Agata Popęda here. I’m still watching.
Many Monterey County residents have been curious about East of Eden on Netflix since locals always read, plan to read or re-read works by John Steinbeck, the most famous writer associated with Salinas, Monterey and Salinas Valley, where East of Eden—at least in our imagination—is set.
“It’s an important book to understand Salinas Valley,” says the nation’s top Steinbeck scholar and Pacific Grove resident Susan Shillinglaw, who is not done with the series yet, and was caught for commentary upon finishing the first episode. “He had to write this book. He wrestled with it in his head for 20 years.”
Shillinglaw says Steinbeck’s difficulty came from his conflicted view of the place he grew up in. He loved the outdoors, but found the social structures around quite bleak. And “bleak” is the word, often an accusation, that has been used a lot in association with the new 2026 Netflix limited series adaptation of the book.
“I like how she lays out all the themes right away, in the voice over part,” Shillinglaw says about series creator Zoe Kazan’s work. “The question of good and evil. She highlights what’s essential in the novel.”
Kazan is the writer and creator of the series—and granddaughter of Elia Kazan, who directed the famous 1955 adaptation of East of Eden with young James Dean.
Shillinglaw is watching with an understanding approach, emphasizing that Steinbeck would be first to acknowledge that adaptation is someone else’s interpretation. He was very appreciative of Elia Kazan’s movie, supposedly calling it the best movie he’d even seen. The fact that the TV series was filmed in New Zealand—as opposed to Salinas Valley, which could use the money and attention—is “regrettable,” Shillinglaw says, but was probably an economic decision (Elia Kazan filmed in Mendocino).
At the heart of discussions on the new East of Eden is, as always, Cathy—the Eve of the Eden that two brothers, Adam and Charles—or Cain and Abel—encounter. As with Eve, Cathy’s story has always presented itself as a problem in a more contemporary, feministic reading of the book, a problem signalized by Steinbeck himself by not finding and not providing an answer to the question that lays at the heart of the story: What is the nature of evil?
To defend Cathy comes Florence Pugh, one of a few actresses in her generation to be able to pull off such a multifaceted character. We know Pugh as a stubborn force—for good, as in the 2022 period drama The Wonder, and for evil. Let’s not forget that Pugh already passed her “Cathy” test portraying, very coldly indeed, Lady Macbeth in the 2016 movie of the same name. She surely can be evil, but is Cathy all that?
I’m sure, dear readers, that you have a lot to say about the series, too. We welcome your opinion.