I know this is supposed to be about something I have seen online recently and technically I have. I rewatched this 1 season, 8 episode long show during my Halloweekend. This show is maybe one of the best thriller limited series I have ever watched. The show is based off of Edgar Allen Poe’s poems, a very well known poet. Each episode in this series is named after a poem written by the poet (which I never really caught on to until the very end lol).

Im sure many of us here in this class had to read at least one or two poems in high school written by Edgar Allen Poe. The Raven being maybe his most popular poem. For me I read The Raven and The Cask of Amontillado (which is a crazy plot twist poem if you have not read it). I vividly remember the latter poem because it was one of the last assignments I did in high school and I vividly remember thinking how messed up it was when the man (Fortunato) dressed up as a jester (coincidence? defineitly not) was taken down into the catacombs and then gets knocked out and then bricked alive by a Mason. In other words he was enclosed into a brick wall still alive. This is probably one of the craziest poems I read, but I really did enjoy it.

Ok so now about the actual series. As I aforementioned, this entire 8 episode series is based off of the different poems written by Edgar Allen Poe. The series starts out with a young brother and sister, Roderick and Madeline Usher, who’s biological father owns this big company known as Fortunato Pharmaceuticals (get it? crazy right?) but the father wanted nothing to do with the kids because Mr. Fortunato had an affair with his wife with Roderick and Madeline’s mother (an assistant at the company) and no one really knew. Eventually the mother dies due to a sickness because she refused to use western medicine and belived that her faith would keep her alive. In the end, she “died” but came back to life and then killed Mr. Fortunato in front of Roderick and Madeline and Fortunato’s wife.

Eventually they grow up and see that other people are now running Fortunato Pharmaceuticals even though it is technically their birth right to own and run the company themselves. Madeline is like a super genius who fancy algorithms and is hell bent of becoming immortal by p[putting her consciousness into a robot. Anyway I digress, they come up with a plan to over throw the current owner of Fortunato and once they do they make a deal with the devil, known as Verna who promises them anything they want in life in return that their bloodline will die with them.

In the end, all of Roderick Usher’s children all die these horrible and crazy deaths in each episode, so I am not going to get too much into it (that is for you all to go and watch yourselves:) ) What put the cherry on top, is that in the very last episode titled “The Raven” it shows how Roderick and Madeline’s plan to take over Fortunato Pharmaceuticals occurred. Madeline who was this beautiful blonde haired and scary genius girl started to flirt with Rufus Griswald (the owner) and got him really drunk at a costume themed party. Guess what he was dressed as… a jester (see where this is going lol). She had told him they could do some “dirty” things down stairs in the basement, when they got down stairs he eventually passes out because Madeline had Poised his drink. When he came to, he was inside the wall where Roderick and Madeline were actively laying bricks to trap him inside. It was at that moment when everything clicked, and all of the assignments and memory’s of this poem in High school started to come back to me. That is when I realized that each episode was named after a poem.

Again, hats off to the directors Mike Flanagan and Michael Fimognari. The series is a great watch and ha some amazing jump scares as well. I definitely recommend watching it. You do not need to have read Edgar Allen Poe’s Poems to understand what is going on, but if you do it just make the watching experience so much better.