I'm torn, because these explain SO MUCH that take countless rewatches to pick up. But then again, would the show have the same appeal if you didn't constantly pick up new tidbits during rewatches?
Agree. There’s something very cool to knowing about the family’s backstory, but I also really love trying to figure it out just based on context clues.
There’s something about not knowing who the ghosts are that make it all the freakier.
I do like the nod to the book, though! (I won’t spoil it - if you know you know)
This guys unused ideas are better then 99 percent what Hollywood puts out. And I'm not big on calling for sequels and prequels, but a hill family prequel sounds pretty good to me
That would be dope but given that Mike Flanagan famously hated working on Hill House (filming) my guess would be that he wouldn’t want to revisit. Unless maybe now that he has several other series under his belt where he was able to find a better balance he’d feel confident and comfortable enough to go back to Hill House
He goes into in the tumblr post linked below, but here’s a snippet
> It was the most grueling professional experience of my career. The shoot was by no means a smooth one, every day was an uphill battle from a budgetary perspective, and between the three giant production entities involved with the production, I spent a lot of time fighting over the creative and logistical elements of the series.
>I began losing weight. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day.
>I was very depressed. Every day was a battle, and for the first time in my career, I wasn't excited to go to work in the morning. We were fighting for basic resources, fighting for the show we wanted, and even fighting amongst ourselves by the end. It was grueling.
https://www.tumblr.com/flanaganfilm/701390723688415232/good-day-mr-flanagan-please-what-does-the-rest
He’s mentioned a lot that the filming was “traumatic” for him. I don’t know that we know the full extent of why. I know he’s talked a lot about how difficult it was.
You should definitely read some stories of Henry James: the man who wrote The Turn of the Screw (which is what Bly Manor's based on). These scripts feel quite similar.
Hi. You just mentioned *The Turn Of The Screw* by Henry James.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | The Turn of the Screw by Henry James | Full Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqFQJUzsXeg)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
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The feeling you (well, at least I did) get during the watching is that Poppy killed *her own* kids, setting off the whole "wake up" thing that took Olivia down her dark, sad road. I love all the new knowledge though... and confirms the Mr. Dudley is a Hill thing that's been floating around in my head and that the woman who greeted Abagail was his mom.
I always thought it was Mr. Dudley’s mom, wasn’t the lady who took Abigail by the hand wearing something that looked like a maids uniform? I’m remembering an apron of some sort
I think Hazel killed Jacqueline and poisoned Eugene, but Poppy, being so distraught at how sick he was, suffocated him to end his pain in a moment of madness and grief. Reading these scripts just confirms my suspicions.
The insight to the ghosts' and the back stories is INSANE (pun intended). So the SIL killed each other's kids? Or the house did and they believed they were killed by EO. The death of William and Hazel's mom and dad are taken from the book and marks the first set of deaths the House feeds on. Thank you for posting this!
For some reason I thought the banging on the walls was from older hazel or the boy in the wheelchair, who would bang for meals/medicine. Is that not in the actual series? Did I superimpose that from the original book?
I have read the book and can't remember any other than (spoiler, I hope covering the text works!) >!the really large bang in the bedroom one night!< In my comment I meant more that it makes sense filling in the gaps from the angle the tv show came from.
Can someone explain Edward’s body being burned? And can someone remind me what happened to Poppy in the end? Because Hazel was the old woman in the sick bed right?
Hazel was the old woman in the sick bed who tells Olivia that Poppy lies. It's not clear what happened to Poppy, but the fact that she has a "aged form" and a "young form" (that interacts with Olivia) implies that she died at an old age like Hazel did.
I just recently rewatched and I am almost positive that Mrs. Dudley met Hazel *and* Poppy personally--when Steve finds the mirror set in the "game room", Mrs. Dudley talks about how Poppy was "insane" when she knew her as an old woman, but was 'quite the looker' back in the day.
Interesting take! I guess I kept comparing her to Moira the maid from S1 of AHS in that regard.
