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The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

Episode 9 - The Beast in the Jungle

Episode 9, the finale of The Haunting of Bly Manor, begins with Hannah back in her memory of Owen’s job interview for the cook’s position. Unlike the last time we saw Hannah in this memory in Episode 5, now that Miles/Peter showed her her corpse in the well, Hannah has stopped being in denial and has come to the complete acceptance of being dead.

It is also this scene where we find out why Hannah always returns to this memory in particular and why it’s so important to her. Hannah tells Owen that “here, right here, this moment ‘what a curious and charming man’, I thought. Oh and it had been so long I’d forgotten that feeling but I looked at you and I almost forgot myself for a moment”. In saying this, Hannah is telling Owen that this was the moment that she fell in love with him, the moment that she was reminded of “that feeling” - love at first sight.

Despite now fully accepting that she’s dead, Hannah tells Owen that she doesn’t want to leave the memory and just wants to stay there with him forever, because if she leaves she doesn’t know where she’ll “go afterwards”. But Owen tells her to “be brave in death” and that she isn’t “so selfish” and so she must bring herself out of the memory to warn the others. He comforts her by telling her that he’ll “always be here” (in her heart) because she has loved him, which now means that he will always live on in her heart no matter what happens to her. He is telling her that she shouldn’t be afraid of what happens in death, as when you love someone they can never disappear from you because the imprint of the love that they made within your heart will always remain there.

Having left her memory, Hannah runs outside to try and save Dani and to stop The Lady of the Lake by standing inbetween her and the manor. However, now that Hannah is no longer in denial about her death, she has become a ‘proper’ ghost and can no longer interact with physical objects, and so The Lady walks straight through her.

To try and save Dani, Flora runs up to her parents bedroom and sits on the bed. The lady does the same thing which we learn that she did with the Doll Face Ghost in Episode 8, releasing Dani and instead taking Flora after mistaking her for her daughter.

On her way to the lake, Henry arrives and gets in The Lady’s way and so she chokes him so that she continue her journey. However, Henry “hovered between life and death”. Due to Owen’s attempts to recucitate him, and because The Lady’s gravity well releases all the ghosts soon after, Henry is able to be brought back to life.

We see the extent of Rebecca’s selfless love for Flora when she tells her that “you won’t feel it” as Flora is being taken into the lake. Rebecca tells her “I’ll fell it for you, I’ll just tuck you away one last time... you let me handle this part”. Rebecca is telling Flora that she’ll take posession of her body for her and tuck her away in a memory instead, so that she won’t have to feel the pain of drowning. This is not just a selfless act on it’s own, but it’s made even more impactful since Peter left her to feel the pain of drowning by herself. Rebecca has already endured the pain of drowning but is willing to do it again for Flora’s sake and she’s being there to metaphorically hold Flora’s hand since there was no one to be there to hold her hand when it happened to her.

Dani then runs out from the manor and to the lake. Just like Rebecca, she knows true selfless love and is willing to do anything to save Flora. Dani says “it’s you, it’s me, it’s us”, something which Older Jamie says that was “something she did not entirely understand”. The reason Jamie says that it was something which Dani “did not entirely understand” is because Dani had seen Flora and Miles say this phrase in the attic, but she obviously hadn’t had enough time to process why they said it or what the effect of saying it is, she just “felt in her bones” that it did something important.

Just like we saw with Miles in Episode 7, both of Dani’s eyes were blue but one of them turns brown when Viola accepts Dani’s invitation. This tells us that the person is not wholly themselves any longer but that they have invited someone else into themself.

Just before Hannah gets released “to some other place” from the manor’s gravity well, Hannah asks Henry to “please tell Owen I’m sorry. Tell him I love him and the rest, well... it’s just...”. Hannah doesn’t get the opportunity to finish her sentence, but just like in Episode 5, this is a reference back to The Haunting of Hill House and the word that she was about to say is “confetti”.

In Hill House, Nell tells her siblings in The Red Room that “I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That’s all. The rest is confetti”. In the same way, Hannah is telling Owen that all the other moments in her life were just confetti, quickly passing moments falling all around her, seen and gone within the blink of an eye. But because she loved him completely and he also loved her completely, the love that they shared is all that really mattered.

The reference back to Hill House also holds the shared sentiment of living on in people’s hearts and memories. Just as Nell says in the same speech as the ‘confetti speech’, that “there’s no without, I am not gone. I am scattered into so many pieces, sprinkled on your life like... new snow” and also just as Flora said in Episode 3 that “dead doesn’t mean gone”. Hannah is saying that she’s not really gone from Owen’s life because the moments of love which they shared together are now scatted all around him and throughout the different memories he has had in his life, as well as the memories that he is yet to make.

After Hannah’s body is found at the bottom of the well, Older Jamie says that “the cook rode with her all the way to the coroner. And there, he insisted on cleaning her himself”. This again reminds us of The Haunting of Hill House, where Shirley insisted on preparing Nell’s body for the funeral herself. In the same way as Shirley did with Nell, Owen loves Hannah so much that he wants to be the one to have the intimate job of cleaning and preparing the body of the one he loved most.

