Biggest WTF Questions and Ending Explained

This article contains spoilers for The Fall of the House of Usher. If you haven’t watched yet, check out my spoiler-free review of the limited series. You can also dig into all of the other Fantastic Fest premieres that are available to stream now!

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When you go into Mike Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix, you expect it to be an adaptation of a single short story. Instead, the series is chock full of nods to a good number of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and short stories. 

Calling films and shows “a love letter” has become so overused that it basically means nothing at this point, so you’ll have to grant me a small indulgence on this one: The Fall of the House of Usher is, without question, a love letter to Poe and his work. And good golly miss molly is that love letter beautifully written (and acted, and directed, and shot, and… I think this metaphor got away from me). 

There’s a lot to talk about here, so let’s dive right in! 

The Fall of the House of Usher Ending Explained

“This house, this carcass of a house, this is our tomb.” 

In another life, Roderick Usher (Bruce Greenwood) would have been a poet. “A broke poet but, to be frank, is there any other kind?” Verna (Carla Gugino) asked while describing the man’s other life to his sister, Madeline (Mary McDonnell). That is, the other life he could have had if he didn’t give up all of the true riches he had for a life of poverty. He gives up his wife and his soul in favor of all the money in the world, and still walks out of this life utterly poor in spite of it all.

The Fall of the House of Usher is obsessed with riches, but where Roderick, Madeline, and the children of the Usher clan see those riches in dollar signs, the series is intent on reminding the viewer what life’s true assets are. Power, of course, remains rooted in money — whether it’s of the paper kind or the type that’s little more than 1s and 0s. But riches? The only member of the Usher line who wasn’t completely bereft of those is Lenore (Kyliegh Curran).

In Poe’s original short story, the crumbling house was a metaphor for a man’s broken psyche (and a little bit of incest with his sister). The end of the tale would see the house cracked in half and gobbled up by the ocean. In Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher, we see a whole rotten foundation that crumbles as Auguste Dupin (Carl Lumbly) watches on. 

But, while the question of what makes a man truly rich is woven throughout the fabric of the series, the story goes well beyond the wholesome but ultimately simplistic message, just as the rot of the Usher home goes much deeper than what we initially see. But beyond that, in what is perhaps the strongest form of reverence for Poe’s work, Flanagan and his team wove in plenty of intricacies that remain up for interpretation throughout the story. Very few things are cut and dry, and the tidbits that remain are oh-so-clever in their own right.

What or Who is Verna? 

“There’s a lot about my job that I love, but there are moments, like these, that bring me no joy. I hope you know that.”

The simplest answer to this is that Verna is the Raven — a piece of iconography that is critically important to Poe’s work, and the title of one of his most famous poems. Obviously we see her represented by a raven multiple times throughout the series, and her name itself is also an anagram of “raven”. But, so far as the poem itself goes, that’s actually far more tied to Lenore than it is Verna herself with the exception of the final moments Roderick spends in his mansion after his granddaughter’s death. That is, in fact, pulled directly from “The Raven,” which is recited as he falls to his knees before the bust of Pallas.

As to what the raven is so far as the purposes of Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher goes? That’s a little less cut and dry. Once you learn that Roderick and Madeline made a deal with her, it’s not a far leap to assume that Verna’s simply a demon. But, all of the hints we’re given throughout the series seem to point more closely to Death itself. 

Firstly, demons deal in souls. Verna says in no uncertain terms that those aren’t real on the night she bargains with the murderous siblings. Beyond that, demons typically relish cashing in on their deals, regardless of what’s in the hearts of those that they’re dragging with them to hell. There are moments when Verna absolutely relishes what she gets to do to the Usher children — particularly Frederick (Henry Thomas) — but there is no joy in the death she brings to Lenore, who she sends off quickly and with no pain.

The whole Death of it all is further confirmed by the words she recites to Madeline in their final meeting. It’s the first stanza of “The City in the Sea,” which I’ll leave to you to read in its entirety on your own. Here’s the most important bit: 

Lo! Death has reared himself a throne
In a strange city lying alone
Far down within the dim West,
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best
Have gone to their eternal rest.

Who Is Madeline Usher? What’s the Deal with the Algorithms?

“You’re a collection of impeccable, elaborate masks in orbit of a stunted heart.”

Not only do the algorithms and AI tie into The Fall of the House of Usher’s overarching theme of chasing eternal life, they also pay homage to a popular trick Poe liked to use in his works: ciphers. To Poe, all poetry was a cipher. The man also quite enjoyed his cryptography, with the most famous instance being the cryptogram in “The Gold-Bug”. 

As for Madeline, who or perhaps what she is ends up being even murkier than Verna. Some interpretations of “The Fall of the House of Usher” believe that she is a physical embodiment of the metaphysical. While that’s not explored in the series, it could help explain why Madeline believed in Verna more than Roderick himself, and tying her obsession with legacy to algorithms, AI, and Egyptology, while he chased the type of legacy that would die the moment he did by the terms of their deal with Verna.

