Major spoilers for Mike Flanagan’s Carrie follow.
I liked a lot about Mike Flanagan’s Carrie. Summer H. Howell gives Carrie White an aching sweetness, the high school material feels surprisingly believable, and Samantha Sloyan is phenomenal as Margaret White. In fact, Margaret and Carrie’s relationship became the part of the series I was most invested in, which is why one finale decision frustrated me so much.
Flanagan’s series dramatically changes the ending of Stephen King’s original book by letting both Carrie and Margaret survive the White house's destruction. Margaret dies by the time the credits roll, but not at the telekinetic hands of her daughter. Instead, Kate Siegel’s mysterious interviewer stops Margaret’s heart after determining she can no longer access the telekinetic abilities she used to save herself. That may open the door for the series' larger mythology, but for me, it takes the emotional catharsis away from the two characters who earned it.
Margaret White Is More Than A Scary Church Lady
Sloyan’s Margaret is frightening without becoming a cartoon. She loves her daughter, and I genuinely believe that. The problem is that every bit of that love has been warped through terror, religious fanaticism and Margaret’s absolute conviction that she understands what God expects from her daughter. She can comfort Carrie one minute and emotionally destroy her the next without seeing a contradiction. She is fanatical in her worldview, but she also makes some really great points and feels like a flesh-and-blood person. I have met this person in real life.
Sloyan is tremendous at playing this type of character. Carrie also spends eight episodes developing the mother-daughter relationship, giving it far more room than Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie. We watch Carrie slowly realize her mother’s rules aren't divine law. We see her push back, discover her powers and begin imagining a life Margaret cannot control.
Everything builds toward the moment Carrie finally breaks that control for good. King’s novel makes that break horrifyingly literal. After Margaret stabs her, Carrie stops her mother’s heart. De Palma changes the method but keeps the emotional ownership of the moment, with Carrie telekinetically pinning Margaret with knives before bringing the house down. Mother and daughter destroy each other. It is awful, but it is also Shakespearean an tragic.
This Particular Choice Cheapens The Payoff
Flanagan almost gets there. Margaret attacks Carrie, stabbing her in the ear; Carrie brings the house down, and then we learn Margaret has her own latent powers and used them to survive. That revelation is interesting by itself. The series establishes Carrie’s abilities as inherited rather than some inexplicable anomaly, and Margaret discovering that the thing she feared in her daughter also exists inside herself is loaded with possibilities. Then it's completely undercut.
Siegel’s mysterious character questions Margaret about her abilities as part of the documentary filming that frames the series. The interviewer determines Margaret cannot summon the powers again and kills her before ordering the death covered up. Suddenly, Margaret White’s final moment belongs to a mythology the series introduced around Carrie, not to Carrie herself. That is where it loses me.
Carrie killing Margaret has never been just another body on the pile. It is the ugliest possible conclusion to a lifetime of abuse. She finally has enough power to escape her mother, and using that power comes with consequences she can never take back. Having Carrie think she killed Margaret, only to let the audience in on the fact that she didn't, softens her agency at exactly the point where I wanted the story to get more complicated. What has always made the character so tragic is that she is a victim turned into an abuser, but the past adaptations have never allowed the climax to let victimhood erase what she's done. But in this adaptation, all agency is removed from her, all the edges are sanded off, and the best story thread of the series is left landing with a wet thud.
Logically, I understand why Flanagan made the change. This book to screen adaptation clearly has ambitions beyond the Whites, with Emaline, the mysterious X-Men-like powered women and the titular character herself surviving the finale. Flanagan has discussed wanting room to continue the story beyond this season. But Sloyan and Howell spent eight episodes making Carrie and Margaret the emotional center, and for me, the ending should have belonged to them. Instead, we are left with a finale that (in my opinion) undercuts the seven hours of storytelling that preceded it.