As Dani is telling Jamie how she can feel Viola “waiting” to take over her body like “an angry, empty, lonely beast”, Jamie asks if she wants “company while you wait for your beast in the jungle”. Jamie makes this offer to Dani completely out of a selfless love, and again referring back to their conversation about “love and posession” from Episode 3, she shows Dani love but does not treat her as a posession. Jamie is aware that she will one day lose Dani and could have saved herself the heartache by cutting ties with her now, but she’s still willing to be the one to keep her “company” and be with her until the time comes.

When Dani and Jamie are saying goodbye to the Wingrave’s, Flora gives Dani the doll which she made and which represents her. Flora says to Dani, “for you, you must have it, it’s you”. This draws a very stark contrast with Episode 1 when Dani gestures towards the doll Flora is holding and asks “is that me?”, and Flora replies “why, no, silly, you’re you”. From the parallel being drawn between these two scenes, we can see that Flora recognises there is something off about Dani that is not making her fully herself, unlike in Episode 1 when Dani was completely herself. Now Dani is more like a ‘doll’, and a puppet to be one day taken over by Viola, than she is herself.

After Jamie and Dani had been together for “a trip around the sun”, Jamie comes into their florists, The Leafling, and gifts Dani a moonflower (presumably as a one year anniversary gift). This is the second and last appearance of the moonflower, which we first saw in Episode 6 when Jamie. The moonflower is a symbol of Jamie and Dani’s relationship in many ways. It represents how they both need to put “exhaustive effort” into it but they receive something beautiful and irreplaceable as a reward for doing so. The flower also symbolises the brevity of the time that they have to spend together and the rarity of the type of love that they share, but also how it’s all still worth it just to have a moment of the love that they share.

As a result of the things that the moonflower symbolises, it makes sense that Jamie gives one to Dani for their one year anniversary and to tell her that she’s “actually pretty in love” with her. The flower is a reminder of all the start of their relationship, as well as a reminder that their love is short, rare and should be cherished while it’s in bloom.

A small little detail; is that the film which Dani and Jamie are watching in the montage of them is the 1966 film, ‘How to Steal a Million’.

We are then told that “five years would pass, and there was peace” before Dani starts to see The Lady of the Lake. Five years was the same amount of time that Viola was hanging onto life before everything changed and she saw that a love between Arthur and her sister Perdita was growing - they both had five years before everything starts to go wrong. It was probably because Viola had so much anger in her heart that she started to appear after five years, with the attitude that if she only got five years before everything changed then Dani should only get the same amount of time.

When Jamie and Dani go to visit Owen’s restaurant in France, it’s revealed that the restaurant is named ‘A Batter Place’ - a pun on the idiom ‘a better place’. This is not only a pun, which is something that Owen was known for, but it also indicates towards Hannah being in ‘a better place’ now she has been released from the ‘gravity�� of the manor. This melding of Owen’s pun and Hannah’s fate reflects the love shared between Owen and Hannah.

Just like how Dani saw Eddie’s spectre in mirrors and some reflective surfaces, she also starts to see The Lady of the Lake as her own reflection. Traditionally mirrors and reflections have always been seen as symbolising portals for the dead to be able to pass into our world, as well as ways for the dead souls to enter the souls of the living.

When Owen tells Dani and Jamie that Miles and Flora don’t remember anything that happened at Bly, we also see a subtle flash of jealousy come over Dani. This displays to us how the Lady of the Lake is starting to take over Dani, as she didn’t previously show the nature in her character to be jealous that the children didn’t remember the trauma of what happened to them; but had she been her whole self, she probably would have been happpy for them that they didn’t remember what had happened.

When Jamie goes after Dani back to the lake at Bly, when we see Dani at the bottom of the lake she has two brown eyes, telling us that the Lady had managed to fully take control of Dani.

A thing to note; when we see the shot of Jamie looking at her reflection in the mirror, looking to see if Dani will appear to her, she is wearing the pink shirt that Dani was wearing in the flower shop earlier in the episode, when Jamie told her that she was in love with her.

As we see Older Jamie do her ritual of looking in reflective surfaces before she goes to bed, we see a hand with a wedding ring on it touching Jamie’s right shoulder. This is the same shoulder which we see her look at at the beginning of Episode 1, insinuating that Dani does come in some shape or form to visit Jamie.

You can access a MASTERLIST of my other analyses for Killing Eve and The Haunting of Bly Manor here.

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starring-movies · 3 years

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The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

Episode 8 - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes

Episode 8 is the penultimate episode of The Haunting of Bly Manor. This episode, as well as Episode 5, are some of the absolute standout episodes of the season and in this one we are given the origin story of who The Lady of the Lake was.

We find out that “towards the middle of the 17th century” the current owner of Bly Manor at that time had died, and he left his two daughters as his heirs to the estate. His daughters were Viola and Perdita, and Perdita was five years younger than her sister. It’s an interesting detail that in Latin, ‘perdita’ means ruined, wasted or lost. In accordance with the meaning of her name, Perdita’s life is completely wasted and lost to Viola.

In life - Perdita lost her husband to Viola (Arthur was first interested in her but Viola presented herself as the lady of the manor so that he would marry her instead), she lost most of her life to caring for Viola when she became sick with “the lung” and she literally lost her life to Viola when Viola strangled her.

In death - Perdita gets lost as a ghost when her face and memories all fade.

