Firefly Lane girls forever might not actually mean forever.
The season finale of the Netflix series Firefly Lane managed to wrap up many loose threads while still leaving the door ajar for a second season with some good old-fashioned cliffhangers.
Kate and Tully’s friendship had plenty of ups-and-downs through the three decades, but no matter what — sleeping with each other’s crushes, lunatic mom’s, keeping secrets — they somehow managed to overcome it all.
So, what led to their fallout?
On Firefly Lane Season 1 Episode 10, we finally find out that the funeral is for Bud, Kate’s father, which is kind of a letdown. After all the hype and speculation that it could’ve been Tully’s, Sean’s, or even Johnny’s, they give us the death of a parent, which is sad, but not exactly shocking.
The bigger shocker is that Kate and Tully are on the outs. In the final scene, Kate tells Tully that she’s not welcome at the funeral, that she will never forgive her for what she did, and that she never wants to see her again.
What could Tully have possibly done to upset and hurt the one person who has always been by her side?
Tully has alienated so many people with her selfish and self-sabotaging behavior.
In the present-day, we see the fallout of Tully and Max’s relationship. She may have been drunk when she told Max she was glad she had a miscarriage and wished she never married him on Firefly Lane Season 1 Episode 9, but you can’t just take something like that back, no matter how hard you try.
Those are hurtful words, but they’re also paired with Tully’s heartful actions, which have pushed Max away numerous times.
As he explains, he’s constantly chasing her. Meanwhile, she never even stops to consider his feelings. And the truth is, she’s not the only one who lost a child and a marriage.
When she suggested a clean slate, the damage had already been done. And I, for one, am glad Max walked away before she could continue walking all over him. He put her first on so many occasions and got hurt because of it. This time, he needed to put himself first.
For the first time, possibly ever, Tully had to face the consequences of her drunk actions and lose the best thing that’s ever happened to her!
Not only did Tully lose her career (and in the flash-forward’s, her best friend), but she also lost her job.
That decision, however, was warranted.
No woman wants to work with a misogynistic asshole like Wilson King. And sadly, even in 2021, there’s still plenty of them running the industry.
King apologized for coming onto Tully and threatening to ruin her career back in the 1980s and said he was a changed man. But telling someone “you’re a family man” holds absolutely no weight. We’ve all seen “family men” who are disgusting pigs and who don’t view women as anything more than an object or a plaything. Some people don’t change, and King is one of those people.
The moment he became the owner of the show, he began bossing Tully around and trying to “mansplain” a woman’s talk show to her.
The final straw? Giving her a teen co-host to attract a male audience. What a surefire way to ruin the integrity of a show that just featured a groundbreaking episode about miscarriage! Of course, a male considered that a “trainwreck” and investors weren’t happy… and that’s showbiz for ya!
Kate and Johnny finally hooked up in the past and in the present, and I loved how the two scenes mirrored each other. I guess you always go back to your one true love, no matter what.
Firefly Lane Review – A Story of Friendship, Heartbreak and Trauma Spanning Three Decades
Throughout my reviews of the series, I kept saying I wanted to see the moment that Kate and Johnny owned up to their feelings for each other.
For several episodes, they danced around it, especially Johnny who “didn’t want to ruin the friendship.” Who would have thought that Kate would be the one to make the first move?
In the present day, Kate struggled with figuring out her feelings. One moment she was making out with Travis, the next moment she mistakenly called him Johnny, then she was trying to seduce him by opening the door naked in front of him and his mother (yeah, at least his mom was chill about that), and finally, she jumped back into bed with Johnny.
The latter felt the most authentic. Don’t get me wrong, Travis is a cool guy, and he’s pretty understanding with Kate and all of her awkward antics, but he’s just a filler as she tries to navigate this confusing time in her life.
Sadly, Johnny’s survival is up in the air. After their romantic night together, Kate dropped Johnny off at the airport and he took off to cover the war in Iraq. During one of the missions, he and his team stepped on a landmine. While the series never addressed whether or not Johnny survived (another cliffhanger), it doesn’t bode well considering the call that came in and the fact that he was missing from the funeral scenes in the flash-forward. There’s a slim chance Johnny was already inside of the church, but it’s very likely that he never made it back home from Iraq.
And that’s devastating.
In flashbacks, we saw more of Cloud’s terrible parenting. She’s so destructive that it’s very clear where Tully gets it from.
In one scene, she decides to sell all of Leon’s drugs so that they can pay their electric bill and get food. I was really glad the series finally addressed that they get their money from granny because man, that was a mystery that I couldn’t shake!
Of course, Cloud didn’t realize that she was selling to undercover cops and was arrested while Tully was taken back to live with her grandmother.
In the second scene, Cloud is over at the Mularkey household for some holiday festivities and mentions that she saw Margie in town with another man. This pretty much confirmed that she was having an affair, which led to quite an awkward moment.
But it wasn’t as awkward as when she called out Bud’s company, CONEX, for making bombs that were dropped in Vietnam. Bud called her out for insulting him in the home that he paid for with the money earned at CONEX, and again, it was super awkward.
The episode could’ve done without the scenes, but it did make Cloud’s reunion with the Mularkey family in the future all the more meaningful.
It seems that Tully is really embracing the idea of giving her mother a second chance.
What did you think of the episode? What are your thoughts on the cliffhanger?
Did you enjoy Firefly Lane as a series? Are you clamoring for season 2?