'Little House on the Prairie': Alison Arngrim Imagines What Happened to Nellie & Percival
- - 'Little House on the Prairie': Alison Arngrim Imagines What Happened to Nellie & Percival
Michelle SteinDecember 13, 2025 at 9:17 PM
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NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Little House on the Prairie star Alison Arngrim shared her theory on what happened to Nellie Oleson and Percival Dalton after the show ended.
In a Dec. 11 episode of the Little House on the Prairie 50th Anniversary Podcast, Arngrim, who played Nellie, and Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder, sat down with host Pamela Bob to answer fan-submitted questions.
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Bob read one question that asked, "What would your character have been doing for the decades past the final season?"
To that, Arngrim explained that she and Pam Roylance, who played Sarah Carter in LHOTP, discussed this in the past.
"In the weird episode, 'The Return of Nellie,' where I come for five minutes, it's mentioned that [Sarah] works for the paper," Argrim said. "She's writing for the town paper, and she says, 'Oh, I must interview you about your life in New York. And then of course, it's never mentioned again."
Arngrim said that she and Roylance actually did an interview in-character as they imagined what Nellie and her husband, Percival (Steve Tracy), were up to in the decades after LHOTP ended.
"Percival and I, ostensibly, went to New York — his father had died, and we went to take care of his mother and run the store," she detailed.
Related: Melissa Gilbert Honors Late Little House on the Prairie Costar: "My Childhood BFF"
Where LHOPT ended would have been in the late 1800s, and as Argrim pointed out, "They're building the subway, there's electricity. It's the Gilded Age."
She imagined, "We're running a store in a completely Jewish neighborhood. And I'm this blond, terribly goyim shiksa wife — but being the good wife with the children and a husband, helping in a store. And how are the locals who have been used to just his dad in the store reacting to him and I in the store together? And he would be modernizing and updating everything because Percival would be like that. Would that freak them out?"
Arngrim added, "Would I be using all the new transportation and the streetcars? Where are we sending the children to school? We're in New York, we could send them anywhere."
To conclude her thoughts on Nellie and Percival's future beyond Little House on the Prairie, she said, "So there was all kinds of fascinating stuff of what our life would be like in the modern, wild, swinging New York."
Bob encouraged her to sit down and record this in-depth conversation, insisting it would get "millions of views."
Little House on the Prairie aired for nine seasons from 1974 to 1983. Tracy died in 1986 from AIDS-related complications at 34.
Next: Little House on the Prairie: Dean Butler Addresses Melissa Gilbert Age Gap After Her "I Was 15" Post
This story was originally published by Parade on Dec 13, 2025, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Parade as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
