Watch the trailer for The Fall of the House of Usher
WARNING: This article contains major spoilers from Netflix’s series
The Fall of the House of Usher takes its cue from the works of American author Edgar Allan Poe – and comes just in time for Halloween.
Many viewers are curious to know how much of the story is taken from Poe’s works and how much is an invention on the part of creator Mike Flanagan with some also curious about the true identity of Verna.
The show also features an extensive cast like The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Haunting of Hill House.
Here’s a summary of the original works which serve as the basis for the Netflix horror series and the plots as well as how they parallel with the show.
The Fall of the House of Usher
The overall title The Fall of the House of Usher serves as a framing device for the entire show.
But within this, each episode adapts one of Poe’s works with each instalment having the same title as either a poem or a short story.
Moreover, The Fall of the House of Usher is also loosely adapted by the Netflix series, along with seven other of Poe’s works.
Poe’s original story The Fall of the House of Usher follows an unnamed narrator, who is called to his childhood friend Roderick Usher’s gloomy mansion and family seat to stay with him and help lift his spirits as he is in a state of malaise.
During the stay over a couple of days, the narrator grows ill with ease by the strange house and also after Roderick says he’s buried his twin sister Madeline in chains.
Roderick and eventually the narrator hear Lady Madeline struggling with her coffin and her chains, before she eventually breaks free and escapes.
She kills Roderick while the terrified narrator flees the House of Usher, which collapses into itself taking the two remaining members of the Ushers with them.
This is pretty much covered in the TV series but with the addition of Roderick (played by Bruce Greenwood) and Madeline’s (Mary McDonnell) added backstory involving Eliza (Annabeth Gish) and Fortunato as well as the deal the siblings struck with Verna (Carla Gugino).
Episode 1 – A Midnight Dreary
The title takes its cue from Poe’s poem The Raven when the narrator is working on a Midnight Dreary as Roderick sets the story for the tale and the death of his children in the show.
In the poem, he is reading to distract himself from the death of his beloved Lenore.
In the show, this is Roderick confessing to the death of his children to detective Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) as he keeps getting texts from his granddaughter Lenore Usher (Kyliegh Curran), which he doesn’t answer and igores after it transpires she is already dead.
Episode 2 – The Masque of the Red Death
The original short story The Masque of Red Death focuses on Prince Prospero, who tries to avoid a plague by holding a masquerade ball in an Abbey.
Nonetheless, a mysterious guest dressed in a red mask kills Prince Prospero after a confrontation, along with the rest of the guests.
Again, Prospero ‘Perry’ Usher (Sauriyan Sapkota) meets a brutal end after his masquerade party goes wrong with Verna turning up wearing the Masque of Red Death.
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Episode 3 – Murder in the Rue Morgue
In the original story, which bears the title The Murders in the Rue Morgue, fictional detective August Dupin solves the murders of mother and daughter Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter Camille, who are brutally killed in a fictional Parisian Street called Rue Morgue.
It emerges a captured orangutan from Borneo was behind the killings after it escaped from its owner.
Similarly, Camille L’Espanaye (Kate Siegel) is killed by an enraged lab chimp when she goes to the Rue Morgue as she tries to figure out who the Usher mole is.
Episode 4 – The Black Cat
The Black Cat follows an animal lover who starts abusing his pets. One night his black cat bites him and in revenge he blinds the cat in one eye and hangs it.
He then buys a similar cat to replace the first one but eventually wants to kill it.
After his wife stops him, the man kills her and bricks her into a wall of his house to hide the evidence but when the police come around, they hear a strange sound in the wall with the officers finding the cat was accidentally bricked up with the corpse and the man gets his comeuppance.
Similarly, Napoleon ‘Leo’ Usher (Rahul Kohli) kills his boyfriend’s cat accidentally and finds a new one at the pound but the new moggy attacks him and flees into his apartment.
Leo believes he’s in the wall and tears the place apart to find the cat, eventually leaping off the side of his balcony as he tries to confront the feline and falls to his death.
On top of this, Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) was bricked up behind a wall after Young Roderick (Zach Gilford) and Young Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) carried out a hostile takeover of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals.
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Episode 5 – The Tell-Tale Heart
The original story follows a narrator who says they have killed someone but says it wasn’t in cold blood as the reader is left questioning their sanity.
The narrator has buried their victim under the floorboards but can continue to hear their heartbeat.
Similarly, Victorine Usher (T’Nia Miller) kills her girlfriend Dr Allessandra Ruiz (Paola Núñez) and forgets about it but continues to hear a heartbeat.
She eventually remembers the murder when Roderick turns up at her place with both of them hearing the ominous sound.
They stumble across Ruiz’s dead body and it is the mechanical heart Victorine invented and tried to get on the market.
Episode 6 – Goldbug
Adapted from The Gold-bug, this story follows the character of William Legrand, who stumbles across a gold beetle and a scrap of parchment with secret directions to buried treasure.
Legrand and his servant Jupiter who go in search of the treasure to restore his lost family fortune but when they do eventually find it, it turns out to be worth less than he’d originally hoped.
In Goldbug, entrepreneur Tamerlane Usher (Samantha Sloyan) is going insane as she keeps seeing Verna everywhere and thinks her husband William ‘Bill’ T. Wilson (Matt Biedel) has been cheating on her with the mysterious woman, who was also a call girl.
Tamerlane vows to restore the Usher family fortune and reputation after Victorine’s heart invention fails.
She pushes out her new lifestyle box called Goldbug tailored to clients, but her descent into madness throws her off-kilter and she fails in her endeavours.
Episode 7 – The Pit and The Pendulum
The Pit and The Pendulum follows a man, who is a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition and suffers many acts of torture including being strapped to his back with a razor-sharp pendulum descending to kill him.
At the last moment, he manages to escape and is saved when French soldiers turn up.
Sadly, there’s no such rescue for Frederick ‘Freddie’ Usher (Henry Thomas), who tortures his wife after believing she cheated on him and then removes all her teeth as one last punishment.
Verna makes sure Freddie gets his just desserts when she paralyses him in the factory where Perry died, which is about to be demolished.
Freddie is killed by a swinging pendulum, which chops him in half – something which is teased at the start of the episode. Roderick sees a vision of a child version of his eldest son before he is torn asunder.
Episode 8 – The Raven
In The Raven, a grief-stricken narrator is working late at night as continues to mourn the death of his beloved Lenore.
He is visited by a mysterious raven, who seems to say over and over “nevermore”.
Similarly, Lenore’s AI version is stuck forever sending Roderick the text “nevermore” after she dies.
The Fall of the House of Usher is streaming on Netflix now
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