Mike Flanagan may be hard at work on several upcoming projects amid his overall TV deal with Amazon, but that’s not stopping fans from revisiting his hit Netflix original horror shows. After making his mark on Netflix with the release of The Haunting of Hill House in 2018, and before dropping other titles like Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher, the 2020 follow-up The Haunting of Bly Manor spun a hauntingly tragic tale of doomed romance that, once again, shocked fans in the finale.
An adaptation of Henry James’ 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw, Bly Manor centered around Danielle “Dani” Clayton, a young American woman who is hired as an au pair for the children of the wealthy Wingrave family in England. After traveling to the picturesque countryside manor, however, it quickly becomes clear that not all is as it seems, and Bly Manor isn’t as peaceful as it looks. Following an 8-episode arc that saw Dani facing her demons – her ex-fiancé was killed just moments after she called off the engagement – the revelation that Bly Manor housekeeper Hannah Grose was dead all along, and Flora and Miles Wingrave at moments being overtaken by the ghosts of Peter Quint and Rebecca Jessel, the story came to a tragic conclusion in Episode 9, “The Beast in the Jungle.”
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In the episode, the residents of Bly Manor came face-to-face with the Lady in the Lake, who was revealed in Episode 8 to be Viola Willoughby, the heiress and original owner of Bly Manor. After being killed by her sister after suffering from a lung disease for years, Viola slowly transformed into the Lady in the Lake over the course of centuries, claiming numerous victims who became caught in her “gravity well,” unable to move on, as she searched for her daughter. In the final episode, Viola mistakes young Flora for her daughter, and in a last-ditch effort to save her, Dani makes the ultimate sacrifice when she invites Viola into herself in order to save Flora. While Dani’s sacrifice undoes Viola’s curse on Bly and released the spirits of those once stuck there – including those of Peter, Rebecca, and Hannah – it also cements Dani’s future: one day she, too, would become the Lady in the Lake.
Following that fateful night, the surviving characters go their separate ways, with Owen heading to Paris, where he finally opened his restaurant in homage to Hannah, and Henry Wingrave, as well as Flora and Miles, who are later revealed to have no recollection of the terrifying happenings at Bly, heading to America. Dani and Jamie, meanwhile, head to America to start a new life together, but after five years of peace, Dani begins suffering from visions of Viola and the knowledge that she will one day become the Lady in the Lake. She eventually flees America and returns to Bly, where, unable to “risk her most important thing, her most important person,” she drowns herself in the lake and becomes the Lady in the Lake. But with Viola’s spirit forever entwined with Dani’s, the Lady in the Lake is “different now,” and “no one would ever be taken again. And no one has been taken to this day.”
Flashing back to 2007, it is revealed that the narrator telling the ghost story of Bly at the wedding is actually Jamie, and the woman getting married is Flora, though their actual names are not revealed. The series ends with Jamie returning to her room and leaving the door open in the hopes that her Lady in the Lake will return to her.
The Haunting of Bly Manor is available to stream on Netflix alongside Flanagan’s other Netflix original titles – The Haunting of Hill House, The Midnight Club, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher.
