Marvel Studios may have made it popular, but Stephen King has been building a connected universe long before it was cool. In his five-decade publishing career, the Master of Horror has deftly created a massive world spanning multiple time periods and realities. Case in point: his most recent work, Other Worlds Than These, officially merges two of his longest-running fantasy series.
In many ways, King’s debut novel Carrie could be seen as the springboard for this sprawling multiverse. Readers follow the titular misfit teen as she’s relentlessly bullied by her popular classmates and abused by her ultra-religious mother, Margaret.
After a horrific prom night prank, Carrie unleashes the full force of her telekinetic powers, setting fire to the gym and causing her classmates to burn to death. Sparking a path of destruction as she walks home, Carrie then seeks comfort from Margaret, who returns the favor by sticking a knife in her daughter’s back. Carrie gently stops her mother’s heart, then seeks out those responsible for the prank. After completing her revenge, the exhausted queen dies under the exertion of her psychic spree.
King uses a semi-epistolary format to tell the story, alternating intimate scenes of high school life with transcriptions from the government’s White Commission and expert writing on the so-called TK phenomenon. We learn that the telekinetic gene is carried through the female line, only popping up every few generations. Carrie’s own grandmother may have possessed the trait and passed it down to her female descendants. After the carnage in Chamberlain, Maine, a haunting epilogue introduces an infant girl in the US South with the ability to dangle her toys in midair.
The Psychic Girls Who Connect King’s Horror Stories
While Carrie is the first of King’s metaphysical girls, she certainly would not be the last. In Doctor Sleep, King’s 2013 sequel to The Shining, an adult Danny Torrance uses telepathy to connect with a tween named Abra Stone, who’s “shining” may be even stronger than his own. Constant Readers also suspect that Ellie Creed of Pet Sematary fame may have a small level of precognition due to harrowing predictions of her mother’s fate.
But over the course of his long career, King’s most powerful little girl is undeniably Firestarter‘s Charlie McGee. The product of two psychically talented parents, whose own powers were engineered by a shadowy agency known as the Shop, Charlie is born with the ability to light fires with her mind. Along with TK abilities and precognition, experts believe that her pyrokinesis may one day be strong enough to split the very planet in two.
When news first broke that Flanagan’s new Carrie adaptation would build on King’s literary coda and feature a network of similarly powerful girls, Constant Readers began to speculate. Would we reunite with Charlie, Abra, or Ellie Creed? Perhaps the series would dovetail with The Institute, King’s 2019 novel in which a handful of psychic children are kidnapped and forced to serve as telepathic assassins.
Or maybe Flanagan would introduce the Breakers, another group of “shining” kids. In later novels of King’s Dark Tower series, these Breakers are similarly held hostage and forced to channel their collective energy to tear down the last remaining beams which hold together the multiverse. Considering Flanagan is currently working on an adaptation of The Dark Tower for Amazon, the latter seemed like a distinct possibility. But the constant King collaborator throws a curveball and takes this burgeoning matriarchy in an entirely new direction.
Mike Flanagan Introduces a Secret Society of Telekinetic Women
We eventually learn that the woman who first sensed Carrie (Summer H. Howell) from afar is named Caitlin (Delainey Hayles). Though details are scant, she appears to live in a lavish house with other similarly magical women. The first episode ends with Caitlin sensing Carrie, then rushing to update a woman sitting at an ornate desk. Credited as Adelaide (Kate Siegel), she appears to be the leader of this mysterious group and is eventually revealed to be the director of interviews filmed in the aftermath of the prom night tragedy.
Beginning with the second episode, Flanagan drops hints about this extensive world. The cryptic Adelaide details an alternate version of the urban legend in which a mother somehow finds the strength to lift a car by herself to save her son. She posits that this distraught woman located latent telekinesis in the midst of her panic. Each subsequent episode begins with another vignette exploring the history of metaphysical manifestation. While some are positive portraits of remarkable women, others are outright horror stories. We watch girls levitate to escape horrific environments or gouge out their own eyes to stop hellish visions. Joan of Arc may have displayed similar powers as did women who were accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake.
Adelaide reminds us that women have historically been villainized for traits (both supernatural or otherwise) that would make them threatening to powerful men. But it’s not always agents of the patriarchy who target these psychically gifted girls. The penultimate episode introduces a single mother named Amanda (Katee Sackhoff) who fears her daughter’s mysterious gift. Woken up by the crying child in the middle of the night, Amanda chases visions of her daughter all over the house, eventually finding the child asleep in her bed. Amanda clings to her daughter and sobs with relief, simultaneously frightened of a trait she does not understand.
Margaret (Samantha Sloyan) becomes similarly fearful of Carrie’s telekinetic powers when the teen begins flaunting them all over the house. Searching for answers on internet message boards, she finds a sympathetic ear in Amanda, and the two mothers meet in a local cafe. Though Margaret is simply looking for advice, she quickly realizes that her new friend has more sinister motivations.
