The following article discusses spoilers for Episode 8 of Carrie, “AP Physics”
Up until now, Netflix’s Midnight Mass was considered Mike Flanagan’s greatest achievement. It’s certainly the best original story he’s ever put on the small screen. However, his newest collaboration with horror master Stephen King offers a new perspective on the genre. Prime Video’s eight-episode modernization of King’s debut masterpiece, Carrie, has redefined horror for fans. Flanagan sets the classic story of high school bullying in a modern context full of school shooter drills and social media.
The terror is increased from previous Flanagan vehicles because, as Sue Snell (Siena Agudong) reiterates, “we were just kids.” Violence against children is harrowing, but that isn’t the only way the director heightens the stakes from the masterful Midnight Mass. He also casts frequent collaborator Samantha Sloyan in the role of Margaret White. Flanagan-heads will recognize her as the reprehensible Bev Keane, but despite their similarities, Margaret’s story is much more tragic than her previous villain.
‘Carrie’s Margaret Is Much More Complex Than ‘Midnight Mass’ Bev
When first approached for the role of Margaret White, Samantha Sloyan was initially hesitant. The role of Carrie’s (Summer H. Howell) staunchly religious mother could at first glance appear to be just a shadow of her previous role in Midnight Mass. On further inspection, however, Margaret is much more complex and, in some ways, tragic than Bev Keane. While the two characters are ruled by religion, the horror of Margaret’s character is that she wasn’t always on the path to being radicalized.
Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
Her relationship with God is a prime element of her characterization, but she wasn’t always ruled by it. One flashback shows that she once had her own ideas, but slowly her husband brainwashed her with concepts that mental illness doesn’t exist and that heathens need to be saved. Bev was entirely a monster of her own creation, while Margaret was a victim in her own way, which led to her villainy. In a conversation with Perri Nemiroff for Collider’s “Ladies Night,” Sloyan acknowledges the tragedy of Margaret’s relationship with religion.
“When Kate’s character asks, ‘Did you ever have the shine, the power?’ And she said, ‘I did,’ and she’s like, ‘I thought it was God,’” Sloyan explains. “And I think it’s so close in that moment of her really having it clear to her that that was not God talking to her.”
Margaret is close to acknowledging the mistakes that she made when it came to Carrie. Even though everything she did was for the benefit of her daughter, doing so crushed the teenager’s spirit. Her belief that religion made her family better than everyone else was one of the reasons that Carrie was so isolated and led to the tragic conclusion. It also led to Margaret’s death that Flanagan changed from the book, which was much more horrifying than what happened to Bev.
Margaret’s Death in ‘Carrie’ Is a Horrifying End
When Bev dies at the end of Netflix’s masterpiece, Midnight Mass, it was a long time coming. A villain absolutely undeserving of redemption, Bev kills Joe’s dog just for the love of the game and nothing else. Her ultimate burning in the sun is well-earned. Margaret’s end in Carrie is devastating, particularly because her path wasn’t necessarily inevitable. Samantha Sloyan tells Collider that Margaret had a better heart than Bev. This heart, however, literally leads to her demise, just as she starts to understand her mistakes.
“I don’t know, it’s a terrible death. I think similar to what Bev is going through, but with a kinder heart, of just having it laid so bare that you just made the wrong choices, you know? And in the moment, there’s nothing. The only thing to do is just hope someone can forgive you, and that the next phase is better.”
Kate Siegel’s character, Adelaide, has the Shine and uses her mind control to weaponize Margaret’s own limited telekinesis against her. She pushes Margaret to slow her own heart rate to the point of death. Now able to pass off the mother’s death as heart failure after the physical trauma she went through, Adelaide can clean up any record of the existence of psychic children.
Margaret has to experience her own death in slow motion, understanding that there is nothing she can do to stop it. This is far more gruesome than Bev’s death and arguably, less deserved. Margaret dies much differently in the book, but this way, the character can understand her crimes without necessarily being absolved of them. Her need to control Carrie led to all the death and destruction, and she doesn’t understand that she has to change until it’s too late. Carrie may be an adaptation of Stephen King, but this ending is quintessential Mike Flanagan.