An amazing detail; is that when Viola and Perdita are mingling with the various suitors, no one in this scene actually opens their mouth when it looks like they’re speaking to another person. Everyone makes the physical gestures towards one another which you make when you speak to someone (like one person leaning in to be heard and the other leaning in to listen), but no one’s mouth actually opens in speech. This small detail, as well as the whole episode being in black and white, helps to immerse us into the fairytale or gothic romance-like tone of the episode.

After Viola marries Arthur, they have a child together. We discover that the origin of the phrase “it is you, it is me, it is us”, which is used to invite a ghost into a person, was first said by Viola to her baby daughter.

It’s not made completely clear, but it’s straight after Viola notices Perdita and Arthur looking at one another that “her suspicion began as small”, but also when “the tickle in her lungs” began. This may just be a coincidence, but if it’s not, then it’s strongly suggested to us that Viola’s illness stemmed from the jealousy and suspicion that planted itself within her - like an almost ‘Dorian Grey-style’ physical manifestation of the jealousy that infected her heart.

When the doctor’s treatments for Viola’s illness don’t work and her condition starts to look more terminal, Arthur calls the vicar to her bedside to preform an absolution rite. Out of sheer stubborn wilfulness Viola refuses to repeat the rites, saying to the vicar for him to “tell your god, that I do not go”. Arthur tries to covnince her to repeat the rites by telling her “it is not about your body any longer, my love. It is your soul we must treat. It is your soul I worry for”. Again it’s not made explicitly clear, but it’s strongly suggested that Viola doesn’t die peacefullly and her soul is imprisoned in the chest of clothes because she didn’t say the rites and so her soul was not properly treated before dying.

As Older Jamie is telling the story, she says that “then five times around the sun, and all is different”, as this was when Viola found Perdita dancing with Arthur and started to treat Perdita awfully. In Episode 9 Older Jamie also says that “five years would pass, and there was peace” for her and Dani, before Viola started to take over Dani’s body. It seems that Viola was given “five times around the sun” before she started to see the connection between Perdita and Arthur growing stronger and when all became different; and so Dani and Jamie were given “five years” of peace before Viola reared her head and made everything different for them.

We also see a similarity being drawn between Viola and Peter. Viola is still hanging onto her life and refusing to die and Perdita says to her that “you should think of her, Vi. Think of Isabel. What will she be left with, what memories of you will she carry? Will it be this? This version of you? Because Viola, with love, let it be anything else”. It’s clear that Viola obviously does love her daughter but at the same time, by refusing to let go, she’s acting somewhat selfishly. Perdita is right when she says that Isabel will not carry any fond memories of her mother, but only a vision of her slowly wasting away in a “living death”. In the same way, Peter does love Rebecca but his decision to drown her was a completely selfish one, only thinking about his own loneliness and what he wanted.

We then see that Viola’s soul has been trapped in the chest which she locked her clothes in. While trapped in the chest she repeats a constant cycle of “sleeping, waking, walking” as she waits to see her daughter who will open the chest when she is of age. However when Perdita is the one who opens Viola’s chest, Viola strangles her as revenge for being killed by her and for her opening the chest that was supposed to be guarded until Isabel could open it. When Viola sees Arthur’s reaction to finding Perdita’s dead body, she doesn’t see “the changes wrought of time” but she sees “only his sadness”. This is heartbreaking for Viola, to see the man who was once her husband lamenting the loss of her sister.

Thinking that Viola’s chest was cursed, Arthur throws it into the lake so that Isabel would not succumb to the same curse that killed Perdita. It is this “absolute abandonment”, this “final insult”, which breaks Viola’s heart completely, and it’s from the anguish she feels and “stubbornness alone” which stops her “being pulled towards some other place, some realm beyond”. This stubbornness that Viola had, and because she ignored the pull from the “realm beyond”, meant that “she instead made her own gravity, gravity of will”.

We find out that The Lady of the Lake’s journey through Bly Manor started when her chest was thrown into the lake. The trip that Viola makes is in the hope that she would one day find her daughter. She walks to her old bedroom in the hope that she will find her daughter but then when she doesn’t find her, she remembers that she died and that her daughter had left her. This remembering would break her heart after every single trip, and so she would sleep to forget what had happened and then would wake back up having forgotten. It is also revealed to us that most of the other ghosts which we see in the manor are people who got in the way of her path, the most tragic of whom was the Doll Face Ghost, who was a little boy that she mistook for her daughter and drowned.

Through this we are also presented the idea of the danger of becoming blindsided by anguish and stubbornness. Viola began her journey through the manor with the purpose of finding her daughter, but then as time went on and she forgot more and more, the journey just started to become a ritual, something repeatedly done mindlessly and with no purpose. Through this repeated ritual, she completely loses the purpose for which she once did this, and as a result takes the life of an innocent boy because she could only remember that she was searching for a child and so she thought that this must be the child whom she sought. Viola allows anger and grief from love to seethe inside her, and eventually it takes over her completely, leaving only that anger in control of the shell of her body.

As well as this, we find out that the reason that all the ghosts have lost their faces is due to a side effect of forgetting. As each of the ghosts gradually forget who they once were, this gets physically shown on their face. It is a visual representation of memories fading as the details slowly get lost and then they are eventually lost completely.