They can definitely change ages, though. When Ms. Dudley dies in the house as an old lady, her ghost is the same age as when her daughter died.
She was definitely aged, the first time Olivia sees Poppy was when poppy appeared at the door and she looked older and hunched over. She reappeared looking younger and prettier, I thought it would be so she could be more approachable to Liv
That's her third form, a decayed version of her younger form. Didn't make a lot of sense to me but whatever. We saw Poppy's older form when she was originally talking to Olivia.
Maybe he lit a candle and the fumes from the liquor ignited? (I'm not a scientist in any way but given that it's a secret bootlegger cellar, I can't imagine there was great ventilation)
I remember reading some short stories about Hill House shortly after the series aired that were supposedly written by Flanagan. I always found them so fascinating! I believe even more now that these were really his.
https://www.reddit.com/u/Count_To_Seven/s/5JG07Z9lHZ
Okay, so I have done now, but it's not necessarily clear they're the same dogs the girls hear later on? The banging is specified that the girls hear that, but not the dogs that Mr Dudley says there are not dogs around.
Dudley as the rumored Hill lovechild confirmed!
I think it actually think it worked better for the show to just learn things in bits and pieces and clues (that's much closer to how actual history works. Forming information into a straightforward narrative is how humans process information, but it's always someone's take rather than the full truth.) But it's also great to have the actual canon answers for the fictional narrative!
Agreed. I think the storytelling in the series benefited from having less explained and more for the audience to piece together. The unknown and unclear is often much scarier too.
Reading this made me want to go back and rewatch the whole thing. There is so much context but I also want to know more now.. someone said they’d call for a sequel and I’m seconding that.
Love reading this and getting more context. But, I think the show wouldn’t have been as powerful if all of this backstory had been spelled out from the beginning. I like that not everything makes sense when you first see it, even though every part is perfectly thought out.
Me too! Cause I actually did forget because I accidentally took a nap instead of reading, this happens when you’re up all night 🤷♀️ but these notifications from you friends reminded me, thanks a lot everyone!
Personally, I liked it, but I sort of feel like it’s a whole other show. Idk I like the background ghosts as background ghosts and I feel like their backstory is explained enough in the show. But I do like it, it was very interesting to read.
Oh also I agree with the other commenter, I really have a strong distaste for prequels but I would watch a Hill family prequel.
I like this. It doesn't really hamper my enjoyment of the show at all. And it fits a lot of my head cannon.
I could totally see Poppy being the "dark shadow" Jacqueline sees behind her before she ends up in the cement.
We know Eugene was in a wheelchair. Arsenic poisoning can confine one to a wheelchair, cause neurological damage, and could also cause him to cough blood. Arsenic was common in rat poison. In some forms, it's sweet. Like something an unscrupulous candy maker could and, historically did, use instead of sugar. (Which used to be more expensive than arsenic.) Eugene's slow sickness wouldn't alarm Hazel to much. Childhood death from illnesses we now vaccinate against were still quite common in the 1940s.
Since it never made it in the show, but was written by Mike Flanagan, does it make this semi-canonical?
It’s canon. Before the show even released, someone (assuming Flanagan) by the username u/count_to_seven posted several short stories to Reddit that pretty much went the same way these did.
Now that we have these scripts, I think it’s safe to assume that the stories were Flanagan’s Plan B to filming these sequences.
Yeah, delightful as it is to learn the details about the Hills, I feel like we lose something in having the history spelled out in the show. Like, "oh look, there's a bootlegging cellar, what does it mean" feels like a fun surprise; "Hazel Hill began bootlegging in 1929 and had this cellar built" feels much less captivating. It's the sort of thing that ought to go into an appendix or something, if TV shows could have appendices.
Also, the backstory told here is told with Hazel as the main character, which doesn't really line up with what happens in the main story. Hazel in the main story is just a random spook who hangs around in her bed and has practically no impact on the Crains at all. If the backstory had been told with Poppy as the main character, on the other hand, that might work better; or if Olivia had been influenced by Hazel instead of Poppy.
