Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Netflix’s East of Eden.Netflix’s East of Eden changes one of literature’s most iconic characters.

The new seven-episode miniseries adapts John Steinbeck’s classic novel, featuring the literary villain Cathy Ames, played in this version of the story by Florence Pugh. The author’s first words about her are “I believe there are monsters born in this world to human parents,” which is also included in the latest adaptation. Steinbeck’s source material depicts her as being pure evil instead of a tragic or sympathetic villain, but a somewhat different approach is taken this time around.

While speaking with Tudum about the show’s ending, Pugh, who also executive produced the series, explained that “one of the things I’ve taken pride in is being able to give unlikable characters another chance. It gives me an opportunity to try and understand these characters, understand their decision-making, have empathy for them, and try and allow for their story to be bigger than just the fact that they made evil decisions at some point in their lifetime.”

Cathy’s backstory is explored in both the novel and the new miniseries, but while the book uses this to show how she has always been evil and manipulative, the show utilizes her past to emphasize how her cruelty is shaped by unresolved childhood trauma. While the character ultimately has the same fate as her book counterpart, Netflix’s East of Eden ending brings the story full-circle to her traumatic origins, as in her last moments, she has a vision of herself at five years old, serving as a reminder of what led to the choices she made and that she was not always evil.

In a Tudum cover story for East of Eden, Pugh broke down how these changes are about more than humanizing an unlikable and evil character, but specifically one who is a woman, and that it feeds into a larger conversation about equality and bodily autonomy. Check out her comments below:

I feel like it’s become a bit of a thing of mine to play female characters that were previously unliked in literature, in scripts, in plays, in films, and I think I’ve taken huge pride in trying to find ways to make them human. This was another example of that: How do we get the audience to pause and think and feel for her in a way that hasn’t been done before?

We’re coming up against changes that are happening now that are taking us back miles into our history as women, and I think ultimately the demand for equality, the demand for respect, and the demand for control of our own bodies will never not be a topic that we don’t want to talk about. When we make stories that are from a time that feels far, far away, and they mirror things that we are potentially coming up against now, I hope it allows us to ask the question, “How far have we actually moved forward? And if we have, how do we hold onto that? And if we haven’t, how do we change that?”

This is a more human and modern version of Cathy due to the changes in her perspective and justifications. Nevertheless, she is still undeniably ruthless, including how she burns her parents alive, shoots her husband and abandons her newborn children, and slowly poisons and torments Faye (Martha Plimpton), the brothel owner who treated her like a beloved daughter.

In ScreenRant‘s East of Eden review, Graeme Guttmann gives the show a score of six out of 10 stars, praising Pugh’s performance while arguing that some of the changes to her character ultimately backfire: “Making Cathy a victim of circumstance rather than one that wields her power simply because she can robs the character of some agency, an oxymoron that lies underneath the modernization of one of literature’s most complex female characters . . . Pugh’s performance somehow seems to both lean into these changes and work against them to give Cathy the well-rounded portrayal she deserves.”

As per the “Certified Fresh” 86% critics’ score and 76% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the new adaptation has been generally well-received, including praise for Pugh’s performance and some of the Cathy changes. Many of the reviews hail creator and co-showruner Zoe Kazan’s adaptation as being the best yet of Steinbeck’s classic novel, even more so than the 1955 film directed by her grandfather Elia Kazan. Hoon Lee’s performance as Lee and the production design are also highlighted as key strengths of the miniseries.

In addition to Pugh, Plimpton, and Lee, the East of Eden cast also features Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask, Mike Faist as Charles Trask, Ciarán Hinds as Samuel Hamilton, Tracey Letts as Cyrus Trask, Joseph Zada as Cal Trask, Joe Anders as Aron Trask, and Zoe Phillips as Abra Bacon. Kazan served as the showrunner alongside Jeb Stuart, and they will be reuniting with Netflix for the streamer’s new adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s Western novel Lonesome Dove.

All episodes of East of Eden are streaming on Netflix.