🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

The last seven episodes of Firefly Lane Season 2 were some of the hardest to write, creator Maggie Friedman tells Tudum. The episodes chronicle the final chapter in the 30-year friendship of Kate (Sarah Chalke) and Tully (Katherine Heigl), as Kate undergoes treatment for breast cancer. “The emotion of it was just exhausting,” she says.

While the first half of Season 2 finally revealed what caused the rift in their decades-long bond, the second half showed what it took to mend it — and just how much the two women meant to each other.

“It really took a lot out of [Chalke and Heigl],” Friedman says of the last stretch of the show, which sees the women finally make amends as Tully helps usher Kate through her terminal illness. “I feel so proud of how they turned out. They’re my favorite episodes of the whole series.”

Below, Friedman takes Tudum through the biggest questions about that tear-jerker finale and how she paid tribute to Kristin Hannah’s book that inspired the show as she brought the story to its conclusion.

Is Kate still alive?

In Tully’s heart? Yes. But in real life, no, Kate did not survive her cancer. “We ended the second-to-last episode seeing Kate in the future,” Friedman says, but “we reveal in the last episode that that’s Tully’s fantasy version of Kate.”

It’s not meant to be a trick, but rather a tribute to the closeness of their friendship. Says Friedman, “I love knowing that 10 years later, even after Kate’s gone, that Tully has stayed so connected to Kate’s family, and that she’s helped raise Marah [Kate’s daughter, played by Yael Yurman].”

When Kate dies, it’s during a girls’ night with her best friend. As Tully explains how she finally confessed her true feelings to former co-worker turned paramour Danny (Ignacio Serricchio), Kate quietly slips away. “It’s almost like she waited until she knew Tully was taken care of, like her work was done,” Friedman tells Tudum.

Did Tully marry Johnny? 

At the end of Episode 9, a flash-forward to 10 years in the future shows Kate’s husband, Johnny (Ben Lawson), suited up and anxiously awaiting a mysterious bride to arrive at the altar. “Hold your horses, I’m almost ready!” shouts Tully from the bathroom. But who’s the bride in question?

It’s actually Marah’s wedding. Says Friedman, “I love knowing that Marah, even though she had a tumultuous teenagehood, turns out happy and good and she’s getting married.”

Did Tully marry Danny?

It was important for Tully to confess her true feelings to Danny because, as Friedman says, “It’s been really hard for Tully to let anybody get close to her who isn’t Kate. It’s not like, ‘Oh, she needs a man,’ or, ‘It’s not OK unless she finds love.’ It’s really more about her healing the part of herself that couldn’t have intimacy with anybody who isn’t Kate. She pushed people away because of her trauma, and she’s finally able to let somebody in and be healthy about it.”

Tully and Danny end up together, but come on — it’s 2006 (for them). Does it matter if Danny put a ring on it or not? As the series ends, the couple are committed to each other.

Is the ending the same as in the book?

“There were places in the series where we felt really good about branching off from the book and creating surprises for the audience who loves both [the show and the book],” Friedman says. “Ultimately we decided it felt like a good full circle moment to bring it back to the ending of the book and stay true to that element.”

In fact, there were a few scenes in the finale that were ripped directly from the pages of Kristin Hannah’s novel: like when Tully pushes a seriously ill Kate down a hill in her wheelchair, telling her to “close your eyes and picture we’re on our bikes and it’s like we’re flying.” 

And at the very end of the series, when Tully can’t bear to go to Kate’s funeral and instead opens a box Kate prepared that’s filled with memories of their friendship, “that’s all straight out of the book,” Friedman confirms.

Watch Ali Skovbye's Audition Tape for Firefly LaneSee Ali's reading for Young Tully.