather than a presented one.
- Spain offers the season’s most unexpected pivot: Ross gets sick, disrupting her plans and the show’s polished veneer. The recovery sequence feels unguarded, stripped of perfect lighting and choreographed moments, and for a brief spell, the series achieves something rare: genuine intimacy.
Beneath the fashion and five-star accommodations, the show is quietly making an argument: that solo travel is not a placeholder until companionship arrives, but a valid, even joyful, way to inhabit the world. Ross, in her fifties, unmarried and child-free, embodies that stance without apology. It’s a refreshing counter-narrative, particularly in an entertainment landscape that still treats women over 50 as curiosities when they’re not anchored to family roles.
The show’s greatest strength is its ability to fuse aspirational visuals with moments of grounded humanity. Its greatest limitation is its own polish; Ross’ trips often feel like invitations we can only accept as spectators, never participants. There’s an unshakable sense that we’re being guided through a luxury scrapbook rather than on a journey with unpredictable edges.
Solo Traveling with Tracee Ellis Ross is not a traditional travel show; it’s a curated diary, equal parts self-portrait and global postcard. It’s aspirational, occasionally aloof, but punctuated with moments of disarming vulnerability that hint at an even richer series lurking just beneath the surface. As a first season, it’s both a declaration of independence and an open question: how much of herself is Ross willing to share when the itinerary goes off-script?
