In the weeks leading up to the release of Mike Flanagan’s new Prime Video-streaming series adaptation of Stephen King’s iconic Carrie, the venerated showrunner and filmmaker dropped a substantial surprise on everyone: he had plans for the series to continue for multiple seasons to come. Flanagan even went so far as to refer to his “dream scenario” for the series being a full three seasons, constituting a Carrie “trilogy.”
While that was all fine and good as a “dream scenario,” the reality of the series’ future depended heavily on its success on the streaming platform. But Carrie performed incredibly well, maintaining a top viewership position for several weeks on Prime Video, leading Amazon to capitalize on this success by officially announcing that a second season would be coming. That’s all fine and good, but it begs the question: what exactly will a second season of Carrie even be about, since the first season adapted the entire book?
Though Flanagan’s adaptation of King’s 1974 novel was largely faithful to its source material, some creative liberties were certainly taken both in terms of updating the time period of the story to modern times and in fleshing out the world of the narrative to fill a full eight-episode run. But among the biggest changes that the series made to the story of Carrie was its ending.
In the novel, following the infamous events of prom night, Carrie White returns to her home, has a confrontation with her mother in which she kills her as well, and then tragically dies herself. In Flanagan’s series, however, much of that is changed. For one, Carrie isn’t actually the one responsible for the events at the prom; there are other telekinetically gifted individuals present, including Emaline, who offers to “take the wheel” for Carrie and control her powers through a form of mind-control. All of this culminates in Carrie not dying and instead riding off into the sunset with Emaline, who promises to take her somewhere safe.
So where does this leave things? Well, one would assume a second season of Carrie would follow up on the shadowy organization of telekinetically gifted individuals introduced in increments throughout the first season (led by Kate Siegel’s mysterious character) and the ages-long conflict they are apparently engaged in with an opposing team of hunters (led by Katee Sackhoff’s mysterious character). Beyond this, additional King-related elements, such as "shining," are referenced directly in the finale, implying that all of that could become relevant as well. This is not too surprising, given that Flanagan wrote and directed Doctor Sleep (the sequel to The Shining) a few years back and even developed a whole spinoff TV series for HBO that was ultimately scrapped. So could Carrie’s second season be incorporating elements of those plans? Absolutely.
It’s also worth noting that there have been sequels to Carrie previously, most notably in the form of the 1999 film The Rage: Carrie 2. That film was something of a legacy sequel to the original 1976 Brian De Palma movie adaptation and was thus set in a world where Carrie White had died on prom night. However, the events of the film chronicle a secret half-sister that Carrie had. In the story, Carrie’s father, Ralph White, had run off and gotten another woman pregnant and passed down the TK gene to a different daughter as well. Flanagan’s take on the story has Ralph present and unambiguously kills him off immediately in the first episode but does put a strong emphasis on him and Carrie’s relationship, so it isn’t completely out-of-the-question that future seasons could theoretically implement some material from this sequel.
Ultimately, despite having adapted the entirety of King’s written work directly correlating to Carrie White, there is still a plethora of ancillary and adjacent material that Flanagan and co. could opt to reinterpret through their own lens for Carrie’s second season.
Furthermore, between his past with King adaptations and his future (with a massive interconnected Dark Tower series also in the works at Amazon), there’s no shortage of additional ties that Flanagan could elect to bring in to the series. We’ll just have to wait and see what kind of future lies ahead for Carrietta White and crew.
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