Lexie is crushed after she and Brian break up following an argument about their future and their inability to see eye to eye on racial issues. Lexie seems to grasp a slightly better understanding of Brian's point of view, but they still call it quits. She also decides not to tell him about her abortion. Izzy, however, figures out Lexie's secret and tells her older sister that Elena thinks Pearl is the one who had an abortion. She urges Lexie to tell Elena the truth, but Lexie is too scared. Lexie notes that if Izzy says anything, Elena wouldn't believe her anyway.
Still, we see that Lexie does have a soft spot for Izzy. When Izzy is preparing to burn her clothes after finding out Mia and Pearl moved away, Lexie is the first one in her room, trying to stop her. She calls for help and Trip, Moody, and Elena come in. But when Elena derides Izzy in their final argument, Lexie is genuinely shocked by the depth of Elena's contempt for Izzy and is worried when her sister runs away.
Tired of living in her mother's facade, Lexie reveals all of her wrongdoings to Elena, shouting, "You think Izzy's the f*ck-up in this family, but she's not. I am. I used Pearl. I stole her story to get into Yale, I wrote her name down at the clinic. Mom, I got pregnant. I got the abortion, not her. And, I mean, I tried — I really tried to tell you everything. There's all of this pressure to be all of these things, to be f*cking perfect, but I'm not. I'm not f*cking perfect."
But when Elena refuses to acknowledge Lexie's imperfections (and therefore her own), the eldest Richardson child reaches her breaking point and decides to finish what Izzy started: the fire. She convinces Trip and Moody that it's the only way their family can start over and depart from their picture-perfect life that's hiding their deep-seated issues. "Maybe Izzy's the only one who actually had it right," she says. To everyone who read the Little Fires Everywhere book . . . surprise! Izzy's not the culprit in this adaptation.