You can read my previous The Haunting of Bly Manor posts here:-

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - The Altar of the Dead

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

Episode 7 - The Two Faces, Part Two

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starring-movies · 3 years

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https://twitter.com/gayvillanelles/status/1432529070827339780?s=19

this one too!

Omg that’s even cooler!! Thanks so much for showing me these, it’s made my day!!! Xxx

Here’s the link to the post again if anyone wants to see it:

https://twitter.com/gayvillanelles/status/1432529070827339780?s=21

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starring-movies · 3 years

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Starring Movies - MASTERLIST

Killing Eve

First Introduction to Villanelle

First Introduction to Eve

S1, E1 - Nice Face

S1, E2 - I’ll Deal With Him Later

S1, E3 - Don’t I Know You?

S1, E4 - Sorry Baby

S1, E5 - I Have a Thing about Bathrooms

S1, E6 - Take Me to the Hole!

S1, E7 - I Don’t Want to Be Free

S1, E8 - God, I’m Tired

S2, E1 - Do You Know How to Dispose of a Body?

S2, E2 - Nice and Neat

S2, E3 - The Hungry Caterpillar

S2, E4 - Desperate Times

S2, E5 - Smell Ya Later

S2, E6 - I Hope You Like Missionary!

S2, E7 - Wide Awake

S2, E8 - You’re Mine

S3, E1 - Slowly Slowly Catchy Monkey

S3, E2 - Management Sucks

S3, E3 - Meetings Have Biscuits

S3, E4 - Still Got It

S3, E5 - Are You From Pinner? [Part 1]

S3, E5 - Are You From Pinner? [Part 2]

S3, E6 - End of Game

S3, E7 - Beautiful Monster

S3, E8 - Are You Leading or Am I? [Part1]

S3, E8 - Are You Leading or Am I? [Part2]

The Haunting of Bly Manor

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - The Alter of the Dead

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

Episode 7 - The Two Faces, Part Two

Episode 8 - The Romance of Certain Old Clothes

Episode 9 - The Beast in the Jungle

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starring-movies · 3 years

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a screenshot of your ke 3x08 blew up on twitter! see @/gayvillanelles

Wow that so cool! Thank you so much for letting me know!!! X

Here’s the link if anyone else wanted to see the post:

https://twitter.com/gayvillanelles/status/1433625042273800192?s=21

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starring-movies · 3 years

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Hey, i've read your analysis about killing eve and absolutely loved them! For me, I can't see related things in a scene, analyse the surrounding etc. But reading through your blog was so helpful and exciting. The connections you made with everything is definitely amazing and I wanted to tell that being able to do that requires a deep knoeledge about lots of stuff and you're so talented (and hardworking too). I just wanted to appreciate your hard work with this looong ask. Hope you'll have a good day!!!

Thank you so much!! I appreciate you sending a message so much and I’m so so glad you’ve been enjoying reading the posts!!! And I hope you have a good day too! :)

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starring-movies · 3 years

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When are you gonna post the last two? sorry to bother but plssss

I’m so sorry I know they’ve been ages in coming, I’ve just been hit with a lot of university work but when it’s June ill finish the last two!! Sorry for the wait I know it must be so frustrating :( Thank you for the support in reading them though! :)

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starring-movies · 3 years

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The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

*SPOILERS*

Episode 7 - The Two Faces, Part Two

Episode 7 of The Haunting of Bly Manor is mainly a continuation of Episode 3, which has the same name, as we explore more of Peter and Rebecca’s backstory and a lot more questions also start to get answered.

The episode starts as Dani has been tied up and is coming back into consciousness after Miles (possessed by Peter) hit her over the head at the end of Episode 6. As Peter is trying to set his plan in motion, for him and Rebecca to possess Miles and Flora’s bodies permanently, he suddenly gets thrown into a memory. Unlike Hannah, Rebecca and Flora who ‘dream-hop’ through many of their memories, Peter only ever gets put into one of his memories.

The memory that Peter repeatedly gets pulled into is the memory of a time when his mother came to visit him. Peter’s mother knocks on the door and when Peter lets her in, she tells him “I’m out” and that this time she’s out “forever”, because she says “I suppose they’d say I’m cured”. It’s never explicitly made clear where she’s “out” from, but it’s most likely that she’s been released from a mental institution for her failure to help her son when she knew that her husband was molesting him (which is something that is insinuated later in the episode).

Peter’s mother tells Peter that she needs money from him now that she’s been released and so she blackmails him, saying that she’ll show Henry his “juvenile records”, if he doesn’t give her any money.

The scene then moves to the memory which Rebecca has entered, where we find out that “priceless heirlooms” have been stolen from the manor and that Peter had been embezzling money from Henry. From this it becomes apparent that in Episode 5 when Hannah saw Peter stealing a necklace from Charlotte’s vanity, he was stealing it so that he could sell it and give the money to his other to keep her quiet. It seems that Peter was stealing the “priceless heirlooms”, such as the necklace, to give the money to his mother. However, the “quarter million pounds” that Peter embezzled from Henry most likely really was for the purpose that he said - so that he could run away to make a life in America with Rebecca and free himself from his mother’s blackmailing.