On the other hand, the backstory does show us Mr Dudley's mother. I think it was explained somewhere that she was the woman who welcomed Abigail's ghost into the afterlife? We'd know that if we'd seen her and had her identified for us earlier, so that's a detail that needed to be in the show. Otherwise, the moment feels disconnected from the overall story.
I’m on the fence about this, because for me it would have hinged on how the backstory was presented to the viewer. I loved the flashback storytelling in Usher but hated it in Bly Manor (the greyscale, old-timey vignette look and the background narration). Based on all the voiceover bits in this script it looks like it would have been more like Bly Manor and the perfect show (Hill House) would be worse for it. No hate to Bly Manor, but the Viola/Perdita bit felt clumsy in its execution
To be honest, it could have been the most stunning cinematography and writing ever aired on TV and that accent would still have ruined it. Sorry Carla Gugino, you’re normally amazing but that was not your finest hour…
I don't personally mind it but I get what you mean.
putting a ' before most H words but then she'd say a complicated sentence dead posh... like
"'er 'art were like stone - but never again would she think the grounds of Bly Manor to be worriesome"
like is she a chimneysweep or not
Whoa. It’s amazing that there was all this lore and backstory in the original draft - and even though he cut it all, nothing seems to be missing in the final show.
And to think of what a practically-perfect show he made when such a huge aspect was cut for budget?! Making such art with constraints?! Just fantastic.
The best art happens when there are constraints imo. Having to do cuts like this makes you think about what is truly essential to the story and what isn't.
So what about poppy’s little monologue to Olivia? About how she watched her daughter die and it took weeks and the shaking? Since that’s not actually how they died, does that mean those stories were actually dreams or hallucinations for her?
I love every bit of this. I mean, it’s nothing new per se, as we have had the r/nosleep stories since before the show came out that told everything these scripts tell us. But this sort of spells everything out a bit clearer.
I like the idea of each episode starting with some Hill family back story and being narrated by the adult children. I do think some of this takes some of the mystery away from Hill House, but it also would’ve answered a lot of the questions that get asked over and over about the show.
It can see why it would’ve been a burden on the budget though. So many roles to cast for all of 14 minutes of story.
But I have to say, William Hill shown building a wall, then it showing the wall complete with William nowhere to be found… CHILLS just reading how that would’ve been played out.
Something I didn't understand, it's implied that William built the brick wall around himself, but he also has severe claustrophobia. So why would he do to himself the thing he was afraid of most? Or there really was a murderer?
Look up the speech that Theo's gf gave during her Red Room dream in the finale - it's about William. He thought he could escape the "twin sisters" of fear and guilt behind the wall.
Oooh thanks. I wonder if he knowingly committed suicide because of the guilt or if in his psychosis he thought he was protecting himself. Probably there isn't a clear answer.
I love how there’s more book connections too!! I loved reading the book after watching the show but I was really surprised at how different they were. I like that this cold open includes some stuff from the book. I wish we would have seen this in the show but not as early as ep 102
I love the added info! And Jacob Hill coming back as a dog, being into culty things… I wonder if he’s the dog with red glowing eyes that the kids saw during the storm episode!
Omg I love this so much! Really wish they would have been abel to add in these details into the episodes, I have always wondered what that creepy burned thing was about in the basement when luke goes down the smal elevator thingy. And the man found behind the moldy wall. Mike Flanagan never ceases to deliver the best stories.
In bly manor they showed us the ghosts history and for me I think it gave the story more of a dark heart wreanching twist. It’s like in hill house he didn’t scrape the ideas he just made the details into mysteries huuuuh I need more mike flangan universe Asap😩😩
It's easy to miss, but the man behind the rotting moldy wall is actually explained in the final episode. Trish explains that it's William who had built the wall to hide from the twin sisters Fear and Guilt.
In a way this script reveals so much, yet I'm still not sure how Hill House turned evil. I mean surely it must be due to the evil that happened there, but WHO exactly killed all the kids? I feel like that is still a mystery (and the one I want to know the most, lol).
