A Series of Unfortunate Events: Everything You Need to Remember From the Books

We first meet the precocious Baudelaire children in The Bad Beginning. The three siblings discover that their wealthy parents have died in a terrible fire. Mr. Poe, a family friend, puts them under the care of a distant relative, the nefarious Count Olaf, who lives in a derelict house filled with disturbing eye images.

Olaf, keen on stealing on Violet's fortune, cast the children in his play so that he can trick Violet into marrying him. When the show finally takes place, Violet signs the marriage certificate with her left hand, which invalidates the marriage since she's right-handed. Olaf's plan fails but he manages to escape.

Mr. Poe puts the children under the care of their uncle Dr. Montgomery Montgomery, a reptile expert who goes by Monty. The children get along nicely with their new guardian, who promises to bring them on a trip to Peru with him to study snakes. Things look peachy for the children until Count Olaf disguises as Uncle Monty's assistant Stephano.

Uncle Monty dies. Olaf takes them to a harbor but they get into a car accident. The affected car belongs to none other than Mr. Poe, who doesn't believe that Stephano is Olaf since he doesn't have an ankle tattoo. Olaf's acting assistant, pretending to be a Dr. Lucafont, claims that Uncle Monty died because of the Mamba du Mal. Klaus infers that the evidence doesn't add up — Uncle Monty is pale during his death as opposed to blackened, which is the effect of being poisoned by the Mamba du Mal. Olaf's plan gets foiled and Mr. Poe learns that he had covered up his ankle tattoo with makeup. The villain escapes once more.

The Baudelaire children now live with their eccentric Aunt Josephine. Residing on a hill looking over Lake Lachrymose, Aunt Josephine has a penchant for grammar but fears everything else. The family goes grocery shopping one day and encounter Captain Sham, who, you've guessed it, turns out to be Count Olaf.

Threatened by the villainous actor, Aunt Josephine fakes her own death, leaving the children a letter full of grammar mistakes. The note states that she has jumped into the lake and will leave them in the care of Captain Sham. Klaus eventually discerns a hidden message in the note: Curdled Cave. Josephine is hiding there. The children manage to reach her hiding place after surviving a turbulent storm. Unfortunately, Josephine gets eaten alive by the Lachrymose Leeches on their journey back when they encounter Count Olaf. Sunny later proves to Mr. Poe that Captain Sham is actually Olaf by biting off his fake peg leg.

In a Dickensian fashion, the children's new guardian, Sir, makes them work at his mill under terrible conditions and compensates their labor with coupons. While working, a foreman causes Klaus to trip and break his glasses. Klaus visits a local optometrist named Dr. Georgina Orwell (yes, Lemony Snicket is punny), who hypnotizes him during his appointment. Sunny and Violet learn that the receptionist Shirley is actually Olaf, and that Olaf is working with the optometrist to trap the children. The stakes build up as Sir leaves a note threatening to ship them off with Shirley if they're involved in any more accidents.

Klaus, still hypnotized, operates a saw that's about to cut Charles, Sir's business partner, in half. Violet figures out the keyword to snap Klaus out of his trance and they Charles. Orwell, however, runs into the saw and instantly dies.

Count Olaf hatches another evil plan, this time disguised as Coach Genghis at the orphans' new residence, Prufrock Preparatory School. The siblings play along with his plan, even as he forces them to run laps each night so that they'll flunk out of school.

Even with Olaf's craftiness, the Baudelaire children manage to make friends, Duncan and Isadora Quagmire, similarly precocious triplets whose parents and sibling died in a fire. Their new friends pretend to be them and do laps with Olaf, giving the Baudelaires time to study for their exams. Things don't pan out as planned — the Baudelaire children get expelled and Count Olaf kidnaps the Quagmires, who quickly tell their new friends to look into the elusive "V.F.D."

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny enter the care of Esmé and Jerome Squalor, a wealthy couple who live near their former home. Esmé is a financial adviser who's obsessed with trends. She adopts the Baudelaires because orphans are "in" and plans an auction of "in" things with her auctioneer Gunther, aka Count Olaf.

Exploring their new home, the siblings discover that one of the elevators on the top floor is ersatz, or fake. They find the Quagmires trapped below when they climb down its empty shaft. Perusing the auction catalog, Klaus discovers a Lot #50, V.F.D. The children tell Esmé about Olaf's plan to sneak out the Quagmires but she pushes them down the empty shaft. She's in on the secret with Olaf, who used to be her acting instructor. The children rush to the auction after escaping and discover that Lot #50 is full of Very Fancy Doilies. Olaf slips on a doily, which unveils his disguise. He and Esmé make a run for it. Newly abandoned by his wife, Jerome refuses to help the children find their friends and gives them up for adoption.

An entire village acts as a guardian for the Baudelaire children. The children choose an adoption program called "V.F.D.," which stands for Village of Fowl Devotees. They live with the local handyman Hector, a chronic social rebel with a secret library and plans to escape the staunch community via his hot air mobile home.

