Author Liane Moriarty is releasing Big Little Truths, a sequel to her novel Big Little Lies, and—crucially—HBO's third season will adapt it. This is the smartest move the show could make after Season 2's struggles. The first season worked because it had Moriarty's tightly constructed narrative as scaffolding. Season 2, written without source material, felt like prestige TV treading water. Beautiful water, acted brilliantly, but still treading.
The novel-first approach gives HBO something Season 2 lacked: a roadmap. Season 1's success came from David E. Kelley adapting Moriarty's narrative architecture—the mystery structure, the character dynamics, the Monterey setting as character itself. Season 2 tried to reverse-engineer that magic, and you could feel the strain. Plot felt obligatory. Characters circled their original arcs without finding new ones.
Big Little Truths gives the show a reason to exist beyond "the cast wants to work together again," which, let's be honest, was Season 2's primary justification. Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz—they're all brilliant, and they all deserved better material than Season 2 provided.
The question: can Moriarty recapture what made the original novel sing? Writing a sequel years later because the adaptation succeeded is risky. The creative impulse is different. But Moriarty's strength has always been understanding women navigating systems designed to judge them, and there's no shortage of new pressures for the Monterey Five to face.
HBO needs wins. Their post-Game of Thrones era has been competent but rarely transcendent. Season 1 was event television that started conversations. Season 3 could recapture that if it trusts the source material and doesn't try to stretch eight episodes out of five episodes' worth of story.
