The 'Little Fires Everywhere' TV Show Changed the Book's Ending - Here's How

SPOILER ALERT – This post contains spoilers for the season finale of Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere, so don’t continue reading if you don’t want to know what happened.
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The eighth and final episode of Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington‘s series Little Fires Everywhere premiered on April 22 and we finally know how everything ended.

Some of the things we were waiting to find out included who set the fire in the Richardson home and who would win the trial for custody of Mirabelle/May Ling.

The way the TV show ended was actually different than the way the book, written by Celeste Ng, ended.

“I think there was a desire, and I don’t even really know where it emerged, to play with the ending a little bit so that there could be surprises for people who loved the book, but to do that while still honoring the reality and the truth that Celeste [Ng] was getting at in the book,” Kerry told EW. “So we kind of swung a lot of different directions and played with a lot of different ideas about what it could be, but this was the one that felt like it was both a fun twist for people who loved the book but also was still walking in the footprints of Celeste‘s vision.”

Click inside to find out how it all ended…

SPOILERS AHEAD – FINAL WARNING!

The McCulloughs won custody of Mirabelle, leaving Bebe Chow devastated. After losing the trial, Bebe broke into the McCullough house and kidnapped the baby girl.

Izzy discovered that her mom Elena has kicked Mia and Pearl out of their apartment and saw that they have left town. In retaliation, she then decided to light her possessions on fire, but her three siblings stopped her from doing this. Elena then entered the bedroom and told Izzy that she never wanted to have her, prompting Izzy to run away for good. The three siblings realized how their family has been torn apart by everything that has happened in the house recently and they move forward with Izzy’s plan and start “little fires” in each of their bedrooms. They help their mom escape from the burning house and when the authorities ask who could’ve set the fire, Elena takes the blame.

So, how is this different than the book?

In the book, it was actually Izzy who set the fire in the house. She set fires on everyone’s beds, thinking that no one was home, even though Elena was actually in the house. Elena does escape unharmed and Izzy does run away.

Another big change from the book to the TV show was the way Pearl finds out about her birth father. In the TV show, Elena decided to hurt Mia by being the one to tell Pearl who her father really was. In the book, Elena told Mia that she knew about the birth father and she used it as leverage to get them out of the rental apartment, but Mia was the one who told Pearl about her dad.

The book also revealed that Bebe flew with May Ling to China and that the McCulloughs were never able to find them. They ended up adopting a baby from China.