East of Eden is consumed by the question of what makes someone good or evil. Are we born with something already inside us, do the people who raise us shape who we become, or do we ultimately get to choose? Netflix’s seven-part adaptation finds its most fascinating way into that question through Cathy Ames.

Florence Pugh takes on one of Steinbeck’s most infamous characters, a woman the novel describes in almost inherently monstrous terms. Zoe Kazan’s adaptation doesn’t erase Cathy’s cruelty or ask us to forgive the horrifying things she is capable of, but it is far more interested in understanding how someone becomes Cathy than simply accepting that she was born evil. It makes her absolutely fascinating to watch.

From childhood, Cathy learns how desire can give her power in a world where she otherwise possesses very little of it. She understands what men see when they look at her and becomes incredibly skilled at manipulating that perception. Yet the same sexuality she weaponises can also place her in danger. Control and vulnerability constantly exist alongside one another, and Pugh is phenomenal at allowing both to appear within the same character.

Some of her best work happens without dialogue. A tiny smile, a moment of complete blankness or the slightest change in expression can tell us something entirely different from what Cathy is saying aloud. You are constantly trying to determine whether you’re witnessing genuine vulnerability, calculation or an uncomfortable combination of both. That uncertainty becomes even more interesting once Cathy enters the lives of brothers Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles Trask (Mike Faist).

Adam falls in love with an idea of Cathy almost immediately. His affection is genuine, and his intentions are good, but Cathy repeatedly tells him what she wants and, more importantly, what she doesn’t want. Adam simply struggles to hear her when those desires don’t fit the life he has imagined for them. It complicates the series’ ideas about goodness. Adam can be kind and still hurt someone. He can love Cathy and simultaneously fail to truly see her. Charles does.

Perhaps that’s why the relationship between Charles and Cathy is so compelling. He recognises the danger in her almost immediately, yet that recognition doesn’t stop him from being drawn towards her. Their scenes carry this strange mixture of attraction, suspicion, hostility and understanding because neither seems particularly fooled by the other. Faist and Abbott are excellent at making the brothers’ relationship equally complicated. Years spent competing for their father’s affection have left wounds neither man has properly escaped, and Cathy doesn’t create those fractures so much as expose what was already there. Love, jealousy, and the desperate need to be chosen seem to pass through this family as easily as blood.

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That idea of inheritance becomes increasingly important as East of Eden moves through generations. Joseph Zada makes an enormous emotional impact as Cal Trask, despite only becoming prominent later in the episodes I watched. There is something immediately heartbreaking about Cal’s anger and vulnerability, particularly as questions surrounding where he comes from begin to collide with who he fears he might become.

Suddenly, understanding Cathy matters for reasons beyond Cathy herself. If evil is simply something she was born with, what does that mean for her children? If trauma, circumstance and choices helped create the person she became, can the next generation choose differently? It is one of Steinbeck’s most enduring ideas, encapsulated by timshel, or “thou mayest”: the possibility of choice. Zada captures that conflict beautifully. Cal feels connected to those who came before him without ever seeming like an imitation of them, and within a remarkably short amount of screen time he became one of the characters I was most emotionally invested in.

That generational structure is where Kazan’s adaptation really justifies returning to material already famously brought to screen by her grandfather Elia Kazan in 1955. That film concentrated primarily on the later Cal and Aron story, while seven episodes allow this version to spend considerably more time with Cathy, Adam and Charles and understand the history the younger generation eventually inherits.

Not every part of Steinbeck’s enormous novel can receive equal attention, and the Hamilton side of the story is notably reduced, but the longer format gives these relationships space to develop. Hoon Lee’s Lee is particularly compelling, retaining the novel’s exploration of race and the identity he performs to survive within white American society. There are moments when the pacing can feel overly deliberate, especially as the series lays foundations across different periods, but its patience frequently pays off emotionally. Directors Garth Davis and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre also give the story a beautiful sense of scale without losing sight of the intimate relationships at its centre.

Yet I kept coming back to Cathy. What makes this interpretation work is that understanding her never becomes the same thing as absolving her. Cathy can be a victim of violence and inflict violence herself. She can be vulnerable and manipulative. She can have been shaped by the world around her while still being responsible for the choices she makes.

Pugh never tries to resolve those contradictions. Instead, East of Eden allows them to ripple through generations, eventually asking whether children must carry the worst parts of the people who came before them. For a story so concerned with inheritance, that possibility of choice remains its most moving idea. We may inherit our parents’ wounds, their anger and perhaps even parts of their darkness.

But we don’t necessarily have to become them.

★★★★★

On Netflix from October 1st / Florence Pugh, Christopher Abbott, Mike Faist, Hoon Lee, Tracy Letts, Martha Plimpton, Ciarán Hinds, Joseph Zada, Joe Anders / Creator: Zoe Kazan / Dirs: Garth Davis, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre