Happy Halloween friends! I thought it was perfect that TV Tuesday fall on Halloween because I recently finished Netflix’s limited series, The Fall of the House of Usher and what better day to post my thoughts? Let’s jump into it, shall we?

Another year, another Mike Flanagan series. This one, just as good as his past series. This one is based on the works by Edgar Alan Poe. I haven’t read any of it, so I have no background knowledge to this.

I have to say though, at first this took me some time to get into. The first episode was very explosion heavy, getting into what this was about. Plus, it just feels like there are so many characters that trying to figure out who’s who is a bit rough and confusing.

So we meet our main character, Roderick Usher, he’s at a funeral for three people. We later learn those are three of his six children. All of his children have been murdered and I guess we’re slowly trying to figure out why.

When Roger is speaking to the detective in his childhood home about the case, he says he knows what happened to them and he begins to tell the tale.

But first, we need to learn about him and his sister first. So the first episode was a backstory on how he and his sister lived with their mother, it’s implied that their father is their neighbour in which their mother works for at Fortunato Pharmaceutical company. She ends up dying, resurrecting herself to kill the neighbour and then they both die.

Now years later, they’re trying to make their way into Fortunato Pharmaceuticals to what, gain what is rightfully theirs?  

This show flips back and forth from past to present, which can get a little confusing but it does start to gain a bit of a flow.

In the year 1979, they meet a woman named Verna and I believe she’s important because she keeps coming back.

In the present, well before the kids start dying, a family meeting is called because someone from inside the family is working with the government, giving them insider information about their company… because of course this drug company is hiding secrets. People are dying and the government wants to know why.

So, Madeline, Roderick’s sister has everyone sign a nondisclosure form.

In the second episode we recount the events that lead to Perry’s death, the first one to die. He’s pissed off his father won’t take him seriously about his business venture, so he does his own thing. He uses one of the abandoned buildings owned by the company to have a very exclusive drug/sex party.

For some reason he invites his sister-in-law and I’m not sure what the significance of that was… because I think she’s dead.

It’s a masquerade party and everything is going well… until it isn’t. A woman shows up that Perry doesn’t know, but she knows him. We soon see that it’s Verna and she talks to him about consequences. He said that his party is a no consequence party, but she tells him that everything has a consequence, he should know he was born out of one. I thought that was a little bit much, I mean, she’s not wrong since I don’t think Roderick was really inclined to have more children… but doesn’t having sex always come with the fear of a consequence… so it’s kind of a weird point to make.

Anyways, she leaves, and the party is roaring, everything was supposed to be elevated once everyone was hit with water from the sprinklers… only it’s not water that comes down. I don’t know I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to be water, but geez. Acid comes down and everyone melts, oh god so gross.

That’s the end of Perry. But I’m still not sure why he died and how Verna ties into all this. I’m wondering if she was a victim of Fortunato and is seeking revenge? I guess I’ll find out.

So we learn that it could truly be an accident. Roderick knew about the pipes and how the old building was harvesting all this acid waste. Perry never bothered to check the pipes before his party so boom, all that shit came through the sprinklers.

So Perry is dead, but the sister-in-law did manage to survive. Interesting. We learn that he had something called ‘Monty’ in his system. It’s a street version of the drug the Fortunato creates… which doesn’t look good at all.

We’re learning more about the siblings and they each are just super strange. Like Camilla is PR for the family who’s fucking her two assistants. I honestly thought they were her kids at first, but then it got weird and well I’m glad they aren’t her kids, but that’s an ordeal.

But then Verna also visits Camilla when she’s trying to expose Victorine because she’s doing something with chimps. She’s experimenting on their hearts and when it doesn’t work she covers it up by just getting another chimp and to make it look like it’s working.

So Verna turns into one of the chimps and murders Camilla. She talks to Camilla as if what Victorine is doing to the chimps, she did to Verna, like it was personal. So I’m so curious how she fits into all this.

Verna also makes a house call to Tammy’s house and of course she knows everything about her because that’s how Verna works. Speaking of Tammy, she has a weird kink… so she doesn’t sleep with her husband, they hire women to play out some fantasy while she watches. So Verna is that woman.

