Carrie ending explained: how Amazon changes Stephen king’s book and sets up season 2
Carrie's iconic prom night looks a little different
Spoilers for Carrie below!
Mike Flanagan's Carrie television series is finally available to stream on Prime Video. However, unlike the Brian de Palma adaptation, Flanagan’s Carrie looks and feels a little bit different. For starters, the series takes place in a modern world, which means that social media now gets a chance at center stage in all the teenage drama that surrounds the story. The changes, though, are bigger than that — much bigger.
Of course, the ending to Carrie is as iconic as the name itself: 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, of course, but does much more with the story. Let's take a look at the changes.
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 that are monitoring Carrie (Summer H. Howell). Throughout the season, these interviews pop up, but it is an early one with one of Carrie's only friends, Sue Snell (Siena Agudong), who reveals that there were others at that fateful prom. "It wasn't just Carrie," she says.
The show leads us to believe that Carrie's other friend, Emaline (Thalia Dudek), is a figment of her imagination. However, it turns out that Emaline is, in fact, real and has been astral-projecting into Carrie's mind. She ends up meaning more to the story than viewers anticipated, especially once Chris (Alison Thornton) and her boyfriend Billy (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, capturing the moment for social media. This is when Carrie finally snaps, locking the doors and setting the gymnasium on fire, killing everybody trapped inside before destroying the entire town. But unlike King's book, Emaline appears and asks Carrie if she can "take over," meaning that Carrie wasn't the one who actually killed everybody, it was Emaline.
Margaret White's story ends differently
After, Carrie runs to her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan). The book paints Margaret as a monster, which the show seems like it is going to do. Ultimately, Flanagan is a little more sympathetic, writing her as a mother who genuinely loves her child. However, she is still terrified of Carrie's powers, and when Carrie returns home that night after prom, she plans to kill her.
Up to this point, the show follows the book. In the book, once Margaret stabs Carrie, Carrie kills her by stopping her heart with her powers. After, Carrie succumbs to her wounds. In Flanagan's version, Carrie collapses the house on both of them and is saved from the rubble by Emaline. Ultimately, both she and Margaret survive, which majorly changes King's original ending.
While Carrie is led off by Emaline, Margaret survives because she apparently also has telekinetic powers, which prevented the roof from collapsing on her. Afterward, she is interviewed by the same camera crew as before, which viewers now see is 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 and 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. With the ending of the first season there is room for much more of King's universe to potentially be brought in. Carrie and Emaline are gone, and viewers still don't know what the purpose of the organization that has been monitoring her is.
While this ending is sure to be controversial for fans, Flanagan has a proven track record of adapting King's works. The future of Carrie remains to be seen, but the show has certainly asked some questions that will hopefully be answered, given that Flanagan is allowed to tell his story in its entirey.