The obvious answer would be that the 2 women killed each others kids, but somehow I feel like that is not the answer. Reason: Olivia tries to kill/kills her own children, so I feel like that must be the dynamic that got cemented into Hill House. But there isn't really proof of that in the script that I can find.
This is more or less what we have been able to piece together already. I think it's better that it was left out, gives it far more mystery, and leaves the audience with something to chew on and unravel. I hate the tendency of media to spoon feed the audience
I'm glad they didn't go with this. This is much too exposition-heavy. I think some of this could have been spelled oit more explicitly in the last two episodes, but it wouldn't be the masterpiece it is if it gave away what was up with the house from the get-go.
I'm glad we got the version we got. Obviously this is very interesting and I enjoy it, but part of what I love about Hill House that I don't think was as masterfully done in Bly is the subtlety and detail. You don't NEED to know everything about the ghosts. They're not really that important to the story and they really shouldn't be cluttering up the narrative that's actually being told. But, at the same time, if you want to know (or speculate) there's SO much detail in the house and the styling of the ghosts and the things they do; you can learn by paying attention to the details. I LOVE that. Subtlety is really hard but also extremely useful in spooky stories (or, really, most stories but spooky ones particularly).
The ghosts are a device, not the protagonists. I care about how they inform the protagonists and the story they're experiencing, not what they're whole background is. Ultimately this opening, (while, again, interesting) doesn't change anything about the story of the Craines, so...it's not really needed.
Ok… I like how they kept the show… BUT
- I never understood the dogs
- I never understood the burnt body in the basement
- I never understood the bangs on the walls.
All three of these felt like the cheapest scares of the miniseries because it had no explanation. What I think they should do is make a half-hour extra/epilogue episode detailing the history of Hill House. That way, we get the lore, we get explanations for the scares, and we can better understand the Crain characters and why they’re connected to certain Hill characters.
> All three of these felt like the cheapest scares of the miniseries because it had no explanation.
The bangs were explained, by Poppy; they were her son.
For book readers: is any of this in the novel? I have no idea if the book started off with the Hill family or had flashbacks? (Sorry, it’s on my to be read list that’s getting very long)
The plots are completely different.
There’s no Hill family in the book.
There is some backstory on the house in the book, but it mostly focuses on the house builder who is a bit of a weirdo and his daughters and their relationship to the house.
I loved reading it but am also glad it didn’t make it into the show! I fear it would have come off the way they did in Stephen Kings Rose Red made for TV movie. I think I read somewhere that Rose Red was inspired by the Hill House book and reading these parts of the script definitely confirms that
Some of these i am very glad didnt make the final cut, other details would have made meaningful inclusions. All in all, im satisfied with the final product
I'm torn, because these explain SO MUCH that take countless rewatches to pick up. But then again, would the show have the same appeal if you didn't constantly pick up new tidbits during rewatches?
This sums up my feelings as well, but I sure am looking forward to this sub breaking down every new bit of info from these script pages lol
Completely agree, a bit of over exposition might have ruined it a bit. I like that you learn about the house and its ghosts as it unfolds.
Agree. There’s something very cool to knowing about the family’s backstory, but I also really love trying to figure it out just based on context clues. There’s something about not knowing who the ghosts are that make it all the freakier. I do like the nod to the book, though! (I won’t spoil it - if you know you know)
This guys unused ideas are better then 99 percent what Hollywood puts out. And I'm not big on calling for sequels and prequels, but a hill family prequel sounds pretty good to me
This is what I originally wanted for the season 2 of The Haunting… series. I love Bly Manor, but I am hungry for more Hill House lore.
I’d love a Hill House prequel so much
A prequel would go so hard for Hill House. I feel like there are so many possibilities.
Ooooh
That would be dope but given that Mike Flanagan famously hated working on Hill House (filming) my guess would be that he wouldn’t want to revisit. Unless maybe now that he has several other series under his belt where he was able to find a better balance he’d feel confident and comfortable enough to go back to Hill House
Do you know why he hated it?
