Thoughts on Little House: The Last Farewell

No date is given, but according to the age of Baby Rose and the other kids, it should be Easter of 1891. The date of Christmas 1896 in the previous movie was a horrendous error.

Albert wasn't mentioned, dead or alive. There was no, "Albert loved Walnut Grove, thank God he didn't live to see this." He could be dead, he could be alive and in medical school. I maintain the second.

The tears at the end were doubtless quite genuine. The final scene, with the ruined town, undefeated townsfolk, and the singing of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" is so reminiscent of the last scene of Mrs. Miniver (1942) it is almost a copy, of course minus the airplanes flying over. Doubtless they'd have had them too if they'd been invented yet. It was just as well Harriet Oleson was in the hospital, as all this would have undoubtedly sent her there anyway.

Of course with the question of Albert lies the ultimate Little House contradiction. The closing narration of "Home Again" in Season 9 states that twenty years later Albert returned to Walnut Grove as "Dr. Albert Ingalls." In Little House: The Last Farewell Walnut Grove is destroyed. Of course there is the possibility that at some point Walnut Grove was resurrected from literally smithereens. Something needs to account for the existence of the real world Walnut Grove (which was actually founded in 1874 and incorporated in 1879, not founded in 1840 by Lars Hanson). Even discounting this, the implied death of Albert in Little House: Look Back to Yesterday has created a troubling paradox in which there is both an existing Walnut Grove in which Albert Ingalls was once a doctor, and no Walnut Grove and an Albert Ingalls who died without entering medical school. This can only be reconciled through the Parallel Universe Theory.