Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for The Fall of the House of Usher.
Oh, Madeline Usher (Mary McDonnell), how we misjudged you! Well, to an extent, at least.In our recap of Episode 7ofThe Fall of the House of Usher, we all but accused you of doing unspeakable things to a still-living Lenore (KylieghCurran) in the basement of your childhood home. How could we have known, given all the noise that you were making, that Lenore was already gone and that it was all only you, trying to escape the prison of death to get back at the one who wronged you, much like your mother did all those years before? Still, Madeline, you have to admit that there is something to the opinion that we have formed about you over the course of the eight episodes that comprise this miniseries. After all, you are indeed capable of murder, and “The Raven” leaves no doubt about it.
Filled with poetic justice, the final episode ofMike Flanagan’sThe Fall of the House of Usheris a documentation of the events that ultimately led to the destruction of the show’s titular family and everything that they built. It is also a chronicle of their rise to power through murder, deceiving, and dubious deals with supernatural entities. By the end of its one-hour and 15-minute runtime, all members of the Usher family are dead, from patriarch Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) to young, innocent Lenore. The sole survivors are those who are not connected to the two original Ushers by blood, such as Morelle (Crystal Balint) and Juno (Ruth Codd).
‘The Fall of the House of Usher’s Finale Explains Roderick and Madeline’s Deal With Verna
But much more important than who lives and who dies bythe end ofThe Fall of the House of Usheris how we got here. After teasing some sort of super-human deal between Roderick, Madeline, and Verna (Carla Gugino) for seven episodes, the show finally reveals to us what said contract entailed. It also gives us the answer to the Episode 1-old question of who is the jester-like figure that Roderick Usher sees when he’s leaving his children’s funeral, as well as to the question of who or what is trapped behind the brick wall in Fortunato’s basement. And while some of these answers were a little more obvious than others, it is still unnervingly bizarre how they come together.
The court jester is none other than the costume that Rufus Griswold (Michael Trucco) wore for that fateful New Year’s Eve in 1979. It is the outfit that he chose for the company’s costume party, which young Roderick (Zack Gilford) and Madeline (Willa Fitzgerald) attended dressed as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, and the outfit with which he was buried inside the walls of his new building. As we mentioned in ourEpisode 5 recap, his story is a reference toEdgar Allan Poe’sThe Cask of Amontillado, a tale in which a man is tricked and bricked into a wall by someone he considers a friend. InThe Fall of the House of Usher, Griswold plays the role of Fortunato, the victim of the murderous Montressor, while Madeline and Roderick Usher are the ones who do the bricking.
Here’s how it plays out: at the party, the trio is celebrating Roderick’s victory over Aguste Dupin (Malcolm Goodwin) and the government when Madeline proposes a toast over a bottle of Amontillado sherry. Quick to empty his glass, Griswold doesn’t realize that the drink is laced with cyanide. He’s then seduced by Madeline, who leads him to the basement where the groundwork for the new Fortunato building — a 70-story-high tower — is being laid. Since it’s New Year’s, the workers have been dismissed, and the construction shall remain on hiatus for about a week. It is the perfect opportunity for Madeline and Roderick to get rid of Griswold in a way that makes him look like he simply disappeared off the map in order to save face just as Fortunato has barely averted a crisis. And how do they get rid of him? Well, they tie him to some pipes and wall him in while he’s still alive and kicking. In about a week’s time, he shall be dead, and no one will have heard him scream.
Related:Why Isn’t Mike Flanagan’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ a Haunting Series?
After committing such a horrible crime, all that Madeline and Roderick need now is a perfect alibi. They need to get out of the Fortunato party and be seen somewhere else. That’s how they end up at Verna’s bar, where they are offered a deal that they can’t refuse. No, that’s not true. They can refuse it, alright. After all, that is Verna’s whole thing: she always gives you a choice. Nonetheless, Roderick and Madeline are quick to say yes to what she has to offer them. Standing outside of space and time, this woman who seems to be death itself says that they can have everything they have ever wanted, all the power and money, as long as their bloodline dies with them. They toast over the pact with a bottle of expensive cognac — the same cognac that Roderick offers an older Auguste (Carl Lumbly) in the present — and move on with their lives. As soon as Madeline and Roderick leave the bar, it disappears behind them, and they forget all about what happened. That is, of course, until death comes to collect.
