‘Firefly Lane’ Season 2 Reveals What Ended Tully and Kate’s Friendship
Firefly Lane is back for its second – and final – season. The first nine episodes of the Katherine Heigl series’ sophomore season arrived on Netflix on Dec. 2, and they revealed the answer to the question every viewer was asking at the end of the first season: What ended Kate and Tully’s decades-long friendship?
[Warning: This article contains major spoilers for Firefly Lane Season 2.]
Kate and Tully were no longer friends at the end of ‘Firefly Lane’ Season 1
Firefly Lane chronicles the evolution of Tully (Heigl) and Kate’s (Sarah Chalke) 30-year friendship. It follows the pair from when they first meet in the 1970s through the early 2000s, when they’re in their early 40s.
Over the years, Tully and Kate deal with many ups and downs in their relationship. But through fights, break-ups, career drama, and more, they remain friends. Until, suddenly, they aren’t. The season 1 finale ended with a two-year jump forward in time, to 2005. Kate is attending her father Bud’s (Paul McGillion) funeral. She meets Kate outside the church, and it’s immediately clear they aren’t on good terms.
“Don’t you think you’ve punished me enough?” Tully asks Kate.
“When I said I could never forgive you for what you did, what did you think that meant?” Kate replies.
What could have happened to bring Tully and Kate’s 30-year friendship to an end? The episode didn’t answer that question, but it’s clear it had to have been something huge.
The cause of Tully and Kate’s huge fight, revealed
Firefly Lane Season 2 dances around the issue of what ended Tully and Kate’s friendship for much of the latest batch of episodes. The big reveal finally comes in episode 7, titled “Good Riddance/Time of Your Life.”
Previous episodes had featured glimpses of a serious car accident, each revealing a bit more about the crash and who was involved. By the time we get to the seventh episode, we know that Tully had been driving the car, and that Kate’s daughter Marah (Yael Yurman) was a passenger. But what exactly happened?
It turns out that Tully had been supervising a grounded Marah while the recently-reunited Kate and Johnny (Ben Lawson) spent a romantic evening together. When Marah’s crush invited her to see a movie, she begged Tully to let her go, and Tully relented. But Marah and her friend ended up at a frat party, where she was assaulted by one of the guests. Frantic, she called Tully, who agreed to pick her up.
Tully – who was having flashbacks to her own rape as a teenager – rescued Marah. But as they were driving home, they were T-boned by another car. Both ended up in the hospital with serious, though not life-threatening, injuries. Tully wasn’t at fault, but she had been drinking, and she ended up with a DUI as a result.
Kate had enough of Tully’s selfish behavior
The accident ended up having some major consequences for Tully. Though she wasn’t to blame for the crash, her mugshot still ended up splashed across the tabloids. A deal for a new talk show, which was supposed to be her big comeback, was scrapped.
The blow to her career was devastating enough, but what really left Tully reeling was Kate’s reaction to the incident. Though Tully tried to reach out and explain what happened, Kate had finally had enough of Tully’s excuses for her mistakes and bad behavior. She immediately cut off all contact with her friend. And when Marah finally tricked the two women into meeting face-to-face, it didn’t go well.
Scenes from Firefly Lane’s other timelines had already highlighted other instances of Tully getting into trouble and Kate supporting her friend and – in one case – taking the fall for her screwup. We saw them get in trouble for sneaking into their high school’s pool after hours and going swimming. Tully only makes a bad situation worse when she mouths off to the principal, increasing their punishment as Kate frantically tries to smooth things over. And when the two are in their 20s and working a KPOC, Tully accidentally sets the office on fire. Kate claims she was the one who left the toaster oven unattended, and she gets fired as a result.
So, when Tully shows up at Kate’s home and tries to explain what was going on the night of the accident, Kate doesn’t want to hear it. She’s spent years dealing with her friend’s selfishness. And while she was willing to overlook it when it just hurt her, now that it’s put her only child in danger, she’s drawing a line.
“You drove drunk with my daughter in the car,” she says.
“I’m done bending over backward to clean up all your messes,” Kate adds. “I’ve done it for the last 30 years and I’m sick of it … the only person your care about is you.”
Will the former friends repair their relationship before the show ends?
Firefly Lane Season 2’s ninth episode sees Kate and Tully navigating their life post-breakup. Kate copes with her father’s death, enrolls in a creative writing class, and eventually agrees to remarry her ex-husband, Johnny. Meanwhile, Tully fixes up her and her mom’s old house, teaches herself to cook, and returns to her work as a journalist. She accepts an assignment that will take her to Antarctica for several months to cover the climate crisis.
Then, Kate receives some devastating news. A rash on her chest turns out to be stage 3 breast cancer. Devastated, she breaks downs and tries to reach out to Tully. Kate goes to her former friend’s apartment building just as Tully is getting ready to leave for Antarctica. As Kate is heading up to Tully’s penthouse, Tully is in a different elevator headed down to the lobby. The episode – and the first part of season 2 – ends without them reconciling. Viewers will have to wait for the next batch of episodes to find out if the two are ultimately able to repair their friendship, and if Kate survives her battle with cancer.
Firefly Lane Season 2 Episodes 1-9 are currently streaming on Netflix. Episodes 10-16 are due out in 2023.
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