“Firefly Lane” Season 2 Part 1 left viewers hanging in more ways than one, but Part 2 reconciles those loose ends.
In addition to Kate (Sarah Chalke) and Tully (Katherine Heigl) just barely missing each other on opposite elevators as Kate tries to deliver some devastating news to her estranged best friend, a short clip of a suggestive wedding scene between Johnny and Tully played after the credits of the Netflix series’ final episode.
Throughout Part 2 of Season 2, the scene’s puzzle pieces slowly come together, but at first it looks like Tully, dressed in white, might be getting ready to marry Johnny after Kate has died. As it turns out, it was Marah’s wedding, and Tully ended up with Danny.
“We wanted to direct the audience a little bit and have them wonder, ‘Is Tully going to marry Johnny? Is she gonna marry Danny? What’s happening?’” showrunner Maggie Friedman told TheWrap. “She just happens to be wearing a white slip because she’s getting dressed. She gets dressed, and the veil is there behind her because it’s Marah’s veil. We thought it would be fun to play with the audience’s expectations.”
Author Kristin Hannah made sure to advise Friedman to not let a man come between such a strong female friendship, since that didn’t happen in her book either.
“That was actually my greatest fear in allowing this piece to be adapted because it was just so important for me that a man did not come between these two, that a man was not the reason for their angst or their joy or anything because we’ve seen that a lot,” Hannah told TheWrap. “I think the real strength of the piece is it’s not just Kate and Tully. Johnny allows this friendship to thrive, to take up so much of their marriage, to take up so much of their life because he loves both of them as well. I thought that was really important. The joy of watching a female friendship like this flourish over the course of the seasons — we don’t see enough of it.”
In the earliest timeline of the friendship, when Kate (Roan Curtis) and Tully (Ali Skovbye) are still in high school, a poignant school play scene brought this concept home. Their high school play was “Romeo and Juliet,” but the guy playing Romeo ditches set after he can’t work up the courage to admit publicly that he likes Kate. Kate steps in to play the Romeo to Tully’s Juliet because she’s the only one who has all the lines memorized.
“I always felt like this story is about platonic soulmates. It’s a platonic love story between Kate and Tully. Even though Johnny’s her man and they are engaged, really, Tully is the love of her life, and she’s the love of Tully’s life,” Friedman said. “We came up with this idea that it’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ and at the last second, Kate has to step in and play Romeo to sort of play out the fact that they do love each other so much. We found it felt very poetic, that Kate had to do a death scene when she’s a teenager with the context of knowing what was coming.”
All episodes of “Firefly Lane” Season 2 Part 2 are now streaming on Netflix.