A small little detail; is that after Rebecca finds out that Peter is dead, we see her zoned out in one of Miles and Flora’s lessons. On the desk that Rebecca is sitting behind, there are some word blocks that spell out “redrum”, which is a nod to the 1980’s film ‘The Shining’. Mike Flanagan created The Haunting of Bly Manor and also directed the 2019 sequel to The Shining, Doctor Sleep.

It’s interesting to note that in The Shining “redrum” spells “murder” backwards, and Rebecca ends up being murdered by Peter.

This is not the only reference to The Shining, as there was another one in Episode 1. When we see Dani leaving the hostel which she’s been staying at, as she’s shutting the door behind her, we can see that her room number was 217. In the original book of The Shining by Steven King, the haunted room that Jack Torrance enters is room 217 (but in the movie it’s room 237).

As well as these two instances, there is yet another reference to The Shining, also in Episode 1. When Miles and Flora are locking Dani in the cupboard, we get a shot of them just before the shut the door on her. The shot of Miles and Flora standing side by side with one another evokes the memorable shot of the twins in The Shining.

Rebecca tries to suggest to Peter that they still continue their previous plan to run off to America and tells him that she doesn’t mind if people think that she’s “some batty old witch who talks to thin air”. Peter tells her that they can’t do that because he “can’t leave Bly” and he “can’t get past the end of the drive”, but then he discovers that he can possess Rebecca’s body just like he can with Miles’. The two of them devise a plan where Peter will possess Rebecca’s body and he’ll try to leave while still in her body. They carry out the plan the next morning but as Rebecca runs to the boundary of the grounds, Peter is ejected from her body.

This brings up a question of confusion, as in Episode 9 Dani manages to leave Bly with The Lady in the Lake in partial possession of her body and neither of them were thrown out from Dani’s body. Since Dani is able to leave the grounds, the reason that Peter was pushed out of Rebecca’s body must be because he exited her body himself. As he was about to cross the boundary he probably came to the realisation that if he left while still in Rebecca’s body, then he and Rebecca will never be able to be properly together again and so he pulled himself out so that he could think of another way that they could be together. However it also could be that Dani stopped Viola’s gravity well when she invited Viola into herself (we see all the other ghosts are released when this happens in Episode 9), but this still wouldn’t explain Peter’s oddly quiet reaction when he gets pushed out of Rebecca’s body at the manor’s boundary.

This would also make sense of a lot of a few other things as well. It would make sense of the odd reaction that Peter gives after the failed attempt at escape, when Rebecca says “it didn’t work” - he doesn’t look particularly sad that it didn’t work, even though he was so enthusiastic to finally be able leave and be with Rebecca. It would also make sense of when Older Jamie says that “Peter had not been back to find her, he had left her at the boundary of Bly”. Peter disappears for so long because he’s trying to come up with a different plan for them to be able to be with one another.

After trying to leave the manor in Rebecca’ body doesn’t work, for whatever reason, Peter then comes back to Rebecca with his new plan. Peter explains that when he tries to take possession of Rebecca’s body, neither of them mean to, but he always tries to push her out and she always tries to push him out and so the possession is “temporary”. He tells her that there is a way that they can be together forever and able to touch each other but to do this he says he needs to be given permanent possession of her body and for this to happen she needs to invite him in and give him consent. However when he’s explaining this to Rebecca, Peter doesn’t explain that his grand plan for them to be together means that he’ll take over her body and they’ll only be together by being tucked away in a memory together.

After being given consent from Rebecca to have permanent control over her body, which he gets through the phrase “it’s you, it’s me, it’s us”, Peter carries out his plan. Rebecca gets tucked away “in a memory of them”, and although they are together and can touch one another, this is not what she wanted (nor is this what he really promised to her when he got her to give him her consent) and it’s not ideal for him either as he is now left in Rebecca’s body “here, alone”.

Since Peter is now alone in Rebecca’s body and he doesn’t want to continue to be alone, he decides that he’ll drown her body so that they’ll both become ghosts and they will both be together that way. We see Rebecca (possessed by Peter) crying as she walks into the lake, and then we see Peter crying in bed with Rebecca in the tucked away memory, which is how we know that Peter was in possession of Rebecca’s body when she drowned.

But then as the water starts to enter Rebecca’s body’s lungs, Peter leaves and Rebecca herself is forced back into control of her own body again. We see just what type of a person he is, as he leaves her on her own to feel the pain of the drowning. In a parallel to this, this shows us just how much Rebecca cares for Flora, as in Episode 9 she tells Flora that she’ll take over her body before she’s dragged into the lake and she’ll feel everything for her - a completely selfless action considering that she’s already had to endure the pain once.

Like Peter and Hannah, Rebecca immediately turns into a ghost and we see her mourning her body and the betrayal of her trust, as she stands by the side of the lake and cries. This explains to us why, when Rebecca was possessing Flora’s body, she always walked to the lake - because she sits by the lake and mourns her life.

This is the most prominent example of the love versus possession conversation that Dani and Jamie were having in Episode 3. Peter says that he loves Rebecca, but he displays no true love for her at all, to ask for her complete trust and consent and then to betray her by stealing her life. Peter is acting completely on selfishness and is treating Rebecca like a possession who he manipulate for his own personal benefit. To truly love someone is to want the absolute best for them, even if that comes at your own expense; but when Peter makes this decision he isn’t thinking about Rebecca at all, he’s only thinking about his own desires and loneliness.

