Little Fires Everywhere: Season 1 | Rotten Tomatoes (2024)

FAQs

What is the big secret in Little Fires Everywhere? ›

Mia and the truth about Pearl's birth: In both the book and the show, audiences learn that Mia conceived Pearl as a surrogate for a wealthy couple desperate to have a child.

As Little Fires Everywhere is a standalone miniseries, it will not be renewed for season 2. Like Stephen King's The Stand miniseries, which also released in 2020, the story has wrapped up properly. Showrunner Liz Tigelaar explained that Little Fires Everywhere feels finished.

Needing money for school, Mia accepts the Ryans' offer to carry a baby for them. In their home, she inseminates herself with Joseph's sperm, and by September, Mia is pregnant. The Ryans move her to a small apartment and provide maternity clothes.

In Ng's novel, Izzy does run away, promising to never to return, but she heads for Mia's childhood home in Pittsburgh in hopes to find her. She had found the address in her mother's belongings, and also has the address for Anita Reese, the gallery owner who sells Mia's work.

Pearl is Mia's own biological daughter whom she was meant to relinquish to Pearl's father (who had inseminated her) and his fertility-challenged wife.

In the book, Mia is pointedly asexual. She's never seen an adult man naked. She's never, as Ng puts it, “felt that warmth, that electric tension.” Yet in the Hulu adaptation, Pearl tells Moody her mother has sex with “whomever she wants, whenever she wants.” Mia tells Pearl sex doesn't need to mean anything.

Born prematurely and, as a result, over-parented by her mother Mrs. Richardson, Izzy learns throughout the course of the novel—at the prodding of Mia Warren—to use her voice and her action to “do something” about her circ*mstances.

“Find a Way,” the series finale, packed another surprise punch: We learned those little fires were set by all of the Richardson children — not just problem child Izzy, as it happened in the 2017 best-selling book.

Little Fires Everywhere explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, and the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger of believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Mia's obsession with Pearl's protection stems from her fear of rejection if Pearl learns her true origins. Mia feels she needs to protect herself and Pearl from being discovered which requires keeping family history and details private.

What happens to the Chinese baby in Little Fires Everywhere? ›

After a brutal court battle, Linda and Mark McCullough win custody of baby May Ling, whom they adopted after her birth mother, Bebe Chow, abandoned her at a fire station.

After a night out dancing, they're caught arguing about their future—Elena has her life planned in their hometown of Shaker Heights, Ohio, while Jamie, an aspiring journalist, wants to explore bigger things—so they break up. In the book, Jamie goes on to fight in the Vietnam War and Elena never sees him again.

Perhaps because Elena is now the clear villain of this story, Little Fires Everywhere doesn't seem able to trust Witherspoon to convince viewers to appreciate or like Elena on her own strengths, even though watching Reese Witherspoon paste a sunny smile over a casually terrible statement is the deepest and purest ...

The McCulloughs rename May Ling “Mirabelle,” which means “wonderful beauty.” At the conclusion of the case, Mirabelle is placed in the custody of the McCulloughs, with the recommendation that her adoption be expedited.

We eventually learn that Mia Warren's real name is Mia Wright. Mia changed her last name to Warren partly to disguise her identity, and partly to honor her late brother, Warren, who died in a car accident.

“Ng has one-upped herself with her tremendous follow-up novel… a finely wrought meditation on the nature of motherhood, the dangers of privilege and a cautionary tale about how even the tiniest of secrets can rip families apart…

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng is not, as I had originally anticipated, a thriller or suspense novel. Instead, it is a story of motherhood and the thin line between right and wrong. It's about how our actions as parents can unwittingly affect our children, especially as they move into young adulthood.

Izzy represents disruption and ostracism, and her relationship with her own mother is one of the relationships at the heart of the novel's theme of mothers and daughters.