Lenore Has Her Meeting With Verna
And death isn’t done collecting. Though all the children of Roderick Usher are already dead, from Prospero (Sauriyan Sapkota) to Frederick (Henry Thomas), there are still traces of his bloodline in the world, for no matter how kind and unlike the other Ushers Lenore is, she is still one of them. And, so, after giving a truthful statement to the police about her father torturing her mother and sending Morelle off to get the treatment that she needs — an action that, according to Verna, has granted Morelle a long life throughout which she will help millions of individuals — Lenore has her first and final meeting with the woman who decimated her family. In one of her grandfather’s guest bedrooms, she is greeted by Verna, who grants her a quick and painless death in her bed. Just a mere tap of the finger to the head and she’s gone.
Sitting at Roderick’s childhood home, Dupin listens to all of this with incredulity. After all, how can Lenore be dead if she has been texting her grandpa all night long? Well, it turns out that Madeline has indeed activated her AI version of Lenore, a copy of her grandniece based on everything she has ever posted on social media. However, this Lenore-bot has apparently malfunctioned, and now only sends Roderick the same text message over and over again: “Nevermore,” the same word repeated by the titular bird inPoe’s poem “The Raven”.
Roderick and Madeline Kill Each Other
But, if Lenore died peacefully at home, then what’s with all the noise Madeline has been making in the basement while Dupin and Roderick are chatting? Well, after she tried to convince Roderick to kill himself and pulled her strings to become CEO of Fortunato, it sort of became clear that she wasn’t exactly vibing with the “into this world together, out of this world together” part of Verna’s deal. She was trying to escape her fate somehow, to find a loophole that would allow her to go on living. So, it is up to Roderick to make sure that she fulfills her end of the bargain. And he does so by poisoning his sister and embalming her like an ancient Egyptian queen.
Alas, much like her mother, Madeline has a lot of pent-up rage inside her and can’t just stay dead while the men who have built their empires on her back just keep on living. So, she gets out of her sarcophagus — or, at least, we imagine that there is a sarcophagus - and goes up to the living room, where she chokes Roderick to death in front of Auguste. It’s a scene that parallels Eliza’s (Annabeth Gish) murder of Mr. Longfellow (Robert Longstreet) in the show’s very first episode, and, much like her mother beside her father’s body, Madeline falls to her death by her brother, bringing down the de facto end of the Usher dynasty.
What Happens After the Ushers Are Gone?
With all of the Ushers dead, there’s nothing for any of us to do but skip to the epilogue. Through Auguste Dupin’s voice, we learn that Fortunato Pharmaceutical is inherited by Juno, who immediately dissolves the company and, having weaned herself off of Ligodone, uses the money to start a foundation to help people dealing with addiction. Arthur Pym (Mark Hamill), having refused his own deal with Verna, becomes the only person ever arrested in the United States government’s case against Fortunato, all thanks to the piles of evidence that Camille (Kate Siegel) had collected on him. As for Auguste himself, he retires and goes on to live a peaceful life with his husband, his kids, and his grandkids. But, before, he drops by Roderick Usher’s grave to leave him the tape recorder with which he recorded the conversation that they both had at the Usher’s childhood home, for what good does any of it do now that they are all gone?
But Auguste isn’t the only one to pay the Ushers a visit in their final resting place. Much like a raven, the form that she takes when she tires of her human shape, Verna has collected things belonging to her victims over the course of the series — things that serve as reminders of who they were in life and of how they died. Now, it’s time to return those things to their rightful owners. For Prospero, she leaves the mask that he wore in his orgy-turned-acid-bath. For Camille, she leaves the cell phone that she used to take pictures of Victorine’s (T’Nia Miller) lab. For Leo (Rahul Kohli), she leaves the Gucci collar that Pluto, the cat, wore when she disappeared. For Victorine, she leaves the heart mesh that she desperately tried to implant in Alessandra (Paola Núñez). With Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan), she leaves a golden bug, the symbol of her wellness empire. Frederick gets the bag of cocaine with a nightshade paralyzer. For Roderick and Madeline, an empty whiskey glass and the two sapphires that were placed in lieu of her eyes, respectively. As for Lenore, the best of them, she leaves one of her feathers, accompanied by a white rose: a gift for a life well-lived. And that marks the fall of the house of Usher.