Madeline is also likened to two Egyptian queens throughout the series. Verna calls her Cleopatra on multiple occasions, while Roderick gives her the death worthy of Queen Tawosret whose sapphires rest in her eye sockets upon her death. 

Taworeset lived in the shadow of her husband’s reign before taking the throne after his death, much like Madeline does after believing that she’s successfully coerced Roderick into suicide. Her reign also ended in civil war, mirroring her final battle(s) with her brother despite their love for one another. As for Cleopatra, Verna’s consistent mentioning of the Egyptian queen seems to tie more into the idea of reincarnation than anything. There are many parallels between Madeline and the queen — a strong, successful and viciously intelligent leader who answered to no man and who propaganda would insist used her beauty and body as a weapon against her male foe. Poe’s works don’t often tie to Egyptology, but its use throughout the series to properly illustrate the Usher’s obsession with immortality is inspired.

But, perhaps the cleverest representation of Madeline’s obsession with legacy is that she ties it all to Lenore. All throughout the series, Madeline is represented as a cold-hearted cut-throat who cares for no one but her brother, but the few moments we see her with Lenore illustrate that there’s not just an actual love there, but if there’s a legacy that’s going to live on, it’s going to be Lenore’s. Madeline’s love for the girl inspires her to give Lenore the gift of all gifts (in her eyes) before all others. 

Fitting that the gift would later be one of her brother’s final torments. 

Who Survived the Fall of the House of Usher?

The survivors of the curse that Roderick Usher brought upon himself and his family each find themselves with a fitting end, even if that end is harder than they may have deserved.

Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill) ends up being a lowkey MVP of the series by the end of things and, despite truly understanding the scope of his crimes and what he deserves for them, gets exactly what’s coming for him. “We were a virus, I think. People I mean,” he says to Verna in their meeting before ultimately declining her offer to save him. He then goes on to spend life in prison at his own behest. While it may seem at first like he is forced into this decision because he has nothing of real value to offer Verna as collateral, the Ushers’ Fixer goes to court without a single defense of his wrongdoings and takes his sentence with grace.

Auguste Dupin gets the all around happy ending that he deserves. He’s left alone by the specters meant to haunt Roderick as his former friend-turned-bitter-rival offers him full closure for every wrong that he’s brought to his life and others. Dupin is even given the final word as he sets the recorded confession at the head of Roderick’s tombstone and tells him he doesn’t get to explain why, and Dupin doesn’t care. He walks into the sunset to go live his life in retirement with his husband, his children, and his children’s children. He is the richest man in the world. 

Juno Usher’s (Ruth Codd) story is a bit more complex, but still ultimately a happy one. Had Roderick lived to divorce her, she would have been penniless and trapped in withdrawals for three years. Instead, she had her feet up in the Four Seasons while Death came and did her work on the Usher line. While weaning herself off of Ligodone must have been a terrible ordeal, Juno lives on to start the Phoenix Foundation — a charity to help people with addiction — with the boatloads of cash she made from liquidating Fortunado. 

Morella Usher (Crystal Balint) is undoubtedly left the most devastated of the bunch. It’s certain that she would have traded the mountains of cash she earned from the Fortunado liquidation for the life of her daughter, but that’s just not in the cards. Instead, she starts the Lenore Foundation to help those suffering from domestic abuse. Verna makes sure that Lenore knows this before taking her life, telling the young girl that her mother saved three million people in a decade, and then so many that it became impossible to count because those she helped went on to help others. 

Sweet, dumb, Bill-T Willson (Matt Biedel) makes it out alive too, but he’s of no consequence. Bless him. 

How Did Madeline Usher Come Back To Life?

Despite the series setting up precedent for this in its very first episode with the death of Roderick and Madeline’s mother, this one is still a bit of a head scratcher if you look at it from a mortal point of view.

Roderick poisons Madeline in the same way they poisoned Rufus Griswold all those years ago. She then dies, Roderick gets her up on the table, and gets to work preparing the queen for her burial. If it just ended at her falling into his arms, her rising up from the dead wouldn’t be particularly curious. However, the finale makes a point to show Roderick picking up the mummification tools, implying that he squidged up her brain and pulled it out of her nose; cut out her tongue, and popped out her eyes. This is confirmed when she stumbles up the stairs to kill him later, so this definitely isn’t the same scenario their mother was in! 

But, when you look at it from a metaphysical perspective, a couple of other options present themselves. First, Verna decided it wasn’t time for Madeline to die yet either and brought her back just long enough for her to finish off Roderick and she allowed them to die together. The second takes the very afterlife that the two worshipped into account. Perhaps she stayed dead and Roderick already had one foot in the afterlife, making it possible for her to end him.

