THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER Ending Explained: Who - Or What - Is Carla Gugino's Verna? - SPOILERS

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER Ending Explained: Who - Or What - Is Carla Gugino's Verna? - SPOILERS

Mike Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher is now streaming on Netflix, and if you've watched the show (or simply want to know how it ends), we have a breakdown of the finale right here...

By MarkCassidy - Oct 14, 2023 03:10 PM EST
Filed Under: Netflix
Source: Via FearHQ

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.

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tylerzero
tylerzero - 10/14/2023, 3:21 PM
You know what else is eternal? Carla’s “goddess” status.
EgoEgor
EgoEgor - 10/14/2023, 3:22 PM
How is Carla Gugino still an absolute babe?
marvel72
marvel72 - 10/14/2023, 5:13 PM
@EgoEgor -

marvel72
marvel72 - 10/14/2023, 5:13 PM
This is on my watch list, better start watching.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 5:38 PM
They make it clear almost with no uncertainty that she is an extra dimensional being who lives in the hollow earth, accessed from a portal in the North Pole at “Ultima Thule”. Mark Hamill’s character goes there in 1982 and knows a lot of shit and thats why he’s not too shocked by her existence. So it’s sort of a hard sci fi angle to the occult stuff.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 5:41 PM
@DigDugFunny - like some time after Roderick explains Mark Hamill’s hollow earth hypothesis and Ultima Thule, Verna actually mentions emerging from the hollow earth to do her work.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 5:51 PM
@DigDugFunny - Star Wars and CBM mystery box storytelling has destroyed people’s ability to comprehend linear storytelling because instead of paying attention to plot we are told to look for dumb Easter eggs
MarkCassidy
MarkCassidy - 10/14/2023, 6:01 PM
@DigDugFunny - she met the twins in 1979. The suggestion is not that she's been unleashed at any specific time, it's that she emerges wherever death is.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 6:51 PM
@MarkCassidy - that’s not correct either. There’s a whole sequence of her being photographed with tons of famous people like she’s an immortal Ghislaine Maxwell. She just likes to meddle with the timeline and uses death as a way to morally test people. She isn’t the grim reaper, she’s literally explicitly stated to be a hollow earth alien deity.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 6:59 PM
@DigDugFunny - I’m just saying because you say in the article the best explanation we’re gonna get for her existence is a cryptic poem at the end when we literally get an explanation of a) her homeland b) the nature of her race and c) how and why she does her dealings
MarkCassidy
MarkCassidy - 10/14/2023, 7:07 PM
@DigDugFunny - there's no literal explanation of her origin.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 7:24 PM
@MarkCassidy - YES THERE IS

She outright tells Mark Hamill “you saw me on the ice at the North Pole” confirming his story about extra dimensional beings of Ultima Thule

They even give a name to her home lol
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 7:25 PM
@DigDugFunny - Yes figuratively she is Death for the Usher family but quite literally she is a fifth dimensional being from hollow earth who emerges from the North Pole
MarkCassidy
MarkCassidy - 10/14/2023, 8:18 PM
@DigDugFunny - dude, she met the Ushers BEFORE that expedition.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 8:42 PM
@MarkCassidy - okay? I’m not sure the point you’re trying to make? She met the Ushers before she met Mark Hamill. But Mark Hamill met her at her home.
Demigods
Demigods - 10/14/2023, 8:08 PM
To all the people arguing... she's the Raven... Verna is just an anagram for Raven. She has always and will always be here. She's one of the personifications of death from the old world pagan mythologies, a fact that Poe knew quite well... and that Flannaghan alluded to throughout the series and pretty much outright said. She is there when there is death and WILL always be there when there is death.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 8:43 PM
@Demigods - No. She will always be there when there’s accountability to be had. She’s a shit stirrer, but she’s not literally the grim reaper.
DougMcCausland
DougMcCausland - 10/14/2023, 8:45 PM
@DigDugFunny - She says souls don’t exist and she wants leverage on people. She’s like an interdimensional Jeffrey Epstein for famous people. She pushes people to success but can pull the rug out from under them.
Demigods
Demigods - 10/15/2023, 10:28 AM
@DigDugFunny - I never said she's literally the grim reaper. I said that she's A personification of death. There's a reason they started her name with a V as an anagram for "Raven", and they allude to Vanth, the Velas, and the Viduus throughout the series... again, things Poe was quite familiar with. Seriously. I can guarantee Flanagan read not only the works of Poe, but his biography and interpretation of his literature, in which, he often calls to old world personifications of death. Also, MANY chthonic deities also deal with accountability, especially those that shepherd souls to the afterlife. It's an extremely common theme in many mythologies. Check out what the souls and to do to get to the afterlife in Aztec myths. Mostly everyone knows about Egyptian myths, weighing one's heart against a feather. In Greek myths, your Miasma could get you cursed/killed or haunted/hunted by the Eunomenids (the kindly ones, or the Furies). Hell, Vanth himself had a partial role of the judge. It's an EXTREMELY common theme, as death always balances the scales, and no matter what you do, you cannot escape death forever... it will always be there, and it is impartial to anything other than balancing the scales.
Demigods
Demigods - 10/18/2023, 5:54 AM
@DigDugFunny - oh and there's the association that death has with excess and riches. Again, just look at Greek mythology and you'll see that every chthonic (or even remotely and obscurely chthonic deity) is also associated with bountiful excess, on the opposite end of their spectrum. Hades was also known as the "rich one," Demeter either produced excess crops or made the earth barren, Dionysus (loosely and arguably chthonic- and it's being argued more and more that he originally was associated with death as well) is the embodiment of all things excess, both good and bad. Every death-related god has an opposite side to their purview, which usually deals with excess of something we'd crave in life.
abd00bie
abd00bie - 10/14/2023, 9:10 PM
The older actors were all phenomenal in this.. Hamill, Gugino, McDonnell, Greenwood, Lumbly
narrow290
narrow290 - 10/15/2023, 8:11 PM
I really liked it. Great, dark show especially for this time of year!

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