East of Eden Review: Florence Pugh Dominates Netflix’s Steinbeck Adaptation

KUALA LUMPUR, 1 OCTOBER 2026 —

Netflix has launched a seven-episode miniseries adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel East of Eden, premiering on Thursday, October 1, 2026. The production, created by Zoe Kazan, features Florence Pugh in the lead role of Cathy, alongside Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist.

The 1955 film, starring James Dean, is described as a sumptuously produced throwback that captured a tormented, screen-searing performance instantly and tragically iconic. However, as a filmed version of Steinbeck’s novel, the two-hour film is criticized for reducing the book’s Biblical sprawl and generational richness to an earnestly felt love story laced with occasional daddy issues.

By tackling only the final third of the narrative, the 1955 version is considered so divorced from the best aspects of the source material that it barely earns its title. In contrast, the new Netflix series, which arrives more than 70 years later with a 1981 ABC miniseries wedged in the middle, comes far closer to successfully tackling and reckoning with the depths of Steinbeck’s work.

The new series is adapted primarily by Zoe Kazan, with Alexander Chee co-writing a key midseason episode. Direction is handled by Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre. While the production still struggles to capture the full scope of the novel, it is characterized as rich, morally complex, and packed with memorable performances.

The narrative is a reconfiguring of the Book of Genesis set amid the Western expansion of the American dream in the late 1800s and early 1900s. It is told primarily through the lives of two sets of brothers whose jockeying for paternal affection leads to tragedy, facilitated by one particularly venal anti-heroine.

The story begins with half-brothers Adam Trask, played by Christopher Abbott, and Charles Trask, played by Mike Faist, who grow up under the demanding eye of their father Cyrus, portrayed by Tracy Letts. Cyrus is a one-legged Civil War hero who guides them with military rigor. Adam is depicted as smart and kind but gentle to the point of passivity, while Charles is dark and brooding but proficient in manly pursuits.

The brothers eventually share the family farm in Connecticut. The plot shifts when Cathy, played by Florence Pugh, arrives at their doorstep horribly beaten and seemingly unable to remember her past. Adam is instantly smitten, while Charles recognizes something dark and possibly monstrous in her.

The narrative migrates to California’s Salinas Valley, introducing Samuel Hamilton, played by Ciarán Hinds, a jovial but pathologically unlucky character who helps Adam find real estate. Also introduced is Lee, played by Hoon Lee, who presents as a pidgin-speaking domestic but emerges as the series’ essential heart.

The series eventually reaches the events depicted in the 1955 film, showing Adam’s sons Cal, played by Joseph Zada, and Aron, played by Joe Anders, grappling with a legacy that extends back to the Biblical figures of Cain and Abel. Zoe Phillips plays Abra, the young woman who comes between the brothers.

Kazan and co-showrunner Jeb Stuart offer a generally strict translation of the novel’s plot, though they have cut most of the story related to the Hamilton family, the secondary clan most closely tied to Steinbeck’s own lineage. Much of the dialogue is taken straight from the page, with only minor augmentations to soften or explain Pugh’s character and an added interlude to move Lee more properly to the story’s center.

The series’ leaps in time are drawn directly from Steinbeck and the Bible, where spans of hundreds of years are rushed through in lists of “begats.”

Critics note that the series’ pieces tie together by the end, though some detours and elisions are frustrating. A particular point of contention is Netflix promoting the series as a love triangle between the characters played by Pugh, Abbott, and Faist, which the review states it most surely is not. Christopher Abbott is criticized for giving a mopey, one-note performance as Adam, which leaves the series imbalanced, while Mike Faist makes Charles dangerously exciting.

Florence Pugh, in her first extended television role since 2018’s The Little Drummer Girl, is praised for tearing into one of fiction’s great and confounding antagonists.

Pugh’s portrayal of Cathy is described as terrifying, with the actress refusing to conceal her character’s nature. Cathy is not a traditional villain but a woman who refuses to be limited by the expectations of inferior men and decides she cannot be bothered to adhere to patriarchal morality. Kazan adds an origin story for Cathy that the reviewer deems unnecessary but not ruinous.

Pugh’s performance is highlighted for its unobscured honesty, making Cathy scarier when she tells the truth than when she lies. The review concludes that even in the second half of the series, when Cathy ages past the point at which Pugh is convincing, the performance still works, with Hoon Lee’s character providing essential balance to the narrative.