Is ‘Carrie’ the Beginning of Mike Flanagan’s Stephen King Universe?
By Dread Central
4 min readWhat if prom night was just the beginning? Now that Mike Flanagan’s Carrie is streaming in full on Prime Video, […]
What if prom night was just the beginning? Now that Mike Flanagan’s Carrie is streaming in full on Prime Video, […]
For those of us who need the explanation, King’s official glossary describes the Breakers as psychically gifted prisoners whose abilities are used to weaken the Beams supporting the Dark Tower. The Tower holds together a multiverse, making its destruction considerably worse than one disastrous prom.
That’s where the theory gets interesting. Emaline has been approaching someone who is incredibly powerful, isolated, and desperate for a friend. We eventually learn she’s real and has abilities of her own. Her influence over Carrie also becomes deeply troubling. Viewed through the creator’s interpretation, that relationship could serve a purpose beyond the story we’ve just watched.
To be clear, Emaline hasn’t been identified as a Breaker. That’s the theory. But Flanagan has already entertained the larger connection.
As Dread Central reported in September, he was asked whether Carrie could become an entry point into The Dark Tower. In the original Entertainment Weekly interview, he discussed the possibility of using Carrie to fulfill a narrative role occupied by other characters in the books.
“Carrie White could achieve the same narrative purpose pretty cleanly,” Flanagan said.
That’s a pretty substantial possibility to put out there.
King’s official connections guide shows how this already works on the page. Father Callahan from Salem’s Lot becomes part of the Dark Tower saga. Ted Brautigan connects Hearts in Atlantis to it. Insomnia, The Talisman, and Black House also have links to the larger mythology.
The creator’s video imagines adaptations such as Firestarter, The Talisman, and Black House eventually joining the picture. It’s fun to consider, although getting those stories together onscreen would be another matter entirely.
That’s also why Flanagan’s recent comments about rights are worth revisiting. In The Playlist’s October 9 interview, he explained that The Dark Tower scripts are progressing, but assembling characters controlled by different studios remains a major obstacle.
Amazon owning MGM doesn’t magically solve that. Both Firestarter films, for example, are Universal releases. And Flanagan’s rights negotiations could simply be what’s necessary to adapt The Dark Tower itself, rather than evidence of a secret slate of interconnected shows.
In that same Playlist interview, when asked about additional King projects beyond The Dark Tower and The Mist, he said, “I can tell you we’re not playing with any others.”
Still, Carrie has already expanded its world well beyond one teenager discovering telekinesis. Between Emaline, Adelaide, and the matching necklaces we’ve been examining, Flanagan has given us plenty of reasons to wonder who else is out there and what they want.
Our own Daniel Kurland called the series “an extremely rewarding update of King’s debut novel” in his four-star review. For me, part of the excitement now is that the finale leaves room to explore something unfamiliar.
Could Carrie be our way into that bigger universe? Nothing has been announced, but Flanagan has clearly considered the possibility. After watching what he’s built here, I’d love to see how far he could take it.
