Showrunner gives us the key to unlocking the mysteries of The Haunting of Bly Manor

The Haunting of Bly Manor gives us more of the chills we got from The Haunting of Hill House. Learn about the new ghosts, and the keys to understanding them.

Netflix had a hit on its hands a couple years back when The Haunting of Hill House, a modern reworking of Shirley Jackson’s classic horror story, landed on the service. Now, showrunner Mike Flanagan is coming back with The Haunting of Bly Manor, which takes its cues from Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, about a young woman who takes a job looking after two orphaned children on a stately manner in the English countryside.

The original novella, published in 1889, became hugely influential, in no small part because it was ambiguous: was there really a haunting going on, or was the young governess just seeing things? Something tells me the Netflix version will go in the more explicit direction, but it sounds like it’s going to have a chilling good time getting there.

“It certainly provides a new way to tell a love story, and there are three of them that really beat at the heart of this season,” Flanagan told Vanity Fair. “They all have a very dark edge to them. And by the end, it’s really hard to differentiate tragedy with romance. That sense of romantic longing for someone who meant so much to us—but who’s gone—really is the heart of any ghost story.”

"At its foundation, the Haunting series is very much about haunted spaces and haunted people. The way we make those things dance together is really going to be what’s uniform about Hill House and Bly. Outside of that though, it was really important for all of us not to play the same notes we played for the first season. The first season is very much entrenched in family dynamics and death and grief and loss and child trauma. We all collectively felt like we’d said everything we wanted to say about that."

As different as the two seasons will be, they will share several cast members. Henry Thomas, who played the father in Hill House, returns as Henry Wingrave, the wealthy uncle to orphans: spooky Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and cheerful Flora (Amelie Bea Smith). Wingrave is fine supporting the kids from afar…as long as he doesn’t have to visit Bly Manor.

Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who played the drug-addicted little brother in Hill House, is back as Peter Quint, a business associate of Wingrave’s who tends to take whatever he wants from Bly Manor, permission not needed. And Kate Siegel, who played Theo in Hill House, is here in a still-secret role.

Finally, Victoria Pedretti, who played doomed sister Nell in Hill House, plays the lead character: the young governess Dani Clayton. “Victoria and I talked at the very beginning about how to differentiate this character from Nell,” Flanagan said. “Nell was a character that carried around a ton of darkness with her and never quite got out of the shadows that she was introduced in when we see her as a child. Between the setting in the ’80s, and this idea of a young American abroad, just out on an adventure, it brightened everything up to begin with.”

The house itself is presented differently, too. “Hill House is described by Shirley Jackson as having this gothic, frightening, shadowy presence,” Flanagan said. “Henry James’s Bly Manor, conversely, is described as being bright and sunny and welcoming and rather beautiful. And when the governess approaches it for the first time in the book, she isn’t afraid.”

I think we all know that’s not going to last very long.

Indeed, Flanagan hinted at some sinister mysteries lurking right under the surface, and basically gave us the keys to unlocking them. “Dolls, for children, are a way to play with representations of real people,” he said. “I think for kids, it’s about control. Kids have such little agency. Dolls provide that. But there’s also a darker side to it. Ownership, claiming someone, ceasing to look at them as a human, and instead, looking at them as an object, as a doll…we can draw lines to all sorts of toxic romantic relationships that way, and get into gender politics and the objectification of women in particular by this genre.”

"There are major themes throughout the whole season on the difference between love and ownership, of the nature and importance of consent. And possession, which is all over Henry James’s original material…The more attention a viewer focuses on Flora’s dollhouse, the more they’re likely to see what’s happening and why."

Great, now I’m getting the shivers in advance.

Also be on the lookout for the series’ telltale hidden ghosts, which are hidden right in the frame. There’s supposed to be one in this picture but I can’t find it, which might be for the best:

“This season we wanted our hidden elements to tell their own story,” Flanagan said. “And very much unlike the first season, they’re actually going to be explained. By the end of the season, you’re going to know who they are and why they’re there.”

The Haunting of Bly Manor premieres on September 30.

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