![]() ![]() Sliding through it all is the mysterious man who works as a sort of fixer for the Ushers, Arthur Pym ( Mark Hamill), totally reimagined from the title character in Poe’s only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Prospero’s fate is merely the first as “The Fall of the House of Usher” also spins back to detail the truth behind the demise of Camille L’Espanaye ( Kate Siegel), Leo Usher ( Rahul Kohli), Victorine LeFourcade (T’Nia Miller), Tamerlane Usher ( Samantha Sloyan), and Frederick Usher ( Henry Thomas). Roderick Usher’s children are getting what they deserve, not merely because they are the fruit of a very poisoned tree but because they have made horrific decisions to stay in the shelter of wealth and privilege. But the themes remain the same-guilt, obsession, vengeance, and a supernatural sense of justice. His version of The Tell-Tale Heart is a modern gem, and “The Gold-Bug” is reimagined as a new brand for the Usher company. However, Flanagan is smart enough to shift the Poe narratives ever so slightly for a modern audience. When the young and trendy Prospero Usher ( Sauriyan Sapkota) decides to host an exclusive sex-and-drugs party at one of dad’s old factories in an abbey, readers of The Masque of the Red Death will know it’s going to be a gruesome scene. What’s more interesting is to watch how the fallout of their decisions fell on Roderick’s many children, all torn apart by some of Poe’s most memorable creations.Įnglish majors will likely know where some of the stories are going just by seeing the episode names. It’s important that Roderick and Madeline are cruel, selfish creatures-less so how they got that way. These fill in how the Ushers made their fortune, but they’re kind of a narrative drag. Every episode includes flashbacks to a young Roderick ( Zach Gilford), Madeline ( Willa Fitzgerald), and Annabel Lee ( Katie Parker), Roderick’s first wife. Usher has been reimagined as the head of a massive pharmaceutical company he runs with his twin sister, Madeline ( Mary McDonnell). He’s having visions of monstrous ghosts, including the recurring specter of Verna ( Carla Gugino), a figure that connects most of these tall tales as a sort of vengeful force of karma, the devil come to take what she’s due from a man who profited off the pain of others. (Poe had one too.) Roderick has been haunted by all his awful children who have shuffled off this mortal coil, and it’s because it feels like the ghosts are finally coming for him that he is ready to confess. Dupin asks, “Before they died?” “No, not before,” he replies in one of the show’s many glimpses of Flanagan’s viciously dark sense of humor. How does Usher know all of these gory details? “I know because they told me,” says Usher. It turns out that almost every branch of the Usher family tree has been cut by violent horror. ![]() All of these nightmarish visions are attached to the family drama that Usher offers up for Dupin, giving the season a clever episodic structure in that each chapter intertwines a different Poe source into the overall saga of the Ushers. Immediately, Poeheads should have a raised eyebrow as Dupin is a Poe character from works other than the one that gives this project a title, but Netflix and Flanagan’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” only uses the titular 1839 Poe story as the torso of the skeleton, attaching limbs based on other Poe works to it, including The Masque of the Red Death, Murder in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and many more. He offers to lay out the truth about his family’s criminal, violent history. Auguste Dupin ( Carl Lumbly) to his home. Late one stormy night, Roderick Usher ( Bruce Greenwood) invites an investigator named C. ![]()
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