After Peter drowns her body, Rebecca returns once more to the memory of when Peter gave her Charlotte’s fur coat. The memory was once a very happy one for Rebecca, but now it’s been tainted by Peter’s selfish actions. Rebecca now sees how Peter manipulated her as she says that “I didn’t agree”, she only agreed to them being together not for him to take her life from her.

Peter suddenly gets pulled back into the only memory that he gets pulled into, the memory of his mother coming to visit him. Peter says that from constantly having to return to this memory he feels “like I’m in hell” and his mother says “well, where else would you go”, stating that there is nowhere else that he could go after what he did to to Rebecca.

Peter then gets released from the memory he was being tucked away in and he returns to the attic, where Miles and Flora are in the process of freeing Dani. Peter stops Miles and Flora from letting Dani go and Rebecca returns from her dream hopping.

To try and convince Miles and Flora to give consent for their bodies to be possessed, Peter says that they’ll be able to go to their “forever house” where they’ll be with their parents forever. The “forever house” is a reference to The Haunting of Hill House where Olivia made blueprints of a “forever home” for the family to live in once they got enough money from flipping Hill House (but when Olivia dies, Hill House becomes the forever home). The “forever house/home” is something that is supposed to symbolise safety and family, however in both Hill House and Bly Manor this isn’t really the case. In Hill house the promise of the “forever home” that Olivia dreamt of was never fulfilled; and in Bly Manor the “forever house” that Peter is talking about is just for Miles and Flora to be permanently tucked away in false memories.

Despite Peter’s manipulation, he does know what love really looks like. He tells Miles that, when he’s tucked away in the “forever house” with his parents, he’ll be “with two people who love you so much, so much. That makes you the luckiest man in the world, the richest person, I wish I could be that rich”. Peter recognises that being in a safe place with two people who love you makes you the “richest person” and was something that he never got to experience himself. Not that this makes his behaviour acceptable, but it may from his childhood where Peter developed a distorted view of love and posession, and so this is why he manipulates others and treats them as his possessions - while Peter is supposed to be the conventional ‘villain’, this fleshing out of his past makes his character much more multifaceted and complex, as well as making his actions much less black and white. This added depth and complication is one of the things that makes Bly Manor and its characters so deeply flawed yet extremely relatable.

When Peter takes permanent possession of Miles’ body, when Miles gets up we can see that his right eye is still blue but his left eye is now brown. This is a sign that the person is no longer completely themselves anymore and we see the same thing happen to Dani’s eyes in Episode 9.

We then see Miles (possessed by Peter) walking with Hannah to the well, to try and get her to come to the realisation that she’s dead. He compares Hannah to the cartoon Wile E. Coyote, who would run off a cliff and just keep going, just as Hannah has died (run off the cliff) but she just keeps going and doesn’t become a proper ghost. Miles explains to Hannah that “when Wile E. Coyote looked down, then he’d fall, only when he looked down”, so he tells Hannah that she also needs to look down in order for her to come to terms with her situation and then she’ll also fall (become a ghost). The looking down that Miles wants Hannah to do is not just an actual looking down the well to see her corpse, but this is also a metaphorical looking down of her seeing the ‘big picture’ and for her to stop being in denial.

Hannah finally looks down the well and sees her corpse. She isn’t interrupted (like when Dani interrupted her doing this in Episode 1), but she’s given a proper moment to take in what she’s seeing, and so she is able to come to process and accept her death - just like Peter got to see and accept his body being dragged away by The Lady in the Lake; and just like Rebecca saw and mourned for her body by the side of the lake.

We then return to Flora and Dani in the attic and we find out that Rebecca only pretended to go along with Peter’s plan and possess Flora’s body. Rebecca tells Flora that “no one should ever need that much help”, showing us that she understands true, selfless love and to ask that much of someone is not caring for them at all. This also relates back to what Peter did to Rebecca, he should have never needed “that much help” from Rebecca as to take her entire life from her.

As well as this, it shows us how much Peter is like his mother. Peter’s mother asked too much of him and, in a way, ended up killing him by blackmailing him for money, which is just as he told her that “I hope you know that, late at night, that you killed your own son”. Peter is just as manipulative as his mother when he persuades Rebecca and Miles to trust him so that he can possess their bodies - needing to ask for “that much help” from a person is not love.

You can read my previous The Haunting of Bly Manor posts here:-

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - Altar of the Dead

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

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starring-movies · 3 years

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When are you going to upload the last 3 episodes of the haunting of bly manor? (Don't take this as if i'm pressuring you, I don't to rush or anything, I just want to know)

I’ve got some deadlines and exams due for the end of January so I’ll probably start to repost again at the start of Febuary! Thanks for the question though, I know I’ve been away for a while and sorry for the delay! :)

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starring-movies · 3 years

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Thank you for your analysis of Bly Manor too! I came back after reading the Killing Eve posts.

Thank you so much! I can’t believe you’ve read both my Killing Eve posts and Bly Manor ones!! Thanks!!

