The Haunting of Bly Manor: 5 Things We Loved (and 5 We Didn’t)

The Haunting of Bly Manor has been on everybody’s Netflix watchlist since it was announced. But did it live up to the hype?

This past weekend, anyone with a Netflix account was glued to their screens watching The Haunting of Bly Manor, the wildly anticipated sequel to 2018’s sleeper hit, The Haunting of Hill House.

Though there was much to enjoy—and be terrified of—while watching the second instalment in this anthology, some viewers came away feeling a little less enthused than they expected.

We look at the nine episodes of The Haunting of Bly Manor to determine what people loved about it and why, and where the season could’ve done with some improvements. This post will contain spoilers, so please watch the show before proceeding.

The Haunting of Bly Manor: 5 Things We Loved

The Haunting of Hill House was so well-received that a follow-up would always be under immense pressure to measure up. But there were so many aspects of The Haunting of Bly Manor that fans adored. Here are five of the best.

Hill House Parallels

With The Haunting of Bly Manor bringing back so many cast members from the first season, it wasn’t surprising that fans went looking for connections between the two instalments.

And the makers of the show were clearly cognizant of this—they included a whole bunch of throwbacks to season one that fans would immediately recognize.

The most heartbreaking and memorable one, of course, was when Hannah Grose’s (T’Nia Miller) ghost is freed from Bly Manor. Her parting words to Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas) are to tell Owen (Rahul Kohli) that she loved him and that the rest, “Well, it’s just…”.

Eagle-eyed fans wondered whether this mirrored Nell Crain’s departing words about the “rest being confetti”. Creator Mike Flanagan confirmed that Hannah was indeed going to say that.

Other parallels between the two seasons were highlighted by other Twitter users in this thread that fans will enjoy perusing.

Fan service is often given a bad rap, but the creators of The Haunting of Bly Manor did well here.