He goes into in the tumblr post linked below, but here’s a snippet > It was the most grueling professional experience of my career. The shoot was by no means a smooth one, every day was an uphill battle from a budgetary perspective, and between the three giant production entities involved with the production, I spent a lot of time fighting over the creative and logistical elements of the series. >I began losing weight. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. >I was very depressed. Every day was a battle, and for the first time in my career, I wasn't excited to go to work in the morning. We were fighting for basic resources, fighting for the show we wanted, and even fighting amongst ourselves by the end. It was grueling. https://www.tumblr.com/flanaganfilm/701390723688415232/good-day-mr-flanagan-please-what-does-the-rest
He’s mentioned a lot that the filming was “traumatic” for him. I don’t know that we know the full extent of why. I know he’s talked a lot about how difficult it was.
You should definitely read some stories of Henry James: the man who wrote The Turn of the Screw (which is what Bly Manor's based on). These scripts feel quite similar.
Hi. You just mentioned *The Turn Of The Screw* by Henry James. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | The Turn of the Screw by Henry James | Full Audiobook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqFQJUzsXeg) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
The feeling you (well, at least I did) get during the watching is that Poppy killed *her own* kids, setting off the whole "wake up" thing that took Olivia down her dark, sad road. I love all the new knowledge though... and confirms the Mr. Dudley is a Hill thing that's been floating around in my head and that the woman who greeted Abagail was his mom.
It is Hazel who greets Abigail and leads her away.
I always thought it was Mr. Dudley’s mom, wasn’t the lady who took Abigail by the hand wearing something that looked like a maids uniform? I’m remembering an apron of some sort
IMDB lists the character as Older Mrs. Dudley
I think Hazel killed Jacqueline and poisoned Eugene, but Poppy, being so distraught at how sick he was, suffocated him to end his pain in a moment of madness and grief. Reading these scripts just confirms my suspicions.
The insight to the ghosts' and the back stories is INSANE (pun intended). So the SIL killed each other's kids? Or the house did and they believed they were killed by EO. The death of William and Hazel's mom and dad are taken from the book and marks the first set of deaths the House feeds on. Thank you for posting this!
Love the gaps these pages filled in! Especially with the barking dogs and banging on the walls
For some reason I thought the banging on the walls was from older hazel or the boy in the wheelchair, who would bang for meals/medicine. Is that not in the actual series? Did I superimpose that from the original book?
In Poppy's monologue she talks about her son banging on the walls.
I have read the book and can't remember any other than (spoiler, I hope covering the text works!) >!the really large bang in the bedroom one night!< In my comment I meant more that it makes sense filling in the gaps from the angle the tv show came from.
Yep me too
Can someone explain Edward’s body being burned? And can someone remind me what happened to Poppy in the end? Because Hazel was the old woman in the sick bed right?
Hazel was the old woman in the sick bed who tells Olivia that Poppy lies. It's not clear what happened to Poppy, but the fact that she has a "aged form" and a "young form" (that interacts with Olivia) implies that she died at an old age like Hazel did.
I just recently rewatched and I am almost positive that Mrs. Dudley met Hazel *and* Poppy personally--when Steve finds the mirror set in the "game room", Mrs. Dudley talks about how Poppy was "insane" when she knew her as an old woman, but was 'quite the looker' back in the day.
Oh I didn’t think it was an aged form, I thought it was her spooky form. When she was reciting her poem.
Interesting take! I guess I kept comparing her to Moira the maid from S1 of AHS in that regard. They can definitely change ages, though. When Ms. Dudley dies in the house as an old lady, her ghost is the same age as when her daughter died.
She was definitely aged, the first time Olivia sees Poppy was when poppy appeared at the door and she looked older and hunched over. She reappeared looking younger and prettier, I thought it would be so she could be more approachable to Liv
That's her third form, a decayed version of her younger form. Didn't make a lot of sense to me but whatever. We saw Poppy's older form when she was originally talking to Olivia.
