[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor.]
The Haunting of Bly Manor — an atmospheric, 1980s-set gothic romance, brimming with ghosts of all kinds — dropped on Netflix last week, to the delight of horror fans everywhere.
The series, inspired by author Henry James’ classic story “The Turn of the Screw,” follows au pair Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) who is hired to watch over Bly Manor’s orphaned children, Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and Miles Wingrave (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), in the English countryside. During Dani’s time at Bly, she is challenged by her inconsistent charges, as well as the sinister happenings she sees on the grounds. In Episode 8, “The Romance of Certain Old Clothes,” viewers learn the origins of Bly’s ghosts (particularly the elusive Lady in the Lake) in a black and white fairytale-like flashback that tells the story of the Willoughby sisters who lived in the house long before it became the Wingraves’ summer house. The tragedy that befalls siblings Viola (Kate Siegel) and Perdita (Katie Parker) when the former, also the head of Bly, takes ill, is an emotional tale, but it also explains the origins for nearly all of Bly’s other ghosts (with the exception of T’Nia Miller’s Mrs. Grose) from the witch doctor to the faceless child Flora sees in her room.
These other ghosts were all created by Viola’s spirit, which haunts Bly as the Lady in the Lake, as she carves a pathway through the house to her bed, seeking out her long-gone child, and taking down anyone in her path. She nearly gets Flora, too, but in a harrowing moment near the end of the season, Dani volunteers to host Viola’s spirit inside her own body, and carries the looming threat away from Bly once and for all.
Below, Siegel, who also played psychic middle child Theo in the anthology’s first installment, The Haunting of Hill House, explains her thoughts on Viola’s “love story,” and the inspirations behind the feminist tale.
Continue reading