Spoilers for Mike Flanagan’s Carrie!Mike Flanagan’s Carrie is a hit, and season 2 has been announced, which has people wondering what’s next for Chamberlain’s favorite mass-murdering psychic. Carrie has been a big hit on Prime Video, and Flanagan continues to remind everyone why he’s one of the modern horror greats.
For those who read Stephen King’s 1974 novel or watched Brian De Palma’s Oscar-nominated 1976 adaptation, the ending of Carrie will come as a huge shock. Without spoiling too much in the intro, just know that Carrie has been renewed for a second season. With no guiding light from the novel, Flanagan could take the series in many different directions, so let’s speculate.
The Dark Tower Connection
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Just like in a lot of recent King adaptations, there are several references to The Dark Tower in Carrie. The Dark Tower is King’s eight-book fantasy epic that combines all of King’s genre loves in a sprawling, frightening, thrilling, mysterious, convoluted story that draws from his entire universe.
Just about every single story or short story in King’s bibliography is mentioned, or mentions, something having to do with The Dark Tower. For those unaware of how meta and unorthodox a book it is, an important thread in the books involves the main characters meeting Stephen King, who is writing the Dark Tower books they are a part of.
There are several mentions of The Dark Tower in Carrie, including the construction site, LaMerk Industries, where Carrie’s (Summer H. Howell) father is killed in the first episode. Flanagan is already working on a Dark Tower TV series, so Carrie season 2 could be a way to tie those shows together.
Carrie Meets The True Knot
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Carrie’s powers are never fully explained in the novel, but the show gives us a little more insight into what exactly she’s capable of when show-only character Adelaide (Kate Siegel) refers to Carrie’s telekinetic abilities as a “shine”, a word that’s the source of the title of another King novel, The Shining.
A shine in the King universe is any kind of psychic power, and it can take a variety of forms. The details of “shining” are more thoroughly explored in The Shining‘s sequel, Doctor Sleep, which Flanagan also adapted into a film. In Doctor Sleep, it’s revealed that there is a notable population capable of “shining” like Carrie and Danny Torrance.
The True Knot is a group of shining individuals who feed off the life force of other weak shiners. The very presence of someone who can shine alerts the True Knot like a beacon. While the True Knot presumably died in Doctor Sleep, it’s possible that someone could have escaped and started up a new True Knot, and they could be coming for Carrie to feed or to recruit.
Carrie’s Extended Family
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The show and the book make the same suggestion about Carrie’s family but through different characters, and that could provide the stroy for season 2. Carrie’s powers are not unique in either version of the story, and the novel implies that members of Carrie’s family have had similar powers in the past.
The show brings even more attention to this in the final episode when Margaret White (Samantha Sloyan) uses her own latent powers to stop the house from falling on her. Carrie season 2 could focus on Carrie finding other members of her family and learning more about the history of her shine.
The shine has frequently been described as having a genetic component. Dick Hallorann in The Shining told Danny that he and his grandmother often spoke to one another telekinetically, as an example. Carrie could go searching for the extended members of her family to see if they can offer any insights into her powers.
Chamberlain’s Fate
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Chamberlain, the setting of Carrie, is essentially destroyed in the finale of the book and the movie. The novel gives specifics. The “incident” at the prom in Carrie comes to be known as the “Black Prom”, with 440 reported casualties after it becomes national news.
The survivors are incapable of recovering from the disaster and leave, making it a ghost town. In the King universe, an empty haunted town would be ripe for some terrifying happenings. Carrie could return to the town at some point and confront the ghosts who are there, or perhaps she and her psychic friends could make a basecamp there.
It wouldn’t be the first time a King story returned to a famous, deserted town and the site of a terrible massacre. “One for the Road” is King’s 1977 short story that takes place two years after ‘Salem’s Lot. Jerusalem’s Lot is a ruin, but something ekes out a ghastly living there, and the neighboring towns attempt to steer innocents from venturing too far into it.
Carrie Season 2 And Firestarter
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Carrie is far from the only King story that has to do with young people capable of impossible feats of psychic and telekinetic power. We’ve already mentioned The Shining and Doctor Sleep, but there are other stories even more closely aligned with Carrie. Firestarter is one of the more well-known.
King’s 1980 novel Firestarter follows a young girl named Charlie McGee who has the ability of pyrokinesis. It begins with Charlie and her father, Andy, on the run from the U.S. government, who have been attempting to use her powers for their own destructive purposes.
The book was adapted into a film in 1984 with Drew Barrymore as Charlie, then into a miniseries sequel, Firestarter: Rekindled in 2002, and then a second film adaptation in 2022 with Ryan Kiera Armstrong. No one has done the story justice, and Flanagan could be the first to do so while tying it to his wider universe.
The Institute And Carrie Crossover
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The Institute is the other King novel that could easily be adapted into Flanagan’s world. The Institute is a late-period King novel unlike Carrie and Firestarter. This 2019 novel follows Luke Ellis, a 12-year-old genius whose parents are murdered, after which he’s kidnapped and brought to the Institute.
This is a facility that houses abducted children who exhibit latent psychic powers and use them to commit assassinations across the globe, often resulting in the deaths of the young psychics. The cult in the Carrie show doesn’t seem like the sort of people to have world-dominating designs, but they don’t seem like the greatest group of people ever either.
Perhaps the cult is working with the Institute, bringing Carrie to them. Or maybe it’s just the opposite; they are people who have once been imprisoned by the Institute and are on the run. Carrie season 2 could also have a split plot, with Luke escaping the Institute and coming into contact with Carrie and Emaline (Thalia Dudek).
Another King Classic Gets A TV Season
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It’s also possible that Carrie season 2 will bring in a different sort of King book as a part of the story. Flanagan loves King and likely has an interest in adapting just about every King story, and if Prime is giving him the money and the canvas, maybe he’ll take the chance to bring in whatever story he pleases.
Carrie is an acclaimed ’70s adaptation of an acclaimed ’70s novel. Perhaps Flanagan will move to adapt a ’90s King classic that was adapted into a ’90s movie. Needful Things is a horror thriller from 1993 based on King’s 1991 novel, set in Castle Rock, Maine, where a strange man named Leland Gaunt sets up a shop with everything you could ever need.
Though he has exactly what each of his customers is looking for, each item ends up providing more misery than joy. Both Needful Things and Carrie involve evil or chaos arriving in a typical, sleepy American town, and this could be an opportunity for Flanagan to revive a great King story, just as he did with Carrie.
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