Netflix Casts Willa Dunn as Nellie Oleson for Little House Season 2

Q: The new series shows Pa Ingalls making mistakes. Does it confront his illegal squatting on Osage Nation land?

Yes. The Netflix remake does not just show Pa Ingalls as flawed in a general sense; it explicitly places the family on Osage land and treats that as part of the story’s moral and historical tension. Reporting on the series says season one, based on *Little House on the Prairie*, is set near Independence, Kansas, on land the U.S. had not yet fully opened for settlement. In the show, Pa is told that the claim is not officially legal because the Osage Nation still lives there and treaty negotiations are ongoing. That makes the issue of squatting and Indigenous dispossession part of the plot, not just background. Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine has said the series aims to examine westward expansion more honestly while keeping the books’ emotional core. The production reportedly broadens the perspective beyond the Ingalls family by introducing Osage characters and an Osage family, and by showing Laura’s relationship with an Osage girl. The series also used Osage and Indigenous consultants, including scholar Robert Warrior and cultural consultant Julie O’Keefe, to shape that portrayal. What the show appears to do is frame Pa less as a villain than as a settler whose hopes and mistakes are inseparable from a larger system he only partly understands. So it does confront the fact that the Ingallses were occupying Osage land, while presenting Pa as a decent but compromised figure rather than ignoring the history.

3 articles · Updated · The Associated Press · Jul 9

Filming is already underway on Netflix’s second season of “Little House,” with Willa Dunn joining as Laura Ingalls’ rival Nellie Oleson, a key character from the books and 1974 TV series.
Showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine said the remake is giving Nellie a “slightly different take” while using Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books as its touchstone for expanding her family’s role.
The new series premieres Thursday and follows the Ingalls family settling on the late-1800s frontier, with Luke Bracey as Pa and Alice Halsey as Laura.
Sonnenshine said the adaptation aims to keep the originals’ heart and iconic moments while more directly addressing land politics and the Ingalls family’s encounters with the Osage Nation.