It’s enough to make even the biggest fan of Poe’s work feel like their head is spinning, but the lore and Flanagan’s world-building never lose sight of their inspiration. Bringing Poe’s real story to Roderick Usher Here the heart in “The Tell-Tale Heart” is no longer a human organ, but a synthetic prototype that maddeningly ticks away just out of sight. Gone are the stereotypical trappings of a Gothic tale - the gabled houses and candlelit corridors that people often expect when they hear the name Poe - replaced by brutalist architecture, AI text generators, workout videos, and neon lights. The Halloween Countdown: 31 days of horror to watch And, what’s more, it’s later revealed that the street name for Ligodone is “Monty.” The Big Pharma company that Roderick owns is aptly called Fortunato, which happens to be the name of Montresor’s dimwitted victim in “The Cask of Amontillado,” and the drug it produces is Ligodone - what could be a blink-and-you’d-miss-it reference to “Ligeia,” a story about a mysterious temptress that works well in the grander scheme of things as a metaphor for addiction. The original version of Arthur and Flanagan’s both travel to the edge of the world and back on a strange and dangerous ocean voyage.Īuguste Dupin, here playing the role of the house guest who visits the Usher siblings in their decaying family home, originally shows up as a detective in three of Poe’s stories and helped pave the way for the detective novels we know and love today. Roderick and Madeline’s attorney is Arthur Pym, who also happens to be the lead in Poe’s only completed novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The names Flanagan has chosen carry weight throughout the show and connect back to Poe beyond the ill-fated House of Usher. Many have theorized over the years that the name “Morella” comes from “great morel,” another name for the poisonous plant belladonna, or deadly nightshade - and that plays an important part in Morella’s story arc. Even Roderick’s daughter-in-law’s name, Morella, is a reference to a Poe’s short story that shares the same name. Roderick’s doomed offspring - Camille, Prospero, Tamerlane, Victorine, Frederick, Napoleon, and even his granddaughter Lenore - are all named after characters who appear throughout Poe’s poems and stories. The first episode alone, appropriately titled “Midnight Dreary,” is a veritable minefield of Gothic Easter eggs. Some are small details, easily missed if you’re not looking for them, and others appear on screen with the force of a wrecking ball. The Fall of the House of Usher is packed to the brim with moments like these. Every Usher character name has a hidden meaning It also feels like an ironic and pointed choice - a conspiratorial wink and a smile from Mike Flanagan to his audience - when you consider Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” a story in which a man traps one of his rivals behind a brick wall in the basement of his home. Its lyrics are emblematic of a complicated childhood, which Roderick and Madeline Usher contended with in their youth. The song itself came on the radio in 1979, an important year for the ill-fated Usher siblings in this iteration of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story. It’s clear when Pink Floyd’s rollicking protest song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” begins to play in the opening moments of The Fall of the House of Usher that viewers are in for a wild ride.
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