‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ Finale Recap: Bringing Down the House

Okay, so things got away from them a little bit at the end there. 

It might be something as simple as the episode straying from the formula. The final installment of The Fall of the House of Usher is the first installment since the premiere that isn’t dedicated to the killing of one of the Usher heirs in a manner consistent with an Edgar Allan Poe story. Instead, the episode builds to not one, not two, not three, but four separate climaxes, toward which the whole series had obviously been building: the murder of Rufus Griswold via burial alive a la “The Cask of Amontillado”; Lenore’s death, tied somehow to “The Raven,” after which the episode is named; the deal with the Devil that got them into this mess in the first place; and the final reckoning for the Usher twins, based on the story that gives the show its name. It’s an awful lot.

But going overboard is Flanagan’s stock in trade, for better or for worse. He might have focused the episode a bit more, or spread some of its contents a bit more evenly throughout the season, but then you’d lose the fusillade effect he was clearly going for in the finale. It doesn’t quite work, but I see his point. Similarly, Flanagan might have avoided triggering the cringe reflex by avoiding such a direct “Donald Trump made a deal with the Devil” joke (he even makes the monstrous Arthur Pym say he can’t stand the guy), but I think he honestly hates Trump that much and feels he’s a special case, even as he correctly situates Trump among all the other, more traditional rich right-wing assholes whom the mystery woman counts as her “clients.” Again, not what I would have done, but he doesn’t have the guardrails up.

And there’s a big ol’ dose of heartwarming ending served up here, too, despite the tone of virtually everything that’s come before. Juno kicks, inherits everything, and gives it all away to charities for addicts. Morelle recovers, inherits her own sizeable portion of everything, and gives it all away to charities for abuse and burn victims. Arthur goes to prison. Auggie considers himself the richest man alive because he has a happy family to go home to. Maybe the best way to put how far Flanagan runs with this stuff is that he wasn’t content with having one surviving spouse become a secular saint — he had to go with two. I’m surprised Napoleon’s boyfriend didn’t resurface to spend his surprise inheritance on controlling the pet population like Bob Barker.

You put up with this excess, because Flanagan — working here with co-writer Kiele Sanchez and director Mike Fimognari — also delivers the kind of excess you like. A moment of Drumpf-ing is worth the ferocious condemnation of the entire capitalist enterprise. The warm sendoffs for characters like Juno, Morelle, Lenore, and Annabel Lee are offset by Roderick and Madeline being monstrous pieces of shit until the very end, with Roderick betraying Madeline and Madeline roaring, and I do mean roaring, back into consciousness to kill him for it. Kudos to Mary McDonnell, by the way, who found a way to scream that still feels genuinely disturbing even after a lifetime spent watching horror films.

And if he gets a little sappy here and there, if his taste level fails him occasionally (the final shot is the raven cawwing as it flies at the camera and blocks out the lens?), does it matter as long as he’s more than offsetting it with genuinely nasty shit? The way Griswold’s spirit just gives out the moment they put that jester mask back on his head as they wall him up. The way it depicts powerful people’s idea of changing the world as being synonymous with destroying it. Random obscene line readings, like Rahul Kohli’s Leo telling Sauriyan Sapkota’s Perry he shouldn’t need any viagra because “You’re in your twenties, you’re like eighty percent cum — I can smell it,” or Samantha Sloyan’s Tammy telling her husband to eat a woman’s ass while she reads a book, dimly audible beneath the sounds of the character melting down on stage. The truly disgusting kills. The ongoing nightmare of Morelle. Going full-on dark-and-stormy-night as Roderick wheels around his mansion searching for the raven. (It’s so nice to watch a streaming show where the dark looks three-dimensional instead of flat asphalt!) Even Poe’s poetry, which is recited at length, is used as a sort of verbal special effect to make everything feel even more over the top. 

Copenhagen Cowboy, Dead Ringers, The Idol, Foundation Season 2: It’s been a great year for the lurid and the florid on television, maybe the best I can remember. The Fall of the House of Usher fits right alongside them, glowing and buzzing like a gorgeously lit, expensively dressed corpse. 

This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, after the victory of the WGA in their own strike over similar issues. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the show being covered here wouldn’t exist.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Times, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.