Firefly Lane Fans Are Divided Over The Conflict Between Tully And Kate In Season 2
At the heart of Netflix drama "Firefly Lane" is a friendship between two women, starting in their teenage years and continuing until they're middle aged. Save for when they're teenagers, Katherine Heigl and Sarah Chalke play Tully Hart and Kate Mularkey, the duo at the show's core.
Their fictional friendship has resonated with not just viewers but the series' leads themselves. For instance, Heigl revealed that "Firefly Lane" reflects her own personal relationships in certain ways, such that she felt connected to Tully during the making of the show. That said, Heigl and Chalke were not friends before "Firefly Lane," meaning that their characters' bond was invented on-set rather than indicative of their real-life dynamic.
The entirety of "Firefly Lane" Season 1 dropped on Netflix in early February of 2021, introducing viewers to Tully and Kate for the first time. Then, in October of 2022, "Firefly Lane" fans got the bittersweet news that, while the show would return for a two-part second season, that season would be its last. Season 1 ends on a cliffhanger that sees significant conflict introduced into Tully and Kate's friendship, and the source of their divide becomes a focal point of the first half of Season 2, which hit Netflix on December 2, 2022. In the wake of these episodes premiering, fans shared differing viewpoints about the conflict between the two women, ultimately coming to no consensus about who was right and who was wrong in Tully and Kate's clash.
Some Firefly Lane fans have turned on Kate, while others think she's unduly criticized
The first half of "Firefly Lane" Season 2 reveals that the cause of the sudden distance between Kate and Tully was an incident in which Tully picked up Kate's daughter Marah (Yael Yurman) from a party while intoxicated and crashed her car.
On Twitter, in response to Kate's decision to end her friendship with Tully over this incident, podcaster and media personality Scottie Beam argued that Kate is the series' true villain. User @stfualyzamo, meanwhile, suggested that Kate harbors a victim complex that renders her incapable of empathizing with others' points of view. On Reddit, user FlimsyManagement even started a thread titled "Kate is a terrible friend," arguing that Kate failed to show any compassion toward Tully in the wake of this accident, caring only about herself.
However, various users on Reddit have empathized with Kate. For example, in a thread titled "I don't get the Kate hate," user Mediocre_Laugh4655 argued that Tully could have helped Marah without endangering her by driving drunk. Meanwhile, user hazymeeger started at thread suggesting that Tully may have smothered Kate as a friend. Another thread even posits that the two women are toxic when paired with one another.
Given that "Firefly Lane" has no clear protagonist, these mixed reactions are likely by design. Fans will now have to wait until Season 2, Part 2 drops on June 8, 2023 to find out how Kate and Tully's saga will resolve.