The Most Surprising Differences Between The Hunting Wives Book and Show (Including the Much Darker TV Ending)

Netflix’s The Hunting Wives offers just one version of the story.

The salacious show starring Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman was based on May Cobb’s 2021 novel of the same name. Though the premise — an exclusive Texas skeet-shooting club where a circle of wives bound by secrets becomes engulfed in scandal and murder — remained the same, major elements of the original plot were reimagined for the TV adaptation.

“My jaw dropped when [showrunner Rebecca Cutter] told me,” Cobb said of the show’s changes in a July 2025 interview with Variety. “It makes so much sense … I needed another twist in the book, and that’s the one I came up with. But I thought it was genius. It’s a great twist.”

Both versions explore themes of obsession, secrecy and privilege, but the show results in some new deaths in Maple Brook.

Read on for a breakdown of the biggest differences between The Hunting Wives book and TV show, and which characters made it out alive.

Warning: The Hunting Wives spoilers ahead!

Abby isn’t pregnant with Brad’s baby 

In the book, Abby Jackson’s (Madison Wolfe) murder is initially believed to be motivated by her alleged pregnancy with Brad’s (George Ferrier) baby. Sophie (Snow) later uncovers that Brad’s mom, Jill (Katie Lowes), and Callie (Jaime Ray Newman), another one of the wives, had taken the high school student to an abortion clinic before her murder, and Jill killed Abby to protect her son.

But the show takes a different turn. While Sophie first suspects that Abby was pregnant and visited an abortion clinic, she later discovers that it was actually Margo (Akerman) — not Abby — who was carrying Brad’s child.

Though Margo and Brad also have an affair in the book, The Hunting Wives series alters the storyline so that Margo is the one who ultimately decides to have an abortion.

Cutter told Variety in July 2025 that she decided to include more conversations about abortion rights in the series to “address some of the realities” of living in Texas.

“I think the conversations were more just about the sensitivity of it all, and not trying to pick a side,” the showrunner said. “We wanted to show the nuance of everything as well, because there really is no black and white. It’s all gray, especially for someone who lives in Texas.”

Jill isn’t Abby’s killer 

Although some TV adaptations stick closely to the original story, The Hunting Wives provides an alternate ending. In the book, Jill kills Abby and Margo to protect her son. But in the series, Jill is nothing more than a red herring to distract viewers from uncovering Abby’s real killer: Margo. 

After Sophie finds out that Margo got pregnant by Brad, she confronts the politician’s wife, who confesses to murdering Abby with Sophie’s handgun. Margo also reveals that she planted Abby’s phone in Jill’s house to frame her for the murder.

“She was jealous of me and she threatened to take everything that I’ve built and burn it to the f—— ground,” a tearful Margo tells Sophie in the show. “I was drunk and I made a … mistake.”

After news of Abby’s death spreads, her mother, Starr (Chrissy Metz), comes face-to-face with Jill, who shoots and kills her. Upon discovering Jill’s crime, Callie pulls a gun on Jill, who also dies.

Sophie gets a much darker ending

At the end of The Hunting Wives book, Sophie calls things off with her husband, Graham, and goes to therapy. Sadly, the protagonist’s fate became much more twisted in the series.

In the show’s final episode, Sophie decides to hit (and presumably kill) Margo’s brother, Kyle (Michael Aaron Milligan), with her car after he threatens her. She doesn’t call the police, and instead drags his limp body to a nearby cliff and throws him over the edge.

The Hunting Wives series is set up for a second season 

Cobb’s original story was a standalone novel, but Cutter left things open-ended in the final episode of season 1. Though Netflix hasn’t officially renewed The Hunting Wives for a second season, the showrunner told Variety in July 2025 that she’s already thinking about what’s next for the wives. 

“I think we’d do a little bit of a time jump — not a year, but a time,” Cutter said. “By the end of shooting, I realized that the two engines of the show are the whodunit and the Margo/Sophie relationship, and tracking how those spines intersect with each other.” 

She continued, “The first thing I’m thinking about is, where are these two women at the start? Where are they at the end? What are the peaks and valleys of their individual power, of their relationship? So it’s tracking a course for that, and then figuring out what the crime engine is.”

Cutter added that it would be “smart” to introduce a new mystery, but that idea is in its early stages. She joked, “I don’t know whodunit yet or who got done!”