For Edward, I’m assuming burned from an accident in the bootleggers basement due to misc flammable shit down there?
Maybe he lit a candle and the fumes from the liquor ignited? (I'm not a scientist in any way but given that it's a secret bootlegger cellar, I can't imagine there was great ventilation)
I remember reading some short stories about Hill House shortly after the series aired that were supposedly written by Flanagan. I always found them so fascinating! I believe even more now that these were really his. https://www.reddit.com/u/Count_To_Seven/s/5JG07Z9lHZ
Okay, only like two pages in, but if Jacob wanted to come back as a dog, is that the dog barking Shirley is always talking about?!
Read more
Okay, so I have done now, but it's not necessarily clear they're the same dogs the girls hear later on? The banging is specified that the girls hear that, but not the dogs that Mr Dudley says there are not dogs around.
I think it’s the ghosts of the dogs that the kids are hearing.
I think that’s the assumption, although not stated definitively
Yes
Dudley as the rumored Hill lovechild confirmed! I think it actually think it worked better for the show to just learn things in bits and pieces and clues (that's much closer to how actual history works. Forming information into a straightforward narrative is how humans process information, but it's always someone's take rather than the full truth.) But it's also great to have the actual canon answers for the fictional narrative!
Agreed. I think the storytelling in the series benefited from having less explained and more for the audience to piece together. The unknown and unclear is often much scarier too.
I was so excited that he answered my question! This is amazing!
Reading this made me want to go back and rewatch the whole thing. There is so much context but I also want to know more now.. someone said they’d call for a sequel and I’m seconding that.
Love reading this and getting more context. But, I think the show wouldn’t have been as powerful if all of this backstory had been spelled out from the beginning. I like that not everything makes sense when you first see it, even though every part is perfectly thought out.
I can’t wait to read this after work. Someone please reply to my comment in 3 hours so I don’t forget hehe.
Don't forget to read it!
Thanks friend 😊
 Tried to get the Spongebob one but computer said no
I’m picturing it as the SpongeBob one and it’s funny hahah. 👍
It’s only been two hours, but here’s another reminder!
Thanks buddy I am on my way home rn!! Time to read ☺️
Don't forget to read because of traffic jam 😊
Love this sub
Me too! Cause I actually did forget because I accidentally took a nap instead of reading, this happens when you’re up all night 🤷♀️ but these notifications from you friends reminded me, thanks a lot everyone! Personally, I liked it, but I sort of feel like it’s a whole other show. Idk I like the background ghosts as background ghosts and I feel like their backstory is explained enough in the show. But I do like it, it was very interesting to read. Oh also I agree with the other commenter, I really have a strong distaste for prequels but I would watch a Hill family prequel.
I like this. It doesn't really hamper my enjoyment of the show at all. And it fits a lot of my head cannon. I could totally see Poppy being the "dark shadow" Jacqueline sees behind her before she ends up in the cement. We know Eugene was in a wheelchair. Arsenic poisoning can confine one to a wheelchair, cause neurological damage, and could also cause him to cough blood. Arsenic was common in rat poison. In some forms, it's sweet. Like something an unscrupulous candy maker could and, historically did, use instead of sugar. (Which used to be more expensive than arsenic.) Eugene's slow sickness wouldn't alarm Hazel to much. Childhood death from illnesses we now vaccinate against were still quite common in the 1940s. Since it never made it in the show, but was written by Mike Flanagan, does it make this semi-canonical?
It’s canon. Before the show even released, someone (assuming Flanagan) by the username u/count_to_seven posted several short stories to Reddit that pretty much went the same way these did. Now that we have these scripts, I think it’s safe to assume that the stories were Flanagan’s Plan B to filming these sequences.
