Netflix’s Prairie Gamble: What the New Little House Reveals About America’s Favorite Pioneer Family

Clear Facts

• Netflix releases first trailer for new “Little House on the Prairie” series premiering July 9
• Series departs from both Laura Ingalls Wilder’s original novels and Michael Landon’s iconic 1974 television adaptation
• Author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the beloved series to help children “understand more about the beginning of things” and “what made America as they know it”

Laura Ingalls Wilder fans have awaited Netflix’s new version of her iconic “Little House on the Prairie” story with both trepidation and tempered excitement. When the show airs on July 9, will it honor the novel’s spirit? Will it incorporate more of the history of the real Ingalls family?

As a scholar of both Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose Wilder Lane, I’ve placed cautious hopes on fidelity to the books with inclusions of details from real life that Wilder chose to leave out of her novels. Netflix’s teaser, released Monday, provides enough tantalizing scenes to make both fans of the books and fans of the original series wonder about the show’s direction and overall vision.

It’s an intriguing bite, promising some fidelity to the novel but also completely new story lines.

Appropriately enough, Laura’s voiceover begins with the same phrase that opens “Little House in the Big Woods,” the first novel in the autobiographical fiction Little House series, written by Laura Ingalls Wilder in 1932: “Once upon a time…” Beginning the novel and now the new series with these words evokes a fairy tale quality, which the video sequence and the music behind the words support.

Laura’s voiceover offers a preview of the new series that is an apt summary of the book:

“Once upon a time, Ma and Pa and Mary and Laura left the Big Woods of Wisconsin and moved to the prairie, where a new life was waiting for them. Every day and every night was an adventure. And even though they were all alone, and very small against the sky and the stars, they were happy because they were a family – and they were together.”

The video sequence depicts the Ingalls family leaving the Big Woods by wagon, majestic scenes of a prairie with a river cutting through it, and a town teeming with people where the Ingalls girls, wearing straw hats, step out of their covered wagon and into the dusty streets. Laura exchanges glances with another child, perhaps meant to be from the Osage tribe, and Mary shares a longing look with a teenaged boy.

Other scenes feature Laura and Pa running through a cornfield, Pa and Ma rolling a log, probably to build their cabin, and Pa joyfully swinging Ma around inside the completed “little house.” The emotional roller coaster continues as Pa looks at a distraught Ma with tears in his eyes and the girls giggle while wearing flower crowns. The final scenes show the Ingalls family around a campfire against the backdrop of an enormous Kansas sky filled with stars while Pa plays his fiddle.

The teaser is a complete package, introducing the characters, the story background, the location, and important themes of adventure, isolation (despite the town scene), family togetherness, and love. The music is fast-paced and vaguely 19th-century in tone, while the scenes form a rapid montage of both iconic and tantalizing images proclaiming that this version of “Little House on the Prairie” is something altogether new.

Predictably, fans of both the books and the classic series have raised calls of alarm over the Netflix trailer and details that have leaked out. On social media, members declare their undying loyalty to the original series, expressing doubt that departing from Michael Landon’s story lines will benefit the new show.

Some declare it scandalous that the Olesons don’t appear to be part of the Netflix series. Never mind that the Oleson family is not introduced in the “Little House on the Prairie” novel, only in the following book, “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” where they own the town mercantile.

A “Little House” show without Harriet, Nels, Nellie, and Willie is beyond imagination for Landon “Little House” loyalists, as is a town that is not Walnut Grove, Minnesota. But the original television series sowed the seeds of its fans’ confusion regarding the location and story line of the Netflix version of “Little House on the Prairie.” It used the title Wilder employed for her book about the Ingalls’ pioneer days in Kansas but centered the story on Wilder’s book about the family’s years along Plum Creek in southwest Minnesota, near the town of Walnut Grove.

Laura fans (many of whom happily call themselves “bonnetheads”) are hoping for a rendition of the story that runs much closer to the Little House books or the real lives of the Ingalls family than that offered by Michael Landon. However, the Netflix trailer appears to reveal a different intent. There are some bothersome inconsistencies with the novel. Netflix Mary’s hair is definitely not blonde. The girls should be wearing cloth bonnets, not straw hats. Their ages are all wrong, and where is Baby Carrie?

Both sets of Laura fans have missed the pivotal moment in cultural literacy that the Netflix series represents. The “Little House” story and characters have become so iconic since their first appearance in 1932 that the details of how the story is told can be changed without altering the characterization, the overarching story, and, most importantly, its themes or lessons.

The themes of all three “Little House on the Prairie” versions are the same: simple, family-focused pleasures and adventures in a new land of opportunity that will require hard work and perseverance from its new residents.

In a speech to the Detroit Book Fair in 1937, Laura Ingalls Wilder explained her motivation for writing the Little House series.

“I wanted the children now to understand more about the beginning of things, to know what is behind the things they see — what it is that made America as they know it.”

Based on the just-released teaser, Netflix’s version of “Little House on the Prairie” seems poised to tell Wilder’s story, though the strands it weaves together might not be the same ones used by Michael Landon in the original television series or by Wilder herself. Netflix’s new way of telling an old story about American pioneer values, family strength, and hard work might be just right for a new generation.

Let us know what you think, please share your thoughts in the comments below.