The Fall of the House of Usher’s ending, explained

Warning: This article contains spoilers Fall of the House of Usher (2023).

first episode of netflix Fall of the House of Usher Establishes some mysteries that the series does not resolve until its eighth and final installment. First, of course, is why Verna (Carla Gugino) decided to plot the death of all of Asher’s children. It’s also initially unclear why Lenore (Kyleigh Curran) is constantly texting her grandfather Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) while she talks with C. Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly). Finally, there is the nature of the mysterious “confession” that Roderick promised Dupin. After all, what could someone so obviously dishonest possibly confess?

How The Fall of the House of Usher sets up its big finale

Fall of the House of UsherLuckily, the finale answers all of these questions. At the beginning, the episode goes back in time and finally reveals what happened that night when Roderick and his sister, Madeline (played by Willa Fitzgerald in her youth), first crossed paths with Verna. . As anyone who has read Edgar Allan Poe the Cask of Amontillado Predictably, it turns out that the two used Fortunato Pharmaceuticals’ 1980 New Year’s Eve party to lure Roderick’s boss, Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) to the company’s basement. The two drug Rufus and seal him alive behind a brick wall to complete their capture of Fortunato. (The glitter Roderick hears throughout the series and the clown who haunts him are both callbacks to the costume that Rufus wore the night he was killed.)

To conceal their crime, Roderick and Madeline go to the nearest bar: the Verna. Once there, she offered them a deal: she would ensure their unlimited success if they agreed to defer their “payment” for her supernatural protection to the next generation of Ushers. Without hesitation Roderick and Madeline agreed. The deaths of their children, in other words, are the result of a deal they themselves willingly made decades ago because they believed a short life of luxury was better for them than knowing what it was like to struggle financially. It would be better to live. That same New Year’s Eve night, Verna promised that Roderick’s children would not die until her own time came, which is why it was her own fatal diagnosis that precipitated her children’s deaths.

In its opening third, Fall of the House of Usher Episode 8 also reveals that it was not only Roderick’s selfishness that broke up his marriage to Annabel Lee (Katie Parker), but he later used her wealth to take her children away from her. It is implied that she killed herself after losing the love and attention of her children – the same children whom Roderick had condemned to die up to that point. Her adult children are not the only people Verna has to kill as part of her deal with Roderick and Madeline.

in one Fall of the House of UsherIn the most poignant scenes, Verna visits Lenore, tells her about the positive impact her life will ultimately have on the world, expresses grave regret over the nature of their conversation, and then painlessly kills her. . So, it’s not Lenore who is sending messages to Roderick during the Netflix series, but the AI ​​bot version of her that she innocently started developing with her aunt, Mary McDonnell’s elder Madeline.

Deaths are increasing and the mystery is deepening

After Lenore’s death, Verna begins to torment Roderick by giving him visions of her body, as well as revealing her true form as a shape-shifting raven (Verna is an anagram of “raven”). She shows him how many people have died from her and Fortunato Pharmaceuticals’ drugs and orders him to confess his crimes to Auguste Dupin. However, before he does so, he reveals another surprising secret: before Auguste arrives at their meeting, Roderick reunites with Madeline and poisons her to ensure that his debt with Verna is fulfilled by night. will be fully repaid by the end of.

Roderick then cuts out Madeline’s eyes and replaces them with sapphires so that she can be sent to the afterlife like the queens of ancient Egypt. Unfortunately, just as the Usher siblings failed to do with their mother years earlier, Roderick did not double-check to make sure Madeline was actually dead before he placed her in her coffin. . As a result, the creaking and pounding sounds that Auguste had heard earlier from the basement were being made by the still-living Madeline trying to break free.

And she becomes free. Roderick’s sister comes staggering up the stairs, where he has eyes with blue sapphires, and promptly strangles him to death, while their childhood home collapses on top of them. This moment brings the story of the Usher family full circle – ending with a reflection of the moment Roderick and Madeline watched their barely surviving mother strangle their uncaring father to death before their eyes.

How does The Fall of the House of Usher end?

Carl Lumbly’s Auguste, fortunately, manages to get out of Usher’s house alive. Before Roderick dies, he finally gives Auguste the confession he promised him hours earlier. In the moments before Madeline escapes, Roderick reveals to Auguste that he knew deep down that the deal he and Madeline had made with Verna was real. “I knew I would climb to the top of the tower over a pile of corpses,” he says. “We told them it was about soothing the pain of the world. This is the biggest lie we have told. You can’t eliminate pain.”

“There is no such thing as painkillers. Imagine if we put it on a bottle?” Roderick Muses. “I’m sure I could still sell it.”

In its closing moments, Fall of the House of Usher The finale reveals that Roderick’s wife, Juno (Ruth Codd), inherited everything after his death, dissolving Fortunato Pharmaceuticals and turning it over to the Drug Rehabilitation Foundation. Verna, meanwhile, takes a moment to make a final visit to the Usher family’s graves, and places symbolic objects on top of each gravestone (e.g. a phone for Camille, a whiskey glass for Roderick). . This is a very strange conclusion and one that drives home Fall of the House of UsherMain topics of.

While they were alive, the Ushers (except Lenore) saw life as a series of deals to be made. Roderick and Madeline, in particular, agreed with ruining the next generation if it meant immediate luxuries for them. However, in the end, all the ushers’ greed leaves them with only death and some things, It’s hard to imagine a worse fate.

Fall of the House of Usher Now streaming on Netflix.