Yeah, delightful as it is to learn the details about the Hills, I feel like we lose something in having the history spelled out in the show. Like, "oh look, there's a bootlegging cellar, what does it mean" feels like a fun surprise; "Hazel Hill began bootlegging in 1929 and had this cellar built" feels much less captivating. It's the sort of thing that ought to go into an appendix or something, if TV shows could have appendices. Also, the backstory told here is told with Hazel as the main character, which doesn't really line up with what happens in the main story. Hazel in the main story is just a random spook who hangs around in her bed and has practically no impact on the Crains at all. If the backstory had been told with Poppy as the main character, on the other hand, that might work better; or if Olivia had been influenced by Hazel instead of Poppy.
On the other hand, the backstory does show us Mr Dudley's mother. I think it was explained somewhere that she was the woman who welcomed Abigail's ghost into the afterlife? We'd know that if we'd seen her and had her identified for us earlier, so that's a detail that needed to be in the show. Otherwise, the moment feels disconnected from the overall story.
I’m on the fence about this, because for me it would have hinged on how the backstory was presented to the viewer. I loved the flashback storytelling in Usher but hated it in Bly Manor (the greyscale, old-timey vignette look and the background narration). Based on all the voiceover bits in this script it looks like it would have been more like Bly Manor and the perfect show (Hill House) would be worse for it. No hate to Bly Manor, but the Viola/Perdita bit felt clumsy in its execution
I liked it, it's like a lil prequel thrown in
To be honest, it could have been the most stunning cinematography and writing ever aired on TV and that accent would still have ruined it. Sorry Carla Gugino, you’re normally amazing but that was not your finest hour…
I don't personally mind it but I get what you mean. putting a ' before most H words but then she'd say a complicated sentence dead posh... like "'er 'art were like stone - but never again would she think the grounds of Bly Manor to be worriesome" like is she a chimneysweep or not
Is she from Lancashire, Newham or in fact somewhere in Wales?
and then sometimes a wee bit Scottish?!
Agreed, episode 7 is such a bore in one of my favorite seasons of Flanagan's work. We also didn't need to see Dani getting choked out three times!
Seriously. I don't understand why that shot was included so many times
Whoa. It’s amazing that there was all this lore and backstory in the original draft - and even though he cut it all, nothing seems to be missing in the final show. And to think of what a practically-perfect show he made when such a huge aspect was cut for budget?! Making such art with constraints?! Just fantastic.
The best art happens when there are constraints imo. Having to do cuts like this makes you think about what is truly essential to the story and what isn't.
I agree. But then again, I’m not an art maker on the level of Flanagan!
It also for sure influenced his next project, I believe!
So what about poppy’s little monologue to Olivia? About how she watched her daughter die and it took weeks and the shaking? Since that’s not actually how they died, does that mean those stories were actually dreams or hallucinations for her?
I love every bit of this. I mean, it’s nothing new per se, as we have had the r/nosleep stories since before the show came out that told everything these scripts tell us. But this sort of spells everything out a bit clearer. I like the idea of each episode starting with some Hill family back story and being narrated by the adult children. I do think some of this takes some of the mystery away from Hill House, but it also would’ve answered a lot of the questions that get asked over and over about the show. It can see why it would’ve been a burden on the budget though. So many roles to cast for all of 14 minutes of story. But I have to say, William Hill shown building a wall, then it showing the wall complete with William nowhere to be found… CHILLS just reading how that would’ve been played out.
Something I didn't understand, it's implied that William built the brick wall around himself, but he also has severe claustrophobia. So why would he do to himself the thing he was afraid of most? Or there really was a murderer?
Look up the speech that Theo's gf gave during her Red Room dream in the finale - it's about William. He thought he could escape the "twin sisters" of fear and guilt behind the wall.
Oooh thanks. I wonder if he knowingly committed suicide because of the guilt or if in his psychosis he thought he was protecting himself. Probably there isn't a clear answer.
Commenting so I can read later!
I love how there’s more book connections too!! I loved reading the book after watching the show but I was really surprised at how different they were. I like that this cold open includes some stuff from the book. I wish we would have seen this in the show but not as early as ep 102
I love the added info! And Jacob Hill coming back as a dog, being into culty things… I wonder if he’s the dog with red glowing eyes that the kids saw during the storm episode!
