The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart‘s story can be broadly divided into three timelines that reveal themselves in a very interlinked manner through the seven-episode run. The series picks up a powerful topic to address and then plays too safe with it by only hinting at it in the background. The execution of this series reminds us of another show called The Power, which set out to convey the right message but did not know what to do with it. While The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is based on a book of the same name that we did not read, we could tell that the show simply missed something. So, without any further ado, let us take a detailed look at the ending of the series.
Does Alice Press Charges Against Dylan?
This has been the biggest question on our minds ever since we finished watching The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, and it is not easy to answer since episode 7’s ending left it to the viewer’s deductions. While the indication is that Alice decides to fight against him, the audience is still left questioning why she became so helpless in the first place, and we believe that has a lot to do with Alice’s upbringing. Interactions with the opposite gender are an integral part of growing up and teach one how to navigate society in general. It would help to remember that Lulu had also dated Dylan, but she had stepped back in time when she started sensing these overbearing tendencies in him.
One would assume that growing up in Thornfield and watching women come there with their accounts of domestic abuse would mean that Alice knew that what Dylan was doing was wrong and that she needed to get away from it. But it is only when we see June’s final letter to Alice that we realize how little of everything Alice was aware of. She most likely only saw the woman come and go or get the help they needed. She never heard their story of how they were manipulated by the men in their lives and further failed by the system, which forced them to seek refuge with a complete stranger in times of need.
Once June decided to uncover that side of Thornfield for Alice, the girl got a better understanding of what her fight would be like. Nobody believed her when she complained about Dylan, and that is a classic case of the abuser turning things in his favor by banking on his reputation. Alice had the wounds to show, but they were ignored in favor of the bruises on Dylan, and all because Alice wasn’t the perfect victim. But with time and a fresh perspective, she understood what fighting against Dylan would mean for her and for others that he may choose to target later in life. All of those women, the flowers, whose accounts June had recorded, must have similarly felt like they were in love with their abuser, just like Alice continued to feel. But the journal was a reminder of what life with that kind of love looked like. We suppose it also involved a better understanding of Agnes for Alice to come to this realization.
Knowing that Agnes wanted to leave Clem proved that she was not willing to suffer until eternity in the name of love. The fact that it was Agnes and not Alice who had set the fire showed that she was a fighter who had tried to protect herself and the ones she loved instead of letting Clem’s anger continue targeting them. Alice had loved Agnes, but it was only now that she understood how strong her mother had been. Alice was Agnes’ daughter, and she couldn’t let her mother’s struggles go in vain. She would fight Dylan with everything she had in her.
Why Did Alice And The Others Burn Down The Tree?
It took us a while to understand this action. In The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart‘s ending, we see Alice, Twig, Candy, and Sally burn this tree down after putting some flowers on it. We know that the flowers were parting wishes for June, but the tree itself meant something else. Clem had carved something on it, which we think of as a representation of his inner demons. This makes us think of the language that June used when she talked about him. She said that he had “something broken in him like his father.”
When it came to Clem and his actions, June absolutely never made an excuse for him, but her actions had been less than noble. June should have never tried to arrange a relationship between Clem and Agnes, knowing that her son was a sexual assaulter. She should have found some other way to protect Candy and the women on the farm. June only tried to stop Clem and Agnes when she came to know that her son was capable of physical violence as well, but she should not have waited so long. It just shows that June was not a fair judge, and while she had always protected victims of abuse, she knowingly pushed Agnes into it because, just like Alice, she believed that the “love” her son was capable of would protect Agnes and ensure that her life would be alright. It was the weight of this mistake that June carried throughout her life and that she was never able to tell Alice. This was the reason she kept so many secrets from her granddaughter until her dying breath.
June had always been scared of the cruelty that men were capable of. The tree represented her fears since this was where she had caught her son being with Candy, which had set her opinion about the men of the family. It was why she kept Charlie away from Thornfield without even bothering to give him a chance. She did not want to take any risks with Oggi as well, and that is why she separated him from Alice.
By burning down that tree, Alice was setting fire to the fears and trauma of June Hart and herself that had guided their lives for so long. She would have her family with her brother, and she would continue to run Thornfield just as her grandmother wanted her to. But Alice would not hide from the world anymore. She had been so protected all her life that she had ended up missing the obvious signs in Dylan. Her flower fortress had also not let her think for herself, and while everything June did still had her respect, Alice would do things her way now, which is why she set the tree on fire.
Final Thoughts
Without mincing words, we will say that the pacing of The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart is terrible. It is just slow and unnecessarily eerie, with only a few good episodes. We would have also liked the series to do a deeper dive into Alice and Dylan’s relationship instead of just keeping it surface-level and leaving the rest to the audience’s understanding of things. We had been very patient with The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, but it just did not do what it should have. Perhaps the book is better.
