How grim is this trailer for Netflix's Little House On The Prairie supposed to be?

The revived series' first trailer lays on the pastoral charms thick—but also has some pretty hungry-looking CGI wolves.

By William Hughes | June 11, 2026 | 7:50pm

Crosby Fitzgerald, Luke Bracey, Skywalker Hughes, and Alice Halsey in Netflix's Little House On The Prairie, Photo: Netflix

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How grim is this trailer for Netflix's Little House On The Prairie supposed to be?

Among the many questions circulating around Netflix’s plans to revive long-time TV institution Little House On The Prairie—plans it embarked upon in full last January, around the time it noticed that like 220 million hours of the original series were getting watched on its servers every year—tone has always been near the forefront. It’s not like Michael Landon’s original show, which ran for nine seasons and a few movies on NBC in the 1970s and ’80s—was outright saccharine, for all that it was stamped firmly with Landon’s Christian faith. But it was a series where most issues of frontier living could be dealt with with a little conversation, community and good cheer (at least, until it was time to blow shit up), and it was unclear how much the new version of the show would alter that ethos in order to fit in with more modern TV attitudes.

It’s a question that is not wholly resolved by the show’s first trailer, which dropped on YouTube today, and which sees Luke Bracey’s Charles Ingalls and Crosby Fitzgerald’s Caroline Ingalls transport their daughters Laura (Alice Halsey) and Mary (Skywalker Hughes) to a tiny new community on the far edge of nowhere. And, sure, things are nice and pastoral—as represented by Bracey’s optimistic “We have Glenn Powell at home” smile—but also, dang, there sure are a lot of obvious CGI wolves in these woods, huh?

Netflix’s own marketing for the eight-episode series (which has already been renewed for a second season) promises that it’ll be “Part hopeful family drama, part epic survival tale, and part origin story of the American West,” and that clearly includes reckoning with things like the native inhabitants all this free land grabbing is being grabbed from—to say nothing of opening the possibility that you might tune in to Little House On The Prairie one day to see the disease-ridden Ingalls family all lumped together in a frozen-to-death pile of crpses. That being said, series showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine did give a statement to Netflix’s Tudum where she emphasized that the show “is a love story about a family. They’re a family you want to be with, you want to know, you want to spend time with,” which does suggest that, seriousness of the hardships aside, the series won’t be going full Donner Party any time soon.

Little House On The Prairie debuts on Netflix on July 9.

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