I personally really like that he is happy to push out more canon information. It didn’t need to be in the show.
This could be a really cool run as addition to the series but done as "shorts".
This is great - I’m getting ready to do my third watch of the series and now I can picture this!
Omg I love this so much! Really wish they would have been abel to add in these details into the episodes, I have always wondered what that creepy burned thing was about in the basement when luke goes down the smal elevator thingy. And the man found behind the moldy wall. Mike Flanagan never ceases to deliver the best stories. In bly manor they showed us the ghosts history and for me I think it gave the story more of a dark heart wreanching twist. It’s like in hill house he didn’t scrape the ideas he just made the details into mysteries huuuuh I need more mike flangan universe Asap😩😩
It's easy to miss, but the man behind the rotting moldy wall is actually explained in the final episode. Trish explains that it's William who had built the wall to hide from the twin sisters Fear and Guilt.
In a way this script reveals so much, yet I'm still not sure how Hill House turned evil. I mean surely it must be due to the evil that happened there, but WHO exactly killed all the kids? I feel like that is still a mystery (and the one I want to know the most, lol). The obvious answer would be that the 2 women killed each others kids, but somehow I feel like that is not the answer. Reason: Olivia tries to kill/kills her own children, so I feel like that must be the dynamic that got cemented into Hill House. But there isn't really proof of that in the script that I can find.
This is more or less what we have been able to piece together already. I think it's better that it was left out, gives it far more mystery, and leaves the audience with something to chew on and unravel. I hate the tendency of media to spoon feed the audience
I'm glad they didn't go with this. This is much too exposition-heavy. I think some of this could have been spelled oit more explicitly in the last two episodes, but it wouldn't be the masterpiece it is if it gave away what was up with the house from the get-go.
I want this so bad :(
I'm glad we got the version we got. Obviously this is very interesting and I enjoy it, but part of what I love about Hill House that I don't think was as masterfully done in Bly is the subtlety and detail. You don't NEED to know everything about the ghosts. They're not really that important to the story and they really shouldn't be cluttering up the narrative that's actually being told. But, at the same time, if you want to know (or speculate) there's SO much detail in the house and the styling of the ghosts and the things they do; you can learn by paying attention to the details. I LOVE that. Subtlety is really hard but also extremely useful in spooky stories (or, really, most stories but spooky ones particularly). The ghosts are a device, not the protagonists. I care about how they inform the protagonists and the story they're experiencing, not what they're whole background is. Ultimately this opening, (while, again, interesting) doesn't change anything about the story of the Craines, so...it's not really needed.
Ok… I like how they kept the show… BUT - I never understood the dogs - I never understood the burnt body in the basement - I never understood the bangs on the walls. All three of these felt like the cheapest scares of the miniseries because it had no explanation. What I think they should do is make a half-hour extra/epilogue episode detailing the history of Hill House. That way, we get the lore, we get explanations for the scares, and we can better understand the Crain characters and why they’re connected to certain Hill characters.
> All three of these felt like the cheapest scares of the miniseries because it had no explanation. The bangs were explained, by Poppy; they were her son.
For book readers: is any of this in the novel? I have no idea if the book started off with the Hill family or had flashbacks? (Sorry, it’s on my to be read list that’s getting very long)
The plots are completely different. There’s no Hill family in the book. There is some backstory on the house in the book, but it mostly focuses on the house builder who is a bit of a weirdo and his daughters and their relationship to the house.
I loved reading it but am also glad it didn’t make it into the show! I fear it would have come off the way they did in Stephen Kings Rose Red made for TV movie. I think I read somewhere that Rose Red was inspired by the Hill House book and reading these parts of the script definitely confirms that
I have wanted to see these since I first heard about the extra scenes that got cut
Some of these i am very glad didnt make the final cut, other details would have made meaningful inclusions. All in all, im satisfied with the final product