What Was the Deal with the Jester?

If having meant to be a poet wasn’t enough to make it clear that Roderick Usher is a loose allegory of Poe himself, making one of his primary foils Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) certainly puts the nail in that coffin.

If you’re not caught up on 19th century literary beefs — Edgar Allan Poe and Rufus Griswold fricken hated each other. Griswold, an anthologist and literary critic, would outlive Poe and proceed to write an obituary under a pseudonym attempting to undermine the late poet’s career. Obviously, one man’s legacy would far exceed the other’s. 

We’d be here all day if I were to outline all of the ties to Poe’s work in The Fall of the House of Usher, but two particularly clever ones are the name of Fortunato itself, and then dressing up Rufus Griswold in a jester costume and entombing him in a wall. Of course, the bottle of Amontillado sherry is pretty inspired, too.

Fortunato is the name of the antagonist of Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado”. In it, Montresor (the protagonist) lures Fortunato into the catacombs to seek revenge, as the former believes that the latter is responsible for the loss of his family. (Reminder: Roderick and Madeline’s mother die at — what they believe — the fault of Fortunato and its former CEO.)

In the story, Fortunato is in the same type of jester costume as Griswold when he meets a similar fate. In fact, Griswold’s death is one of the most direct adaptations, with his story mirroring Fortunato’s pretty perfectly. 

Why Wouldn’t Verna Let Roderick Usher Die By Suidice?

“I’m sorry I couldn’t accept your resignation.” 

Roderick Usher may have gone down as the king of salesmen, but there are no loopholes in deals with death. Especially when Death’s got a little bit of a soft spot for some humans — she finds them interesting, you see — and she knows that you don’t feel a single ounce of remorse for what you did. 

“I knew. Deep down. In the witching hour. I knew. I knew I would climb to the top of the tower on a pile of corpses,” Roderick tells Auguste in the final moments of their conversation before Madeline stumbles up the stairs to murder her brother. And climb to the top of the tower on a mountain of corpses is exactly what Roderick did. Verna shows him this in his last moments at Fortunato, making it rain corpses to illustrate just how many people the Usher family killed with ligadone.

Verna wouldn’t let Roderick Usher die by suicide because it wasn’t in her design. And, while only implied, I suspect she thought that she didn’t think he deserved the autonomy of choosing his own death.

Why Did Lenore Keep Texting Roderick “Nevermore”?

“It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

The sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore, the only decent member of the Usher family, gone with the rest of the spoiled bunch. Of course, in the poem, it is the raven that continues to squawk “nevermore.” Here, though, Flanagan and company seem to have chosen to lean into the scholarly interpretation of what Poe meant by the word — a fear that we can never hold onto what we love most and concern that he could never do justice to the dead. 

A constant reminder in the last hours of an old man’s miserable life that he will never see what he loves most ever again.

Roderick may have let go of the man he was and of his beloved Annabel Lee, but if there was anyone who was capable of haunting him beyond a few jump scares, it was his dear Lenore.

In its most literal definition, the AI Madeline created of Lenore texting Roderick “nevermore” in varying versions is exceptionally cruel. Defined in the dictionary as “at no future time; never again,” it serves as a constant reminder in the last hours of an old man’s miserable life that he will never see what he loves most ever again.

Is Ligadone A Real Drug?

‘Tis not! As far as I can tell, it’s a callback to Poe’s short story “Ligeia”. While it’s a bit of a stretch given that the story is about a first wife possessing the body of a second wife, the protagonist is an opium addict. The drug, however, shares closer ties to modern-day oxycontin (if, you know, everyone lied to our faces and said it wasn’t wildly addictive).

The Biggest Easter Eggs in The Fall of the House of Usher

• Landor Pharma is a nod to Poe’s short story “Landor’s Cottage.”
• The Jester costume is a tie in to both “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Hop-Frog” 
• Lenore and Morella are watching The Raven (1935). We also see several other Flanagan films come up on the screen when Lenore is searching for their next film, including Gerald’s Game. 
• Verna’s license is packed with little tidbits. Her name, Pamela Clemm, is a nod to Poe’s wife while the 1849 in her address is Poe’s death year and Reynolds Street is a nod to the name Poe shouted on this death bed. 
• Mr. Longfellow’s house address is 2640, which mirrors the number of the Edgar Allan Poe cottage in New York.
• It wouldn’t be a Mike Flanagan joint without some hidden ghosts! While not as hard to spot as the multitudes hidden in The Haunting of Hill House, you can see several specters shifting behind Auggie as Roderick tells his tale.

If that’s not enough Poe goodness for you, you can find dig in deeper with Every Edgar Allan Poe Reference in The Fall of the House of Usher, too!

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