A surprising ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ finale lets the past burn

After an uneven and often disappointing season, Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere concluded Wednesday with its eighth episode, “Find a Way,” in which every secret and scandal that has bubbled up since Mia and Pearl Warren moved to Shaker Heights finally reaches a boiling point. 

But the most shocking twist of all is that this final hour is the show’s best.

We begin with a ham-fisted flashback, the show’s favorite narrative device, taking us back to when the Richardson kids were younger and Izzy tried to save a baby bird, only to be told that its mother would no longer touch it now that it made contact with a human. The show beats us over the head with this metaphor, as usual, stopping just shy of Izzy declaring “I’m the bird” and fleeing to her room.

In the present, Teen Izzy says Teen Things to her mother like “Isn’t that what we do in this house? Discard the things we don’t like?” while Pearl Warren shouts “All you do is lie!” to Mia across town. To be fair, they’re not wrong, and this is very age-appropriate behavior. It’s still tough to watch.

Pearl is furious to learn that her biological father is alive and well, and that Mia ran away with her instead of giving baby Pearl to the Ryans when she was supposed to. That reveal, with Elena as the source, deliberately mirrors the case of Mae Ling/Mirabelle McCullough. 

While the show seems to sympathize with Bebe Chow, the biological mother, Mia and Pearl’s strained relationship reminds us that giving Mae Ling to her biological mother would not magically ensure a happy life for her. No parents are infallible, biological or not. Mia promised Pearl to the Ryans and Bebe never intended to leave Mae Ling at the fire station. Yet both of them ended up in the opposite of their desired situations, and fought tooth and nail for their babies.

Image: erin simkin / Hulu

Rosemarie DeWitt gives a season-best performance (she’s not the only one, but we’ll get to that) in Linda McCullough’s testimony, as she balks at Ed Lam’s line of questioning. Ed asks how the McCulloughs plan to keep Mae Ling in touch with Chinese culture, questioning how much they’ve done (or rather, haven’t done) in the year they’ve had her. 

Once again, the show leaves us with questions but no answers on a deeply fraught and nuanced topic. Children grow up away from their parents’ home country every day, many of them with severely weakened ties to their heritage. But in a custody battle where genes are involved, this responsibility weighs differently. 

Elena, in her determination to undermine Bebe Chow and win the case for Linda, tries to coerce a friend at Planned Parenthood into sharing patient info. Her friend refuses, but Elena snoops through the files anyway. She finds nothing on Bebe, but she does find a titillating file marked “Warren, P” — the file on Lexie’s abortion that she underwent with Pearl’s name.

No parents are infallible, biological or not.

At the same time, Moody puts two and two together about Pearl and Trip, and the sweet, friendly Moody who approached Pearl all those months ago evaporates on the spot. He’s all jealous rage and slut-shaming, and it’s Trip who punches his brother to protest the hurtful slander. Elena assumes Moody got Pearl pregnant, which is false on every level. It was Trip, Moody says, and still neither of them knows that Lexie got the abortion. 

As every fragile secret between the Warren and Richardson family unravels, it is Izzy who puts the pieces together — strange, volatile Izzy, who can’t relate to her mother, who calls Moody out on his displaced bitterness, who can’t stomach the way Lexie treated Brian and Pearl, and who doesn’t want to see Mia leave for good. It is Izzy who arrives at the Warrens’ while Mia comforts a broken Bebe Chow after the verdict.

And Izzy and Pearl illustrate in tandem that a mother-daughter relationship is not as easy as who belongs to whom. Each of them experienced genuine affection with the other’s mother, but in the final hour, Pearl claims Mia as hers, for now and forever. Izzy finds herself stuck with the Richardsons, feeling more trapped than ever and abandoned by Mia as well as Elena. 

All of this is intercut with Bebe taking Mae Ling from the McCullough once and for all. In that way, this often erratic adaption lays those parallels out with surprising clarity.

Image: erin simkin / Hulu

A distraught Izzy runs after Mia and Pearl, then back into the house determined to set it aflame. Her siblings catch her, and when Elena follows, the argument leads her to shout the words at Izzy that she can’t take back: “I never wanted you in the first place!”

The Richardson kids stare at their mother in shock, a mother they no longer recognize — or perhaps a mother they finally see for her true self. She lets Izzy run out of the house, ignores Lexie’s admission about the abortion, and — most incredulously — goes back to bed. It’s an unhinged turn from Elena, but Witherspoon sells the living hell out of that shrieked “YES YOU ARE” in response to Lexie’s plea that she isn’t perfect. 

The other kids, led by Lexie, decide they’re done. They finish what Izzy started, setting fires in every room until the whole house goes up in flames.

In this blatant departure from Celeste Ng’s book, Little Fires Everywhere delivers its best and most satisfying twist. Originally it was Izzy who set the fires, and since episode 1 that is what we were led to believe. In a show that consistently and often inexplicably departed from its source material, the final switch redeems a lot of shoddy character work with as much heavy-handed drama as was used to build them.

A shell of Elena goes searching for Izzy after the fire, but she’s long gone, as are Bebe and Mae Ling. Izzy hasn’t reunited with Mia and Pearl, and we don’t know if she ever will. The Warrens go to meet Grandma and Grandpa while Elena discovers Mia’s model of Shaker — the place that caged her, and tried to cage Mia as well. 

The final scenes drag a little and include a meandering monologue about birds — but that is Little Fires Everywhere in a nutshell. The journey wasn’t always elegant or enjoyable, but the resolution was packed with firepower.

All episodes of Little Fires Everywhere are now streaming on Hulu.