Note: The following story contains spoilers from “Carrie.”
“Carrie” is here.
An all-new adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel, developed by Mike Flanagan (“The Haunting of Hill House” and King adaptations “Gerald’s Game” and “Doctor Sleep”) and starring Summer H. Howell in the title role as the psychically gifted Carrie White, an awkward, homeschooled girl who is forced into public school and has to contend with the horrors of real life. (Among other things, she becomes the subject of a cyber-bullying campaign, along with classics like the public menstruation humiliation ritual.) And, much like the novel (and Brian De Palma’s brilliant 1976 adaptation), it ends with the worst prom imaginable, with Carrie taking out her supernatural vengeance on those who wronged her.
But how does this updated version of the story play out? And does it point the way towards future installments in the series? (Flanagan has already mapped out a three-season arc.) Read on to find out – but we first must issue a massive spoiler warning. If you haven’t seen it yet, watch “Carrie” on Prime Video (it’s terrific!) and come back afterward.
How different is the climax of this “Carrie” from other iterations of the story?
Carrie goes to the prom, is humiliated and pig’s blood is dumped on her. She takes revenge on those responsible and ends up destroying a large portion of the town (the level of destruction is closer to King’s approximation than De Palma’s), murdering dozens of people along the way. (In the book, the body count is somewhere around 440.)
But there are some fairly big departures, beginning with additional psychics being at the dance. That’s right — it’s not just Carrie.
Excuse me?
One of the bigger swings in this new version of “Carrie” is the introduction of a cult of psychic women – we hesitate to call them witches, but it might be a good shorthand – who are alerted to Carrie’s powerful presence and, eventually, intersect with her at the prom.
In the very first episode, prom survivor Sue Snell (Siena Agudong), one of Carrie’s actual friends, is interrogated by an unseen woman (Kate Siegel). Sue tells the woman that everyone, including the police, have been asking the wrong question about the destruction that engulfed the town. The pertinent question, Sue suggests, is who else was there? And they do show up, causing havoc at the prom alongside Carrie White.
There’s also the matter of Emaline (Thalia Dudek), who, it is revealed later, is one of the witches. She can astral project and Carrie is the only one who has seen her all season long. She becomes even more instrumental in the bloody climax, asking Carrie if she wants her (Emaline) to take the wheel for some of the madness.
But doesn’t that rob Carrie of some of her agency?
We posed this very question to Flanagan, who told us, “It’s important too when you look at the ending, you can very clearly see that Emaline is not at the wheel when Carrie kills Chris.” (And, for the record, it is a great kill.)
“Emaline is not at the wheel when Carrie killed Tommy Ross by mistake,” Flanagan continued. “When Emaline is and isn’t there is important, but it’s not meant to remove agency so much as to deal with those moments of shock, to spread the complexity of culpability out for a tragedy. I do think tragedies have many authors, but there are also other people in that gym besides Carrie and Emaline.”
Flanagan said that one of the things he appreciated was that, in the confusion of the prom massacre, things can get muddy.
“One of the things I love is you see something occur, like a door get locked, and it’s very easy to say, Well, clearly that was Carrie or Emaline, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s either one of them. It was important for me that Carrie be able to survive emotionally,” said Flanagan. “We knew she was going to survive physically, but I imagine she’s coming out of that so racked with guilt and PTSD and trauma, that she would have somewhere to go and grow beyond that moment. I think it’s enough that she’s going to have to potentially deal with murdering Chris Hargensen right there.”
What happens after the prom?
After the “Black Prom” (as it’s referred to in the book) Carrie dances with Emaline, causing a huge crater in the center of town that follows her as Carrie walks back to her house. In these moments, we are flashing back to images that have previously been teased in the series, particularly in the first episode.
“You should see that the crater forms as she runs away when Emaline. But I was trying to make it like we stayed on the path,” said Flanagan. “I think she just beats the fire to the house by a little bit.”
Seeing these events in the first episode and seeing them again in the finale was a deliberate choice by Flanagan.
“I can totally see how that by the time you get into Episode 8, where we’re perched on her shoulder the whole time and when she runs away from Main Street, we don’t stick around to watch what happens after that,” said Flanagan. “While those fires burn out of control, we just go home.”
How else does it stray from the source material?
Unlike in the original novel (and movie), Carrie’s mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) doesn’t kill Carrie and Carrie doesn’t kill Margaret. At the end of the story, they are both survivors — just like Sue and a handful of others.
Carrie leaves with Emaline — actual, physical Emaline, on a quest of self-discovery.
“I think that fire spreads as she and Emaline drive away. I think it consumes the rest of the neighborhood,” said Flanagan. “I did want at least a little bit of a feeling of like, Oh God, this is a big, crazy, violent tragedy. And then when we’re with Carrie, it’s like, Oh no, this is a young person falling apart into a pretty profound despair.”
And after the Black Prom?
Margaret is eventually interviewed by the same shadowy group that interviewed Sue at the beginning of the show. It turns out that group are members of the telekinetic witch cult. Because of course they are.
After her interview, one of the witches kills Margaret after interviewing her. Bye bye, Margaret.
Anybody else survive?
There are a number of potential survivors from the Black Prom – Ms. Desjardin (Amber Midthunder) is picked up and thrown toward fire, but we don’t see her body. We assume, should “Carrie” return, so will Ms. Desjardin, partially because we can’t imagine the show returning without Midthunder.
Additionally, two of the psychic witches at the prom are unaccounted for, as is Amanda West (Katee Sackhoff), Emaline’s mother, who urges Margaret White to kill Carrie before her abilities mature into something more dangerous.
Tina Blake (Josie Totah), another classmate, also survives the Black Prom and is interviewed by the witches. She’s a little worse for wear, but still.
In the book, Sue writes a book following the Black Prom, about her connection with Carrie and the terrible tragedy that befell the town. We do wonder if this element will be a part of the future seasons, should there be any.
“Carrie” is now streaming on Prime Video.
The post ‘Carrie’ Creator Mike Flanagan Explains That Fiery Finale appeared first on TheWrap.