I have to say though, Verna makes her rounds because she visits Victorine pretending to be a patient because apparently her trial is ready for humans, which I don’t think it is, and that’s what Camilla wanted to expose. I’m very curious where this will go. It’s probably the storyline I’m most invested in.

Then she makes her appearance with Leo. I’m pretty sure he’s the next to die. He accidently kills his boyfriend’s cat and he goes to a shelter to find one that looks like it… and he finds one… and Verna. As soon as I saw her, I had a feeling she’d turn into that damn cat.

I honestly thought when Verna became that cat, she’d kill him… but no. She chases him all through the walls of the apartment and has him run off their balcony and fall to his death… I did not see that coming. That was painful.

I really can’t stand Madeline in any decade. I was starting to wonder why she was living with Roderick and his wife in the early 80s… it’s starting to make sense. So the company Roderick is working for is the one their birth father started and she believes that it’s their legacy. I feel like at this point in time, she’s buying her time until they can gain the company for themselves.

You can see how much Roderick isn’t totally into it… I don’t think he ever has been. She’s the mastermind manipulator behind it all. Even in the present, you can see she is. She bugs me.

We see her go and pitch an idea of computerizing all their patient records to Roderick’s boss. Well, we knew that his boss wasn’t going to fall for it; it seemed so outlandish. We find out there that the boss knows who both Roderick and Madeline are, knew their parents; says it’s like a dirty secret at the company.

Madeline says she went so she could scope out the competition and what she’s working with – for what, we don’t know yet.

We also learn that the Ushers have known the detective, Auguste since the 80s. And in the present, ooooh there was never an informant… turns out Auguste made that up to try and get Roderick to fess up to the deaths caused by Fortunato’s drugs. He tells Roderick he never meant for his kids to die, which I believe. 

Okay so what’s so important about New Year’s Eve 1979? They did something and trying to cover it up, also it’s where they met Verna.

Well, I’m pretty sure the order of deaths is now going to be Victorine, Tammy then Freddy.

Tammy seems to run some sort of health brand with her husband… but I don’t know how much longer that will last because she’s losing it and her husband is getting tired and I don’t blame him.

Speaking of losing it, Victorine is hearing things and it’s driving her crazy. She loses her girlfriend and surgeon, like she quite literally murders her in a fit of rage and then Victorine puts her heart monitor thing inside her… and it’s Roderick who finds the mess. Victorine threatens to kill him… but then turns around and kills herself. I didn’t see that coming. Looks like Verna didn’t have a hand in that murder. Victorine was so tired of the work and being successful, all her father saw was a scientist, felt like her love was tied to her work and it drove it her madder than was led to believe. Damn.  

See, I was right, Tammy was next. What I like, is the fact that Roderick can see his dead children (which is freakin’ creepy) but because of that, in the present we get a foreshadowing of how they each died.

We also get a bit on their lawyer, Arthur Pym, played by Mark Hamill, and he does such a great job. He’s up front but also mysterious. The guy has a past, but we don’t really know what it is, all we know is he’s seen things and that’s what makes him so good at his job.

Arthur is putting things together, the woman all the kids are seeing is the same, and is probably behind it. Madeline thinks so too.

Is Verna a time traveler? Because Arthur has pulled up all these photos of her dating back all the way to 1901. Arthur also tells them that the bar they described from 1979 doesn’t exist… so did Verna create it? I still want to know why.

Let’s go back to Freddy’s wife for a second. He’s acting really weird about her. He was pissed when he found the burner phone (the one that got her into the party that almost killed her), but now he’s telling their daughter that she shouldn’t worry about anything… as if he’s doing something to her. OMG I WAS RIGHT!! He is drugging her! What an asshole! Instead of getting the truth from her… he’s what trying to kill her? Well, I don’t feel sorry for him.

Holy hell, we see that he’s put up pictures all over her room, like a psychopath. This is really showing his manipulative side and as the episodes continue it just keeps getting worse and worse. 

Verna shows up at Tammy’s presentation for her health brand, which causes Tammy to go crazy. She starts seeing Verna as herself and she just loses it. She gets home and sees her in all the mirrors, leaving Tammy to smash them all, hence the glass foreshadowing we saw earlier.

What does her in, is the mirror she has on the ceiling that she breaks. That was crazy. Verna has a way of getting into their heads and the psyche to manipulate them into thinking their inner most thoughts and fears are real. I really hope we get an episode just about her because I have so many questions!

Madeline goes to meet Verna… and I still don’t get her.

Verna does finally meet Freddy and I actually believe in the vengeful death he gets. After he pulls his wife’s teeth out with plyers and leaves her for dead, he’s at the sight of the building where his wife was burned to a crisp. He’s set to demolish it on his father’s orders… he was supposed to do it before Perry’s party, but shit happens. He’s inside when Verna shows up and tells him she could have killed him many ways, but after everything he’s done, she chooses to start the demos while he’s inside and having everything fall on him slowly for a long antagonizing death. He deserves it.

We learn that Roderick is sick, well we’ve seen it for a while and so Madeline now feeds him all these pills from their company… but guess what Verna says she’s not done with him yet… he can’t take the easy way out.

I like the way this ended because it ended for good and it had some good twists but I feel like I still have questions.

It’s Verna who tells Roderick to call Auguste to tell him how all his children died and how he played a part. But I’m sitting here going, well if Verna knows the future… why didn’t she stop it before it began?

We still don’t know what she is exactly… is she some sort of spirit who rids the earth of the bad?

We finally learn what happened that New Year’s Eve in 1979. It’s just after Roderick takes the fall for Fortunato, he’s arrested for falsifying documents. He was going to be the whistle blower and expose the company, Auguste was his lawyer, prepping him through it all. But the day of the meeting comes and Roderick throws it all out the window and takes the fall. He’s in jail for a night, if that, but now the company thinks he’s a hero. Both Auguste and his wife are beside themselves. I always wondered what happened to Roderick’s wife, clearly she left… but I have a feeling she died somehow.

So after all that happens, Roderick’s boss thinks he’s the man now, he can do no wrong. Madeline, like I said, has been biding her time and at new year’s she lures his boss into the basement of their building, seduces him, and I thought she was going to kill him… but first she drugs him.

When he wakes up he’s tied up and both she and Roderick are laying bricks to freakin burry him into the wall. But of course. Madeline wouldn’t just kill someone, that’s too easy and not painful enough, she has to make people suffer and so burying him alive in the company he works for will have to do. Once they’re done they head to the bar where they meet Verna… only she never existed.

When they meet her, she knows all about what they did and she tells them what their future could look like if they make the deal. They could have all the fame and fortune, but live short lives, this includes all Ushers, or they could live a long life but suffer with anxiety and pain. Obviously Roderick chooses the first and Madeline follows suit.

I guess she couldn’t do anything because she let them choose. She had to just wait until the right time, and that time is now.

This means that she had to kill Freddy’s daughter, Lenora, because she’s an Usher. That was sad. I’m so happy that Lenora was able to get her mother out of that house and to a clinic to get better. We learn from Verna that in the future once she got better, she took the money that she got from the Ushers, and used it to start a nonprofit that helped people who were struggling with abuse and domestic violence.

I knew that Roderick and Madeline wouldn’t be able to stay alive, obviously. Before he calls Auguste over to his childhood home, he sits with Madeline with a drink… which he poisons her, I did not see that coming. I honestly didn’t think Roderick had it in him to kill her. But I guess after she tried to kill him, things changed. Which we learn she wanted him dead so she could get out of the deal with Verna, get rid of Fortunato and start her own AI company. But Verna was like nope – hence why she saved Roderick. That made me laugh.

So Madeline goes down, and the entire time Roderick is talking to Auguste we can hear Madeline in the basement. But all this time we thought she was alive, no instead she’s dead or well she’s coming back to life just like their mother did… coming full circle.

And to come even fuller circle, Madeline comes up the stairs and murders Roderick by strangling him… just like their mother did to their birth father. How fitting. I like how that ended. The house falls to the ground, but Auguste makes it out.

We learn that Roderick’s wife, the latest one, Juno, wanted out from under him and his drug but he thought she was stupid for trying. Well now that he’s gone, she inherited the company and his money and she destroyed it, used the money to start a rehab place of her own and I was happy to see it.

This family tried to create a pill to remove pain, but they weren’t very successful at it. Even Roderick said it, you can’t create a painkiller and it’s kinda true, you can dull a pain but you can’t kill it, you just make addicts of people.

This was really good and highly recommend if you’ve seen Flanagan’s other works.