Novel from 2008 Firefly Lane was a huge bestseller for Kristin Hannah. It wasn’t until 13 years later that the book was finally turned into a series for Netflix.
In 2021, we finally got to see Kate Mularkey and Tully Hart on screen, played by Sarah Chalke and Katherine Heigl. The story revolves around these two women and their lifelong friendship. Season 1 deviated a bit from the novel, but Season 2 had even more changes.
Kate and Tully’s friendship has been going on for three decades. They meet as young teenagers in the 70s when Tully and her mom Cloud (Beau Garrett) move to Firefly Laneand we follow them into adulthood in the early 2000s.
The road they travel is complicated and sometimes messy. Those complications became somewhat different as the book was turned into a series.
[Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers for Firefly Lane.]
The ‘Firefly Lane’ timeline plays out differently
The timeline in the book takes a linear approach. The story is told chronologically, starting when the girls were teenagers in the 1970s, and continuing until the women are in their 40s in the early 2000s.
On the other hand, the series jumps across decades. The timeline goes back and forth, and we see the girls at different stages of their lives throughout the series. We can also witness the pop culture, hair and fashion of the decade.
Where were Kate and Johnny’s twins?
In Hannah’s novel, Kate and her husband Johnny Ryan (Ben Lawson) have a daughter, Marah (Yael Yurman). But they also have twins, Lucas and William. The series not only left out the twins, but also added a fertility struggle.
While visiting Tully in New York in 1993, Kate shares her grief with her best friend. Tully helps her by telling her that having a child doesn’t make her any less of a woman and that she is a great mom to her daughter. Marah is always the only child in the series.
Kate and Johnny’s divorce
The big change in the show is that Kate and Johnny get divorced, whereas in the book they don’t. It’s also a bit unclear what caused the outage. Johnny does mention that his wife had an emotional affair, but not much is said about it.
The novel portrays Kate as a stay-at-home mom to her three children, but we see her return to work in the Netflix adaptation.
Tully and Cloud’s relationship
The early years of Tully’s relationship with her mother are similar in the book and the series. Cloud is an irresponsible mother struggling with addiction who really screws up her daughter.
Cloud never really redeems himself in the novel. Tully keeps trying to find her and take her to rehab, but Cloud only wants money and even steals from her daughter.
Netflix’s Firefly Lane shows Cloud sobering up and forming a relationship with Tully. She is with her daughter as she recovers from a miscarriage and even spends Christmas with Kate’s family. The TV series Cloud is redeemable.
What caused the rift between Tully and Kate?
The cause of the split depends entirely on whether you’re reading the book or watching the series. This is probably the biggest difference between the two. The big fight in the novel is over Tully’s show, Hour for girls. When Kate and Marah appear on the show hoping to mend their relationship, Tully switches things up and changes the episode to focus on overprotective mothers.
On national television, he practically calls Kate a bad mother. The result is that her best friend stops talking to her. In the series, the story is completely different. In it, Tully gets into a car accident with Marah in the passenger seat after saving her from a party she wasn’t supposed to go to.
Unfortunately, she got into the car after having a few drinks. Kate would not forgive her friend. 2nd part of Firefly Lane Season 2 premieres on Netflix on June 8, 2023. It remains to be seen if the ending of the TV version will be the same as Hannah’s novel.