The Rival Group Hunting Psychic Children
Amanda belongs to a different organization of like-minded mothers dedicated to protecting the world from their powerful girls. When Margaret asks her what to do, Amanda offers to take the problem out of her hands. Explaining the need to ambush Carrie, she outlines a plan to kill Margaret’s child. This horrific strategy is presented as a gift to soften the impact of infanticide. Horrified, Margaret flees the coffee shop, but the damage has already been done. Amanda now knows about Carrie’s existence and will likely attempt to end the girl’s life.
As Carrie first discovers her burgeoning gifts, she meets a fellow outcast named Emaline (Thalia Dudek). The sardonic teen catches Carrie at vulnerable moments and helps her learn to control her mind. But we eventually come to a devastating realization. When secret recordings of their conversation are posted online, Carrie watches herself argue with an empty room. Adelaide will inform us that Emaline is an astral projector, capable of transporting her consciousness across the world while physically remaining far away.
These three female forces come to a head on the night of Carrie’s ruination. Shortly before the prom queen is crowned, Caitlin arrives at the dance with Sable (Cassandra Naud) and Maeve (Ruth Codd) while Amanda lurks in another corner. When she advances on the oblivious teen, Sable uses her own telekinetic powers to ward her off. We can assume that Amanda is there to take Carrie out while Caitlin and her friends have come to prom to save the girl’s life.
But it’s Emaline who reaches her first. As Carrie stares in horror at the body of her friend and date, we see Emaline offer to take control. In a detailed interview, Sue (Siena Agudong) describes a shadow that grows behind the stunned prom queen, suddenly exploding in a wave of invisible force. This nods to the title of an in-world academic text called The Shadow Exploded, which provides a critical analysis of the prom night disaster. Seemingly possessing Carrie’s body, Emaline begins destroying the high school, then spreads her revenge to the larger town.
Without Emaline’s mental buffer, Carrie is devastated by the night’s events. She walks home alone and looks for sympathy from her mother. Margaret is at first compassionate, gently wiping the blood from her daughter’s skin. But moments later, the shaken mother prepares to take Amanda’s advice. Preemptively asking for her daughter’s forgiveness, Margaret jams a knitting needle into Carrie’s ear. Thankfully, the teen’s powers reflexively kick in, and Margaret is thrown across the room. As she approaches Carrie with a knife in her hand, the horrified daughter uses her gifts to bring the house down on both of their heads.
Could Adelaide Be Charlie McGee or Someone Even More Dangerous?
While this devastating conclusion somewhat mirrors King’s novel and Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation, Flanagan makes several important changes. In the early morning aftermath, we see Emaline pull her out of the rubble. Margaret lies buried under heavy debris, frantically using her own meager telekinesis to hold the wreckage just inches away from her own body. A flashback to Margaret’s childhood shows that she once used this power to sharply move a decorative cross, but interpreted the anomaly as a sign from God. While King suggests that Carrie’s grandmother must have had the TK gene, he gives no such gifts to Margaret herself.
In the final episode’s denouement, we learn that Margaret has survived the night but has no knowledge of Carrie’s whereabouts. Interviewed by Adelaide, she demands answers and vows to follow her daughter to the ends of the Earth. But Margaret also reluctantly admits that she will not be able to locate and control her own sliver of psychic strength. Satisfied, Adelaide responds by gradually slowing down, then stopping the mother’s heart. This unnerving scene is directly pulled from King’s novel, though the literary killer is Carrie herself. However, Flanagan’s disturbing twist casts a shadow over Adelaide’s organization.
We’re left to wonder who this powerful woman is and how she would benefit from Margaret’s death. Based on a simple handful of scenes, we assume Adelaide leads a well-funded organization dedicated to protecting magical girls. But she callously kills the distraught mother and instructs her assistants to cover it up. This scene brings to mind the sinister Rose the Hat, also introduced in Doctor Sleep. A psychic vampire, she and her clan roam the country in unremarkable motor homes, locating and feeding on “shining” kids.
Or maybe this is a grown-up Charlie McGee, evading the Shop with an alias. The girl we meet in King’s 1980 novel is adamantly opposed to using her gifts, wary of hurting anyone else. But perhaps after surviving the story’s fiery conclusion, she’s adopted a more pragmatic attitude. Adelaide also demonstrates skill at mental domination, a power wielded by Charlie’s father.
In the wake of the Shop’s experiment, Andy develops a talent he calls “the push.” By internally emphasizing chosen words, he can persuade his targets to bend to his will, either acting in unusual ways or minutely interrogating their memory. We see Adelaide also emphasizing her commands when she questions a handful of prom night survivors.
But again, Emaline becomes the story’s wild card. Likely Amanda’s astral-projecting daughter, she drags Carrie from the wreckage of her house, then tends to her wounds and helps her escape. The finale concludes with the two in Emaline’s car driving down an unmarked road. She refuses to tell the shocked prom queen where they are going, worried that someone may be monitoring Carrie’s thoughts. While certainly hiding from Amanda and her band of assassins, Emaline is also probably protecting Carrie from Caitlin’s mental tracking skills. But where is Emaline taking her? Is she headed towards another group of “shining” teens or will the two girls attempt to survive on their own?
Flanagan’s proposed Carrie seasons 2 and 3 will certainly center this nebulous question as Carrie finds her place in this shadowy world. Only time will tell if subsequent chapters will build on King’s connected universe or spin off in an entirely new direction.