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starring-movies · 3 years

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Hi I've been really enjoying your analysis of the Haunting of Bly Manor. I've also shared it on the fan page of the series on Facebook. Great work. Did you also analyse episodes 7-9? Thank you Heidi

Hey! Thank you so much for sharing my analyses on Facebook! And I’m in the process of writing episodes 7-9 but I’m quite busy at the moment so there will be a delay. I address this in this post:

Thanks again!! :)

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starring-movies · 3 years

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a little update:

i have no real schedule for the posts on this page, only a schedule which i have put on myself, however, i just wanted to let those who keep up with my posts know that there will be a delay on the last three analysis posts (Episode 7, Episode 8 and Episode 9) for The Haunting of Bly Manor.

i apologise for the hold-up, i’ve been trying to complete them to post them but with university Christmas deadlines fast approaching, i just haven’t managed to do so unfortunately - and i don’t want to compromise on the detail and quality of the post just to get it out sooner.

but i’ll also take this ‘update post’ opportunity to say thank you so much for over 300 followers and nearly 100 likes on some of my posts! i really can’t believe so many people enjoy and want to read my analyses, both for Killing Eve and Bly Manor. the support for them has been amazing and i’m just so glad that so many people enjoy reading them as much as i enjoy writing them, especially since i only started writing these for fun during quarantine.

thank you again for your patience and support! xxx

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starring-movies · 3 years

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Thank you for writing these analyses of Killing Eve! You have the closest picture to what I see when I watch Villanelle and Villaneve!

Thank you for reading the Killing Eve analyses, I’m so happy that they’re so representative for you!! :)

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starring-movies · 3 years

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The Haunting of Bly Manor: Episode Analysis

*SPOILERS*

Episode 6 - The Jolly Corner

Episode 6 of The Haunting of Bly Manor mainly focuses around Lord Henry Wingrave’s past, which we haven’t been told very much about, as of yet.

At the very beginning of the episode we find out that Henry has manifested a kind of ‘evil’ alter ego, in a similar way to how Dani manifested a vision of Eddie. In both of these instances, Henry and Dani are haunted by these manifestations as a result of their guilt.

We then find out that it’s not just Peter that has been taking control of Miles, but Rebecca is also taking control of Flora. Rebecca only needs to touch Flora’s forehead to take possession of her, and Flora gets ‘tucked away’ in a memory while Rebecca is in control.

During the memory which Flora gets tucked away in, we see her meet The Doll Face Ghost for the very first time, who she’s initially afraid of. Henry tells her that he used to have a ghost friend who was a soldier (who we can see hidden in some shots) when he lived in Bly Manor and tells her to try and make friends with the ghost like he did - he plays along with Flora as he thinks that the soldier who he was friends with was just his childish imagination, little does he know that he wasn’t imagining it and really was speaking to a ghost.

From this memory of Flora’s, Flora tells her mother that “this is strange... because I’m too old”. This tells that the memories that you get tucked away into aren’t fully immersive, but they’re more two dimensional, as the person in the memory can realise that it’s not real and they're in a memory.

Back in Henry’s past, we see that he occasionally rings the manor to speak to Flora. Later on in the episode we discover that this is because Henry is actually Flora’s biological parent, not Dominic Wingrave. It’s also made apparent that Henry is the one who keeps ringing the manor and then hanging up, so that he might get to hear Flora’s “little voice saying ‘Flora residence’” - they’re not prank calls or Peter ringing the house, like the others originally thought.

A small note; is that there’s a heartwarming theme running through The Haunting anthology of small children mishearing words - the term for this is called a mondegreen. This happened back in Episode 4, when young Eddie told young Dani that his “mom said they make me look extinguished”, where he really means distinguished. In this instance, Flora is on the phone to Henry and she says that her father told her that the ghost she saw was just a “type of mint... a fig mint in my imagination”, Dominic really said figment but Flora amusingly misheard it as fig mint. Similarly, in Episode 6 of Hill House, Luke says that when he and Nell were young, Nell said that their tent makes them “indivisible” when what she really meant was “invisible”. In the same episode of Hill House, young Nell says that “someone broke the sannadeer”, but she means “chandelier” not “sannadeer”.

In the evening, Owen and Hannah agree to watch the children and Jamie takes Dani out to a “secret spot” on the grounds of the manor. Jamie takes Dani out to show her a “moonflower” that she’s been growing, which only “blooms two months a year, and only at night. Each bud, only once”. Dani remarks to Jamie that “that’s a lot of work for a flower that only blooms once”, to which Jamie replies that “that’s what people feel like to me, exhaustive effort, very little to show for it... even you, even me, especially me”.

Jamie also gives Dani a moonflower in Episode 9, when she tells Dani that she’s “actually pretty in love” with her. From these two appearances of the moonflower, we can see that the flower is a symbol of their love and relationship.

Just as Jamie says, she thinks that people (herself and Dani included) are like moonflowers, who you give “exhaustive effort to” with “very little to show for it”. Jamie already knows that Dani’s been dealing with Eddie’s spectre, as Dani told her in Episode 4, and Jamie still accepts it and thinks that Dani “just might be worth the effort”. In turn, it is now Jamie’s turn to unveil her ‘flaws’ to Dani, and give Dani the opportunity to see if she wants to continue to pursue the relationship, which Dani does want to do. In the same way as the moonflower, we can see that Jamie and Dani have mutually agreed that they both require nurturing and “exhaustive effort” but they are both willing to provide this, and so they are rewarded with a relationship that “blooms”.