Village members later report that Count Olaf has been captured. Ironically, it isn't the wicked villain this time around, but instead, a man named Jacques Snicket. The orphans try to help Jacques to no avail. He ends up dead because of the real Count Olaf, who's scheming with Esmé Squalor to trap the siblings. Hunted down by a mob, the Baudelaires find the Quagmires. Hector helps the Quagmires but fails to rescue the Baudelaire children. Isadora and Duncan throw down notebooks from Hector's hot air mobile home, which contain notes about the V.F.D.

The Baudelaires escape the village and follow a van of "Volunteers Fighting Diseases." The volunteers, who work to boost patient morale, suggest that the orphans find a library of records to decrypt the V.F.D.

The children eventually get access to keys from an elderly man who works at the library of records. Esmé chases them out of the library and takes Violet in for a craniectomy. After rescuing Violet, the siblings sneak into Olaf's trunk and eavesdrop on him talking about the Snicket files and the V.F.D.

Hiding in Olaf's trunk, the hapless siblings end up at the Caligari Carnival, where they're accepted as carnies by a fortune-teller named Madame Lulu, who divulges information to Olaf about the V.F.D. Lulu's fortune-telling turns out to be a major scam. She's actually a member of the V.F.D. named Olivia who gathers intel by way of a secret archival library, not psychic powers.

Claiming to spice up publicity for the carnival, Olaf orders Violet and Klaus to be fed to a pit full of lions. The siblings escape this fate, and instead, Olivia and one of Olaf's lackeys fall into the pit. Olaf burns the carnival down and takes the children onto a caravan attached to his troupe's car. On a steep cliff, Klaus and Violet sever the rope that connects the car to the caravan. However, Olaf grabs their baby sister and the siblings are now separated.

Violet and Klaus go up the Mortmain Mountains to find their baby sister, who's currently in Olaf's hands. They encounter Quigley Quagmire, the presumably dead sibling of their prep school friends, and visit the V.F.D. headquarters, which they learn has burned down. Sunny, communicating via smoke signal, eventually reunites with her siblings but insists on staying with Olaf to gather information about the V.F.D. organization.

In an attempt to rescue Sunny, Quigley and the other Baudelaire children trap Esmé. Count Olaf finally yields to them when they say that they have information about an important sugar bowl that a V.F.D. ally throws out of the headquarter window. After rescuing Sunny, the children escape by sliding down a slope with a toboggan but get separated from Quigley in doing so.

The Baudelaires aimlessly drift on a river and come across a ship called the Queequeg (yes, this is a Moby Dick allusion) and encounter Captain Widdershins and his stepdaughter Fiona, a fungi enthusiast. The seafarers too are in search of the sugar bowl, which Klaus suspects to be in the Gorgonian Grotto, a cave covered with a poisonous mushroom.

Fiona and the Baudelaire children dive down into the cave, and Sunny becomes poisoned by the fungi. Before Fiona can help them, Count Olaf's submarine swallows the Queequeg. On the submarine, they encounter a hook-handed man who turns out to be Fiona's brother Fernald. He agrees to help them. While escaping, the children figure out that the antidote for Sunny's illness is horseradish so they give her wasabi. The children safely make it to Briny Beach after receiving a message from Quigley telling them to go there. They encounter Mr. Poe, who urges them to go to the police. Ignoring Mr. Poe's pleas, they enter a cab with a woman named Kit Snicket.

Kit Snicket instructs the Baudelaires to masquerade as concierges at Hotel Denouement, where V.F.D. members will be gathering. She asks them to observe whether the elusive J.S. is a villain or volunteer within the organization. (We learn that the V.F.D. stands for Volunteer Fire Department, which has since been split up into two groups of rivals.) The siblings spot Jerome Squalor and Justice Strauss, both of whom believe that they are J.S.

The children encounter Count Olaf, who pushes a gun into their hands, which drops and kills a man named Dewey Denouement. The children and Olaf are tried in court (a sketchy setup since two of the judges turn out to be part of Olaf's troupe). All four escape and the siblings set the hotel on fire to signal to the volunteers that the gathering has been infiltrated by enemies. Olaf and the Baudelaire children get on a boat together.

Violet, Klaus, Sunny, and Count Olaf wander onto an island led by a man named Ishmael (yup, another Moby Dick reference). Kit also ends up shipwrecked there too. A few of the inhabitants decide to help the children under the condition that the Baudelaires join their plans to overthrow their leader. Gathering weapons at the island's arboretum, the three siblings discover a book. They learn that their parents were once leaders of this island before Ishmael took over and enforced harsh living conditions.

Ishmael stabs Olaf with a harpoon and unleashes the poisonous mushroom in Sunny's helmet, which Olaf had kept to use as a weapon. The poison spreads across the island. The children quickly give everyone horseradish apples but the islanders decide to sail away with their leader. They refocus on helping Kit, who enters labor. Olaf carries her down to a safe area by the beach before he himself dies. Refusing to eat the hybrid apple that would harm her child, Kit passes away in childbirth. The children reside on the island and take care of Kit's daughter Beatrice. After a year, they depart the island by boat. Snicket leaves the ending vague, so we don't know for sure whether or not the protagonists make it back onto land.