Prime Video // Amazon Prime The first episode of Carrie , Mike Flanagan’s new adaptation of the Stephen King classic on Prime Video, asks a surprising question that actually isn’t totally answered at the end of the season.
Spoilers ahead for Mike Flanagan’s Carrie Yes, even if you think you know what happens in this story!
Who were the other people at prom? What happened to Carrie herself, and the other characters? Let’s get into what happens in the Carrie finale and what it means for the potential future.
Carrie expands on King’s novel and, like some other lesser-known adaptations before it, updates the story to modern times. The bullying happens at school and online. Carrie’s parents are not just super religious, but right wing conspiracy theorists. And the potential for an underground network of powerful women with the telekinesis gene that King alludes to in his novel are actually present in the series, leading to some very interesting twists in the final episode.
You know the story: Carrie gets elected queen wearing a dress she made herself, like a fairy tale. The mean girl douses her with pig’s blood. She kills them all, and then destroys the town. Carrie does most of the destruction by herself; but she has a little help. Some other supernatural women, presumably sent by Katie Siegel’s character Adelaide, show up and cause a little chaos before they leave. Carrie’s friend Emaline takes over her body, using her own powers, and controls her for a little bit of time.
Emaline eventually releases Carrie. Drunk on power, Carrie destroys the town of Chamberlain while dancing with Emaline through the streets. Then someone shoots Emaline, and she vanishes.
Yes, and no. Carrie’s friend and only ally at school is an astral projector, and started visiting Carrie after her powers first manifested at school. So that means that only Carrie could see her. From everyone else’s perspective, she was talking to herself. But that doesn’t mean Emaline is imaginary. She was there and eventually made it to Chamberlain after the fatal events of Prom Night.
The student body of Carrie’s school is so fickle on this show. First they make fun of Carrie and call her crazy for talking to herself when she was actually with Emaline. Then they’re on her side, because they all have a common enemy in Chris Hargensen. They applaud Carrie when Chris gets expelled. But when the blood falls, they’re laughing at her again. It’s depressingly realistic.
Anyway, was she sent by Adelaide? We don’t know. Given that they run off together, it doesn’t seem like it. There are warring factions within the supernatural lady community in this universe that we know much about, even at the end of the season. More on that in a moment.
There were five uninvited people at Carrie’s prom, if you don’t count Chris and Billy. One was Emaline, of course. Three were associates of Kate Siegel’s character, Adelaide: Sable, played by Cassandra Naud; Caitlin, played by Delainey Hayles; and Cara, played by Ruth Codd. They survived largely because Caitlin is psychic and told them to get off the floor before it was electrocuted. Handy, that! The fifth prom-crasher was a woman named Amanda, played by Katee Sackoff, who Carrie’s mother Margaret met in the previous episode. She came to kill Carrie and/or Emaline, and is very likely Emaline’s own mother.
This is the most mysterious part of the finale, and the show itself. Siegel narrates the show, but we don’t see her face until the finale. Flanagan has introduced an X-Men like group of supernatural women who live in a house together. (Amanda likens them to a cult, or a terror cell.) They are lead to a woman named Adelaide, played by Siegel, who also conducts several interviews with the prom night survivors. In the finale, she drills Sue for information about Emaline’s involvement. She gets in Sue’s head, like a memory palace. She also asks questions about what it was like, physically, to witness those powers. Sue talks about seeing a “shadow” behind Carrie that we know is Emaline. Fun fact: one of the fake books in King’s novel about the event is called The Shadow Exploded .
Adelaide later drills Margaret White, Carrie’s mom, for information about Emaline and Carrie’s current whereabouts while her associate Caitlin reads her mind. Then she kills her. Is Adelaide the real villain? Or is she a hero? In this X-Men metaphor, is she Professor X, or Magneto? This storyline isn’t the most surprising adaptive choice. King’s writings about the genetics of telekinesis in Carrie are very Marvel-y in nature. But it does ultimately raise more questions than it answers.
Also, before killing her, Adelaide confirms that Margaret has the telekinesis gene as well. Margaret calls it flexing. Carrie uses that word in the book, by the way. Speaking of Stephen King, Adelaide then says that a “lot of people have a little bit of shine, and they don’t even know it.” That’s a reference to The Shining . Ooooh!
We know that around 200 people died on Prom Night. But what about the characters we know? Just like in the book, sweet and innocent Tommy Ross is the first to die. Shortly after, Principal Grayle gets electrocuted. Carrie, while Emaline is driving, uses her telekinesis powers to throw Miss Desjardin back into the fire. We can assume that she didn’t make it, but we do not know either way for sure.
On the way home, Carrie crashes Billy Nolan’s car and make sure that both he and Chris Hargensen are crushed to death. Emaline may have helped that one, too.
Sue and Tina survived long enough to be questioned by Adelaide. So did Margaret White, though as we know she didn’t make it out of the room alive. Sue witnessed the prom-crashers, a.k.a. Adelaide’s powerful associates. Why didn’t Adelaide kill her, too? It appears that she just wiped her memory, or muddled it just enough so that she could no longer be sure. Gotta love supernatural gaslighting!
Carrie also survives, miraculously. Her mother stabs her, but not fatally. After the prom, nobody knows where she is or what happened to her. But we do!
Carrie passes out after destroying her house. She wakes up the next morning in the passenger seat of Emaline’s car. They drive out of Chamberlain together. Emaline says that she is driving Carrie to safety and away from the “monsters” on their feels.
But Emaline won’t tell Carrie what their destination is, because Caitlin (and therefore Adelaide) might be listening telepathically and tracking them. Once again, as Carrie observes, she’s being kept in the dark. What makes Emaline any different from Margaret? Unlike her mother, Emaline believes that Carrie is a god (“a f*cking hurricane,” she says) and wants to empower her. It’s not much, especially until the show gets renewed for season 2, but it’s something.
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Source: Entertainment
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