Another similarity between the moonflower and Dani and Jamie’s relationship, is that the moonflower only blooms for a very short period of time. In the same way, Dani and Jamie’s relationship only lasts for a very short time. As a result of the moonflower’s difficulty to grow and short life span, it also makes the flower incredibly rare. In turn, the type of love that Dani and Jamie share is just as rare as the moonflower’s blossom.

During Jamie’s monologue about her childhood, she says that “people aren’t worth it. But plants, you pour your love, and your effort, and your nourishment into them and you see where it goes. You watch them grow and it all makes sense”. From this we come to understand why plants are so important to Jamie and also why it was so important that Dani reacted with such understanding when Miles cut the roses in Episode 2 - because the roses were like a bit of her own heart that Jamie had poured her “love”, “effort” and “nourishment” into and Miles destroyed them.

Jamie continues to try and give Dani some solace by telling her that Eddie’s death wasn’t her fault and death is natural, she says that “every living thing grows out of every dying thing. We leave more life behind us to take out place”. What Jamie says becomes even more impactful when we think about Dani’s sacrifice, because Dani’s sacrifice for Flora and Miles allows them to live their whole lives and so she leaves “more life behind” her.

After Dominic finds out that Flora is actually Henry’s child, he confronts him and says that he is “banished” from his house, wife and children. Dominic continues to say that “your real self, he’s an evil shit, a grotesque little demon, isn’t he. I pity you, ‘cause you have to live with him, you have to live with yourself. And he’s a shit, grinning, fucking monster”. This “real self” that Dominic is talking about is what we see that Henry’s alter ego is. Henry punishes himself from guilt, by having to constantly live with the “grotesque little demon” that’s inside of him - Henry is just like Sisyphus in the underworld, who was forced to repeatedly push a boulder up a hill for eternity. In the same way Henry has to continually relive the torment of finding out Charlotte and Dominic were dead.

A small note; is that we know that Henry’s alter ego is the “demon” that Dominic is saying is within Henry, as he describes him as a “shit, grinning, fucking monster” - Henry’s alter ego is constantly “grinning” at Henry.

In another of the memories that Flora gets tucked away in, we discover that Flora started put talismen around the grounds of the manor because of her mother. Before Charlotte went on her trip to India with Dominic, she gave Flora a talisman because “it protects people, and it keeps them happy”. So Flora keeps leaving talismen around to protect the people in the manor. An example of this is the talisman that we see Flora leave by the lake in Episode 1, she left the talisman there as protection for Rebecca, as that’s where Rebecca died.

Back in the present, Jamie tells Dani that she’s going home for the night, and Dani tells her “you could come back... tonight”. But Jamie wants to take it slow with Dani and instead tells her “goodnight, just goodnight. There are other nights and there will be other nights”. Just as Older Jamie says in Episode 4, she didn’t “yet understand was that the au pair had been telling herself to wait another night, another time, for years and years”.

Jamie wants them to take their time in this new relationship but unlike Dani, she probably came to terms with her sexuality a long time ago. Dani has only use recently been able to act on the feelings that she’s bottled up and withheld for years, and so now that she has the chance, she wants to make up for lost time in a way and allow herself to fall heavily into all these feelings that she’s been missing.

In another of Flora’s memories we see her wake up in the middle of the night and she sees The Doll Face ghost playing with the dolls in her dollhouse. The Doll Face ghost gets scared and runs away, but Flora runs after him because she wants to take Henry’s advice and make friends with him. She follows the boy ghost up into the attic, where he is hiding amongst some dolls, and she apologises for her rudeness from being afraid of him earlier and offers to tell him a story (like Henry suggested). Flora tells him that she’s “sorry about your face” and so she takes the face off another doll and gives it to him so that he can have a “new face”.

As we saw The Doll Face ghost playing with the dolls in Flora’s dollhouse before he ran away, we know that the boy is the one who moves the dolls around in the house for Flora in the present day. The boy positions the dolls in the house to let Flora know where everyone, both the living and the ghosts, are. From this memory of Flora’s, we now know that the boy continues to position the dolls in the house for Flora as a ‘thank you’ for providing him with a new face.

When Dani tucks Flora into bed, we also see the Doll Face Ghost positioning Flora’s dolls. We see the boy playing in the doll house behind Dani, but when Dani turns around he disappears.

When Flora wakes up from being tucked away, we get another detail of how the mechanics of being a ghost at Bly Manor works. Rebecca appears to Flora to speak to her, but then she suddenly disappears, then when Dani enters Flora’s room she sees Rebecca for the very first time. This tells us that the ghosts can either hide or make themselves visible whenever they want, as we know that Rebecca has been talking to Flora a number of times when Dani was in the room previously, but this is the first time that Dani has actually been able to see her for herself.

You can read my previous The Haunting of Bly Manor posts here:-

Episode 1 - The Great Good Place

Episode 2 - The Pupil

Episode 3 - The Two Faces, Part One

Episode 4 - The Way It Came

Episode 5 - The Alter of the Dead

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