A Netflix Dust-Up on the 'Prairie': When Laura Ingalls Wilder Meets MAGA
The ‘Little House’ reboot, featuring a 'Girl Dad', Black doctor and Osage family, is a high-stakes test of Hollywood's nostalgia machine and a franchise’s tangled legacy
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Andy Lewis writes The Optionist, a standalone newsletter about available IP to develop into film and TV. He recently excerpted part of Lorne Michaels’ bio, involving the 1990s war between Michaels and NBC.
Even in an era of endlessly recycled IP, Netflix's announcement in January that it was greenlighting a new adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie was a big deal. The nine books in the beloved pioneer saga have sold more than 73 million copies since the first installment was published in 1932. On top of that is the still-powerful nostalgic pull of the classic TV series, which ran on NBC for 200 episodes between 1974 and 1983 and which Nielsen recently crowned as the most-watched legacy title on streaming in 2024 (it racked up 13.3 billion minutes of viewing). There are a lot of obsessive Little House fans out there.
In theory, rebooting Wilder’s wholesome, family-friendly Prairie — a biographic story of a Midwestern family in the years after the Civil War — should be the biggest no-brainer on a development exec’s to-do list: Adored pre-existing IP: Check. Passionate fan base: Check. Continued interest and ratings: Check and check.
Add in the success of neo-Westerns like Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone-verse and the boom in trad-wives with their idealization of nuclear families, throwback housekeeping (churn your own butter!) and love of prairie couture, and it’s easy to see why Netflix feels like it’s time to rebuild Little House.
But instantly it became clear it wouldn’t be that easy. Within hours of Netflix’s announcement, Megyn Kelly, the conservative podcast host, posted on X: “@Netflix if you wokeify Little House on the Prairie I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.”
Less than 24 hours later, Melissa Gilbert, who got her first taste of stardom at age 10 playing Laura Ingalls on the hit NBC series, clapped back at Kelly on Instagram: “Watch the original again. TV doesn’t get too much more ‘woke’ than what we did. We tackled: racism, addiction, nativism, antisemitism, misogyny, rape, spousal abuse, and every other ‘woke’ topic you can think of. Thank you very much.”
Today’s political schisms are inescapable, even if Ingalls Wilder’s Libertarianism back then flew under the radar. Says Caroline Fraser, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, “It’s stated quite clearly at the end of Little House on the Prairie that the government is the villain.” (Holy DOGE!)
When Netflix first shared its plans to reboot Little House, it took a diplomatic “big tent” approach. The streamer’s announcement quoted Trip Friendly, son of original Little House producer Ed Friendly. (Trip took over the rights after Ed’s death in 2007.) Trip said it was his dream to revive “Wilder’s classic American stories for a 21st-century audience in a way that brings together fans of both the books and the original television series… long-time fans and new generations.”
The series recently began filming in Canada with Rebecca Sonnenshine (The Boys, The Vampire Diaries) serving as showrunner. Netflix is pitching its Little House as “part family drama, part epic survival tale, and part origin story of the American West,” while promising “a kaleidoscopic view of the struggles and triumphs of those who shaped the frontier.” It’s hard to see how incorporating third-rail subjects like the origin of the American West (built off the displacement and slaughter of millions of indigenous people) and a ‘kaleidoscopic” view (read: a wide range of POVs) can be pulled off in a way that’s faithful to the books, satisfies the broadest possible fan base and does not irritate someone.
The character bios Netflix rolled out certainly reveal a contemporary spin. Charles (played by Luke Bracey) is described as “the original Girl Dad,” who would “fit seamlessly into the 21st century.” Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald) comes across like the ultimate do-everything mom with “a playful, romantic side… who keeps this family on track (like moms do)... with a core of steel.” And Laura (Alice Halsey) is variously painted as “observant, tender, strong-willed, hot-tempered, curious, optimistic, fearless (like her father) and honest (like her mother).” (When Fraser hears these descriptions for the first time, she chuckles: “If that’s the direction, they’re going to need to do some fictionalizing.”)
Netflix’s Little House also introduces a new-to-the-series Osage family that includes Mitchell (Meegwun Fairbrother), the successful mixed Anglo/indigenous patriarch, his fully indigenous wife White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatǎhk), their daughter Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts), who looks to be positioned as a friend for Laura and Little Puma (Xander Cole), who doesn’t like the white settlers. Minor book character George Tann (Jocko Sims), a Black doctor based on a real person, is being given an elevated role, and Mr. Edwards (Warren Christie) has been reimagined as a hunky, single Civil War vet to add a soapy element.
The new Little House is expected next year, capping a decades-long effort that highlights the core challenge of rebooting classic IP today: how to modernize often very dated ideas while keeping both loyal fans and new viewers on board.
If Netflix succeeds, it may finally crack the franchise’s long-standing adaptation problem and offer a model for others. If not, Little House could join The Lone Ranger and The Legend of Tarzan in the graveyard of once-beloved, now-unworkable properties whose time has passed.
But to understand why this one’s trickier than most — complete with warring fanbases, creative clashes, authorship questions, and a $100 million legacy — you have to go back to the beginning.
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