Mike Flanagan’s excellent series adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie keeps a lot of the story beats you’d expect. It’s still about an outcast girl (Summer H. Howell) who is bullied in school. She’s still a psychic prodigy who takes her telekinetic revenge on her classmates at the prom. It also features an overbearing religious mother (Samantha Sloyan) who is often the true villain of the piece. But Flanagan chose to reinvent both Carrieta and Margaret White for the modern day in this Carrie series, and it works far better than it probably should. Some elements came directly from King’s novel, and were not used in any previous versions. Here’s what Flanagan changed to Carrie and Margaret White’s stories for this modern update.
In Stephen King’s original 1974 novel Carrie, his first published book, Carrie and Margaret White lived alone from the start. Her father, Ralph White, was never in the picture. King explains that he died in a grisly construction accident seven months before she was born. Like Margaret, he was a hardcore Christian fundamentalist, who believed that sex was sinful in all its forms.
But one night, he went out drinking, and King’s text heavily implies that Ralph assaulted Margaret, resulting in her pregnancy. In the 1976 film, it seems as if Ralph White didn’t die at all. Carrie suggests that he ran away with another woman, leaving his family behind. But both narratives imply that Carrie’s telekinetic powers comes from her father’s side of the family. The maligned sequel The Rage: Carrie 2 doubles down on this theory.
Carrie 2026 Reinserts Ralph White Into the Narrative
For the new version, Mike Flanagan reimagined Ralph White. He now was not a deadbeat dad, but an military veteran. However, he was still a Christian fundamentalist and paranoid conspiracy theorist. The series implies it was his call to hide Carrie’s birth and entire existence from the community. He did this so he could raise her away from the “evils of the outside world.”
However, as in the novel, he dies in an accident on a construction site, which leads local authorities to discover his wife and daughter. But he remained with his family until his death when Carrie is a teen. This results in Carrie forcibly attending public school, something she had never done until she was 16. In the novel, she always attended public school.
Margaret White Is (Slightly) Less Extreme Than Stephen King’s Version
Margaret White in the novel worked at a laundromat to pay for her and Carrie’s life after Ralph died. In the series, Margaret finds work at a big box store instead after Ralph’s untimely passing. She’s still hyper religious and overbearing, but doesn’t seem to hate Carrie in the way she does in the novel and original film. This is probably because Carrie doesn’t represent a sexual assault to her or a deadbeat husband who ran off and left them. It’s perhaps the biggest change to her character from King’s original text, except for the change revealed in the final episode, which truly shifts her narrative.
Margaret White Has Powers Like Her Daughter in the 2026 Carrie
In the finale episode, after the Carrie’s rampage resulting in hundreds of deaths, she confronts her mother like she does in the novel. As their home collapses in on them, we see that Margaret White herself has telekinetic powers, and is holding part of the house up from crushing her. This is a big change from the novel and films, where Margaret dies after attempting to kill Carrie. In Mike Flanagan’s take, it’s clear that the power Carrie wields comes via her mother’s side of the family, not her father’s. Margaret is taken by the group of psychically powered women and interrogated about what happened. She confesses that she believes this little bit of power only happened this one time, and she doesn’t believe she can summon it again. Knowing that, these women execute Margaret, as they see her as an impediment to Carrie coming into her power.
Mike Flanagan’s Carrie White Lives to See Another Day (Or Another Season)
Of course, the other big change to King’s story happens to Carrie herself. Unlike the novel and most adaptations, Carrie survives the massacre in her hometown that she caused. Or, as we learn, partially caused. It seems the worst acts in town, including all the deliberate murders of her classmates, were caused by astral projecter Emaline (Thalia Dudek) who befriends Carrie in the series. She mentally “took the wheel” during the worst parts of Carrie’s massacre.
We’re not even sure if Carrie remembers how much of a role she played in these events. All of this is leading to a potential second season, which would be completely off-book, as Carrie dies in almost every previous iteration. But Stephen King has given Mike Flanagan high praise for his adaptation of Carrie, so if he’s ok with it, how mad can we get? It cetainly leads to interesting possibilites going forward.
All eight episodes of Carrie are now streaming on Prime Video.