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More than 50 years after Brian De Palma’s haunting version of “Carrie” premiered, series creator Mike Flanagan puts his own spin on Stephen King’s first novel. The showrunner and filmmaker has adapted several of King’s works, including “Life of Chuck” and “Gerald’s Game.” Once again, with the author’s blessing, Flanagan took on the challenge of updating a poignant classic like “Carrie” by bringing online bullying to the forefront.
The Prime Video series follows Carrie White (Summer H. Howell), a shy and sheltered teenager who, following the death of her father, must drop out of homeschooling and attend public school for the first time. Carrie is excited to finally meet others her age, but her enthusiasm gradually fades when she is mistreated by her peers and mocked online via an anonymous page called Carrie Red. It all culminates in the iconic prom scene, where Carrie uses her telekinetic powers to fight against those who have wronged her.
Although most of the novel is featured in Flanagan’s series, the showrunner took creative liberties with the source material on several occasions. From the transformation of Carrie’s relationship with her mother, Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan, who has starred in other Flanagan projects), to the introduction of a secret organization tracking Carrie, the Prime Video original made some bold choices in its narrative. Here are the main differences from book to screen.
Margaret and Carrie’s mother-daughter relationship
In Stephen King’s novel, Margaret White is an evil mother to Carrie, often punishing her and imposing her extremist views on her daughter. Samantha Sloyan’s version of Margaret in “Carrie” is the complete opposite. She tends to call everything that happens outside her home evil, but she loves Carrie. Instead of seeing Carrie’s first period as a sin, she is upset that her daughter received advice from a teacher instead of her.
When Carrie suffers from online bullying, Margaret is the first to confront Principal Grayle (Matthew Lillard) about the school’s refusal to hold Chris (Alison Thornton) accountable for his actions. Margaret is starting a movement to help her daughter and other parents protect their children from bullying on social media by creating her own page.
Margaret’s major flaw is that she is overly protective of Carrie, shielding her from wrongdoing. When Carrie begins to gain greater control over her telekinetic powers, that’s when her complicated relationship with her mother reaches its peak. Under the anger and resentment, Carrie also cares for her mother to the point of returning home after what happened on prom night. The characters’ fates are much more nuanced here than in the source material or other adaptations.
The inclusion of Carrie’s friend Emaline
Previous versions of “Carrie” followed the book in portraying the protagonist as alone and mistreated by everyone among her. She has no confidante and the control she develops over her own powers comes from her inner rage. In Mike Flanagan’s series, a character named Emaline (Thalia Dudek) is introduced to stir up the plot. Emaline becomes Carrie’s ultimate friend at school and plays a fundamental role in helping Carrie perfect her telekinesis skills.
In episode 5, the audience is led to believe that Emaline is a figment of Carrie’s imagination. A leaked video from Carrie’s home security camera showed her talking to herself about Chris’ broken nose, instead of talking with Emaline. Later, this theory is debunked when the character resurfaces during prom night and helps Carrie get revenge and escape from their town of Chamberlain after burning down the school and destroying her own home.
Many questions remain unanswered about the identity of Emaline in the finale, but what we know is that she projected herself from afar in the first episodes of the series and only appears in the flesh at the end when she comes to Carrie’s aid.
Chris’ online harassment is motivated by his own personal struggles
In the “Carrie” series, like the book, Chris is responsible for both the bullying at Ewen High School and orchestrating the prank on Carrie during the prom. However, Mike Flanagan develops the character of Chris by giving him a complicated story. As her parents’ marriage implodes and her father faces financial insecurity, Chris is distraught over not being able to attend the college of her choice and her mother starting a family of her own. To top it all off, her best friend Sue (Siena Agudong, who might seem familiar) feels guilty about how she reacted to Carrie’s first period in the locker room and tries to be Carrie’s friend, distancing herself from Chris.
When Chris creates the Carrie Red account on Instagram, she is motivated to ruin Carrie’s life because hers is falling apart as well. Her actions have consequences: not only is Carrie teased at school, but several other students and staff become targets of online hate. A teacher named Seth Peist (Rahul Kohli) is even reported for having an affair with a student and commits suicide as a result.
In episode 6, Chris faces expulsion and his parents arrange a meeting with Margaret and Carrie so she can apologize for her behavior. However, Chris does not admit his mistakes. She only apologizes when Carrie is about to kill her after the dance.
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Carrie doesn’t kill her mother
At the end of the series, Carrie unleashes her full telekinetic potential when she takes revenge on everyone who wronged her at the ball. The destruction even reaches her own home when she nearly kills herself and her mother by destroying their family home. Yet for readers who remember the ending of Stephen King’s novel, they were both expected to die at the end. This was not the case in the Mike Flanagan series.
Margaret survives the house collapse and is later seen answering a woman’s questions about her daughter. The woman’s name is Adelaide (Kate Siegel) and she is responsible for narrating several moments in the series that inform viewers about the origins of telekinesis. However, we only discover his important role in the series towards the end. Much like Carrie, Adelaide also possesses telekinetic abilities and is determined to discover Carrie’s whereabouts.
While questioning Margaret, Adelaide discovers that Carrie’s mother also had powers of her own. Carrie inherited the TK gene from her mother, although she didn’t know it. Adelaide kills Margaret the same way Carrie kills her mother in the book, by slowing her heart to a complete stop.
Carrie survives the end of season 1
Carrie dies at the end of the book, but her fate is much less dire at the end of the Prime Video series. Season 1 ends with Carrie being saved by Emaline, and the two leave Chamberlain. In the finale, it is also revealed that there is a secret organization that hunts down people with abilities like Carrie and Emaline.
The open-ended resolution of Season 1 gives enough room for the show to return for Season 2. After all, with Carrie alive and a secret organization hunting her, there’s plenty of room to expand on Stephen King’s source material (and potentially crossover with other characters from King’s books).
In an interview with Collider, Mike Flanagan said his “dream scenario” was for “Carrie” to last three seasons. This would be a change from the showrunner’s previous work, which tends to be in limited series form. Only time will tell if Carrie’s journey will continue beyond the finale, but learning that Flanagan plans to continue her story is an intriguing prospect, given that previous adaptations of the novel have never done so before.
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