Carrie Episodes 5–8 Review (Part 2): The Blood Still Lands, but the Ending Wants Another Season

By Devin Smock | More Horror

SPOILERS THROUGHOUT

The first four episodes of Mike Flanagan’s Carrie convinced me there was still a reason to tell this story again. Episodes five through eight are generally effective and occasionally great, but they also begin moving away from what made that first half work so well. The series stops digging through Stephen King’s novel for pieces the previous adaptations left behind and starts building something larger around it.

I understand the temptation. This is an eight-episode television series released in 2026, not a two-hour movie made in 1976. It has to justify the extra time and acknowledge the world we currently live in. It also would not make much sense to retell the exact same story, frame by frame, and expect people to care. Most of the modernization works. The problem arrives when the show starts worrying about Carrie’s possible future before it has finished the story sitting directly in front of it.

Episode five, “Physical Education,” continues one of the series’ smarter updates by turning Carrie’s humiliation into something that cannot be contained inside a locker room. Chris Hargensen’s Carrie Red account has made public cruelty portable. It follows Carrie through the halls, into her house and onto every phone pointed in her direction. Margaret responds by building her own online army and declaring war on Chris, the school and anybody else she believes has failed her daughter.

Samantha Sloyan remains outstanding as Margaret. This version understands that Margaret can love Carrie and still destroy her. In fact, the love makes her more dangerous because it gives her a reason for everything. She can embarrass Carrie, control her and turn her pain into public content while remaining absolutely certain she is protecting her.

Carrie also begins using her abilities deliberately. When she breaks Chris’s nose, it feels good for a second. Summer H. Howell lets that satisfaction register before the fear catches up with it. Carrie has spent her life being told she is powerless, dirty and wrong. Now she can move people without touching them. Of course some part of her enjoys it. That does not suddenly make her evil. It makes her human, which is more uncomfortable.

The Emaline reveal also works at this point. Carrie learns that the one friend encouraging her to use her powers may not physically be there at all. The stolen footage showing Carrie speaking to an empty room is cruel in exactly the way this series understands. Even something private and possibly supernatural can become content for a pack of bored teenagers.

“Home Economics,” the sixth episode, is probably the strongest of this group. The attempted mediation between the Whites and the Hargensens becomes a pressure cooker while students, parents and cameras gather outside. The staging keeps tightening the room until an apology that might have ended everything is deliberately ruined by Margaret. Then the anger spills into the parking lot.

From a filmmaking perspective, this is where the longer format earns its keep. The conflict is mostly people sitting in a room, but the episode makes the world outside that room feel ready to burst through the walls. Carrie and Chris are still the center of it, but every adult arrives carrying a separate agenda. Nobody is actually listening to the two girls whose lives they claim to be protecting.

The storyline involving Seth Peist’s suicide is heavy and probably could have used more room. Still, it gives the Carrie Red account consequences beyond Carrie. The show understands that exposing someone online is not automatically justice, even when one accusation happens to contain some truth. Once the crowd gets fed, it does not stop to check what parts are real.

The episode ends with Carrie stopping Margaret’s hand before she can slap her and putting her inside the prayer closet. That reversal is simple, mean and completely earned. Margaret built the closet as a place to remove Carrie from the world. Now she is the one behind the door.

“Romantic Literature” brings the story toward the night everybody knows is coming. Tommy asks Carrie to prom, Carrie stands in front of the town and argues that the students should still be allowed to have it, and Chris and Billy prepare the pig’s blood. There is no real mystery about where this is headed. The tension comes from watching Carrie briefly get the ordinary life she has been denied.

The prom material works because the series lets Carrie enjoy herself before taking it away. Howell and Joel Oulette give Carrie and Tommy a believable kindness that does not feel like he is merely completing an assignment from Sue. Carrie made her dress. She came into the room frightened. Then she danced, smiled and won. For a few minutes, the story allows her to believe she belongs there.

Then the bucket falls.

The blood, the silence and the first nervous laugh still work. It is one of those images that has been copied and parodied so many times that making it frightening again is not easy. Flanagan and his crew manage it. The effects, sound and scale of the destruction in “AP Physics” are also impressive. Phones shatter, the gym collapses and the entire room turns into panic. Blood, glass, electricity. It is ugly and effective.

My larger problem is what the episode does with Carrie’s responsibility.

Emaline offers to take control, and much of the massacre happens while Carrie is no longer entirely steering her own body. I can see the screenwriting problem Flanagan was trying to solve. The audience has spent seven episodes caring about Carrie, and now the story expects us to watch her kill a gymnasium full of people, including students who had nothing to do with the prank. Letting Emaline take over keeps Carrie sympathetic and leaves her usable for whatever comes next.

It is a clever solution on paper. It is also less interesting.

The horror of Carrie has always lived inside the contradiction. Carrie is a victim, and Carrie becomes responsible for something terrible. Taking some of that choice away from her softens the ugliest part of the story. She still knowingly kills Chris and Billy, so the show does not completely wash the blood from her hands, but it does move much of the massacre onto Emaline. The result is bigger mythology and less tragedy.

That mythology takes over much of the ending. Emaline is an astral projector. Adelaide and her group of psychically gifted women have been watching Carrie. The documentary interviews are not quite what they appeared to be. Carrie survives and leaves Chamberlain with Emaline, opening the road toward another season.

Some of this is interesting. Carrie discovering that she is not the only person in the world with these abilities could lead somewhere worth watching. The idea also grows from material King placed around the edges of the novel. I understand why Flanagan wanted to pull on that thread.

Still, the final two episodes feel less interested in uncovering parts of Carrie that the movies missed and more interested in turning Carrie into the entrance to a larger universe. That shift took me away from the intimate horror that worked so well earlier in the season. The first half gave the story room to breathe. The ending starts constructing hallways into other stories.

The performances keep it together. Howell carries the fear, anger and confused pleasure of Carrie discovering what she can do. Sloyan makes Margaret frightening without turning her into a screaming religious cartoon. Alison Thornton gives Chris enough damage and desperation that she remains a person even when her choices become indefensible. Matthew Lillard also brings real warmth to Principal Grayle, a man trying to control something that has already grown beyond the school.

Episodes five through eight are still good television. There are memorable sequences, strong performances and several choices I genuinely admire. They simply do not hit me as hard as the first four episodes. The closer the series gets to the blood everyone expects, the more attention it gives to the story that might happen afterward.

I would watch that second season. I just wish this one had allowed Carrie’s story to finish bleeding before looking down the road.

6.8/10