Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary...
Mike Flanagan's latest Netflix horror series, The Fall of the House of Usher, is now streaming, and while the final episode doesn't explicitly reveal the identity of the show's most mysterious character, Verna, it does give us enough to make a pretty good assumption.
If you haven't watched House of Usher yet, major spoilers follow.
Over the course of the eight episodes, Verna - brilliantly played by Flanagan regular and Watchmen/Sin City actress Carla Gugino - is present for (and in some cases orchestrates) the deaths of Roderick Usher's children and beloved granddaughter.
It is ultimately revealed that Roderick and his sister, Madeline, struck a deal with Verna in that bar on New Year's Eve back in 1979: They will be vastly wealthy and free from all consequences of their criminal actions for the rest of their lives, but when the time comes, they must die together - along with their entire bloodline.
This would seem to indicate that Verna is a demon (or possibly even the Devil himself herself), but some kind of Faustian bargain would usually involve a soul as payment, and she makes a point of stating outright that they don't exist.
No, Verna is clearly supposed to be a personification of the Raven from (arguably) Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem (her name is even an anagram of "raven"), but what the bird actually is in Poe's writings is open to interpretation, and here she is most likely supposed to represent Death, aka the Grim Reaper.
The closest we get to outright confirmation comes during Verna's final meeting with Madeline, when she recites a few lines from “The City in the Sea.”
"Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city, lying alone. Far down within the dim West, where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest."
Madeline wants clarification, and Verna basically tells her this is the closest she's going to get.
As for what becomes of the twins, the finale concludes in much the same way Poe's short story does, with an embalmed (it's never really explained how she survives - or did she?) Madeline emerging from the cellar to take her brother Roderick's life and fulfil the terms of the contract.
The man who had been listening to Roderick's tragic tale, C. Auguste Dupin, flees as the rotting house the Ushers grew up crashes down around him. We then see him visiting the graves of the family, and as he leaves, Verna drops by to place tokens on each of the gravestones.
Quoth the Raven, nevermore.
"Ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher have built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege and power. But past secrets come to light when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman from their youth," reads the official synopsis.
Flanagan has assembled a typically stacked cast, including Bruce Greenwood, Carla Gugino, Mary McDonnell, Carl Lumbly, Mark Hamill, Michael Trucco, T’Nia Miller, Paola Nuñez, Henry Thomas, Samantha Sloyan, Rahul Kohli, Kate Siegel, Sauriyan Sapkota, Zach Gilford, Willa Fitzgerald, Katie Parker, Malcolm Goodwin, Crystal Balint, Aya Furukawa, Daniel Jun, Matt Biedel, Ruth Codd and Annabeth Gish.
Kyleigh Curran, Igby Rigney and Robert Longstreet also star.
The Fall of the House of Usher marks the fifth Netflix series for Mike Flanagan and Trevor Macy under their Intrepid Pictures overall deal, after The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, Midnight Mass, and recent Christopher Pike adaptation The Midnight Club.
Mike Flanagan and Michael Fimognari each directed four episodes.