How Amazon’s Carrie Adaptation Changes Stephen King’s Book and Sets Up Season 2

Spoilers for Carrie below!

Mike Flanagan’s Carrie television series is available to stream on Prime Video. Unlike the Brian de Palma adaptation, Flanagan’s Carrie looks and feels a little bit different. The series takes place in a modern world where social media plays a central role in the teenage drama. The creative changes go much further than that.

The ending to Carrie remains iconic: after having pig’s blood dumped on her at prom, Carrie uses her telekinesis to kill everybody. Flanagan’s adaptation keeps the prom night slaughter while expanding the story in new directions.

Carrie isn’t the only one involved in this story

After the prom night tragedy, the survivors are interviewed by a society of psychics and telekinetics monitoring Carrie, played by Summer H. Howell. These interviews appear throughout the season. An early interview with one of Carrie’s only friends, Sue Snell, played by Siena Agudong, reveals that other people were present at that fateful prom. She states that it was not just Carrie.

The show leads viewers to believe that Carrie’s other friend, Emaline, played by Thalia Dudek, is a figment of her imagination. Emaline is actually real and has been astral-projecting into Carrie’s mind. She becomes much more important to the story once Chris, played by Alison Thornton, and her boyfriend Billy, played by Arthur Conti, dump pig’s blood on Carrie’s head from the rafters of the stage.

As the blood drips down her face, the crowd slowly morphs from shock to glee. Cell phones lift into the air to capture the moment for social media. Carrie finally snaps, locking the doors and setting the gymnasium on fire. She kills everybody trapped inside before destroying the entire town. Unlike Stephen King’s book, Emaline appears and asks Carrie if she can take over, revealing that Emaline actually killed everybody.

Margaret White’s story ends differently

Carrie runs to her mother, Margaret White, played by Samantha Sloyan. The book paints Margaret as a monster, and the show initially suggests it will follow that path. Flanagan takes a more sympathetic approach by writing her as a mother who genuinely loves her child. Margaret remains terrified of Carrie’s powers and plans to kill her when Carrie returns home that night after prom.

The show follows the book up to this point. In the book, Margaret stabs Carrie, and Carrie kills her by stopping her heart with her powers before succumbing to her own wounds. In Flanagan’s version, Carrie collapses the house on both of them and Emaline saves her from the rubble. Both Carrie and Margaret survive, which alters Stephen King’s original ending.

Carrie is led off by Emaline. Margaret survives because she apparently also has telekinetic powers, which prevent the roof from collapsing on her. Afterward, she is interviewed by the same camera crew led by a character played by Kate Siegel. After getting what she needs from Margaret in the interview, she kills her using Carrie’s method from the book by stopping her heart.

What do these changes mean?

Flanagan has gone on the record stating that he would love for his version of Carrie to run for three seasons. The ending of the first season leaves room to bring in more of Stephen King’s universe. Carrie and Emaline are gone, and viewers still do not know the purpose of the organization that has been monitoring her.

This ending may prove controversial for fans, but Flanagan has a proven track record of adapting Stephen King’s works. The future of Carrie remains to be seen, but the show raises questions that will hopefully be answered if Flanagan is allowed to tell his story in its entirety.

Source: Polygon