‘The Fall of the House of Usher’: ‘Succession’ But Make it Spooky
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The Raven, Edgar Allen Poe
When it was announced that Mike Flanagan’s fifth and final Netflix limited series would be based on the works of Edgar Allen Poe, fans of the genre rejoiced. One of the premiere storytellers of his generation adapting the works of one of the premiere storytellers of any generation was a match made in heaven. Or hell, as it were.
The Fall of the House of Usher was released in October of 2023 and it proved, once again, that Flanagan is the master of crafting a story. And the reason he’s so good at telling stories is because he loves reading stories. Most of Flanagan’s Netflix series have been based on the works of other writers. The Haunting of Hill House came from Shirley Jackson. The Haunting of Bly Manor was an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. Midnight Club was adapted from Christopher Pike’s series of the same name.
Only Midnight Mass was Flanagan’s completely original work, and even that borrowed liberally from Stephen King. Speaking of Stephen King, one of Flanagan’s greatest accomplishments was his adaptation of Doctor Sleep, a sequel to King’s (and, somehow, Stanley Kubrick’s) version of The Shining. Flanagan enjoys telling other people’s stories and making them his own, and that’s exactly what he’s done with The Fall of the House of Usher.
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Like the short story that came before it, The Fall of the House of Usher tells the tale of Roderick Usher and his sister-cum-right-hand-man, Madeline. But in Flanagan’s series, the two head up the powerful drug empire, Fortunato—a pharmaceutical company offering the world something called Ligadone, which is a form of opiate that is “non-addictive,” except yes it is. False advertising aside, Ligadone launched the Usher family into the upper echelon. Roderick, the CEO, became the king of the castle and the lord of the empire—one that he and Madeline built, brick by brick…by brick.
As Fortunato grew, so, too, did the Usher family. Frederick and Tamerlane were Roderick’s first children. They were the two he raised with his first wife—Anabelle Lee. Oh, sweet Anabelle Lee, who had no other thought than to love and be loved by Roderick. But love wasn’t enough for Roderick Usher. He wanted the world. He and Madeline wanted to change the world, if not conquer it completely. There simply wasn’t the time or space for love in the House of Usher. Eventually, Roderick would sire four more children: Camille, Leo, Victorine, and Prosperone—all of whom gained their namesake from various Poe writings. The empire grew. The House expanded. But, like a house of cards, so delicately put together before being subsequently ignored, eventually the house would crumble.
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Roderick and Madeline made a deal one night, long ago. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Once upon a midnight dreary, a brother and sister walked into a bar. There, they were greeted by a charming bartender with a gleam in her eye and a deal in her pocket. If this deal was agreed upon, Roderick and Madeline would become titans; gods, some might say. It was a deal, but not one made with the devil. The bartender, Verna, was simply a messenger. A collector, you might say. Of course, the plan came with a price, and that price was this: When Roderick Usher died, his entire bloodline would die with him. Children, grandchildren, siblings—all of them gone when Roderick took his final breath. And that’s where The Fall of the House of Usher begins—with a funeral for all of Roderick’s children.
The show, like all of Mike Flanagan’s, was a hit. Critics praised its black humor, its writing, and its performances. This was the bleakest of Flanagan’s projects, to be sure. It was also the funniest. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it drew several comparisons to another hit show: Succession. Several articles written about The Fall of the House of Usher have referenced the four-season HBO series, but very few of them have delved into why the two shows are so similar.
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Like The Fall of the House of Usher, Succession tells the story of a family empire, led by its patriarch, Logan Roy. As the Ushers are to the Sackler family, the Roys are to the Murdoch family. The Usher family and the Roy family are fictionalized versions of their real-world counterparts. The Sacklers are the first family of the pharmaceutical world, while the Murdochs, led by Rupert, are a media powerhouse that yields tremendous power across the country, and maybe even the world.
Logan Roy, like Roderick Usher, is a bit of a bastard. Okay, maybe not just a bit. Let’s tell the truth and shame the devil—he’s a gigantic bastard. He spent his life building an empire while neglecting those he left at home. The Roy children, like the Usher clan, grew up with luxury, privilege, and power. They just didn’t have a whole lot of love. And now, as adults, children from both families are trying to reconcile their need to be loved by their father with their need to be respected by him…and the rest of the world.
And maybe that’s why The Fall of the House of Usher has been compared so often to Succession. It’s not just because both shows feature an aging patriarch refusing to give in to a fate that was decided long before they could weigh the pros, the cons, and the Return on Investment. It’s not just because both shows feature children who snort cocaine from a silver spoon. And it’s not even just because both shows offer a glimpse into a life and a livelihood that the majority of us will never actually experience ourselves.
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The biggest thing that defines both The Fall of the House of Usher and Succession is the tragedy of it all.
Both Succession and The Fall of the House of Usher are tragedies, at their core. There’s comedy, sure. There’s drama. There are even a few ghosts and ghouls lurking in the shadows. But both shows are tragic in their portrayal of two dynasties, two families, who never stood a chance.
Logan Roy’s fate was sealed the moment he was sent to live with his abusive uncle. The fate of his children was decided shortly thereafter, decades before they were born. Similarly, the fates of Roderick Usher and sister Madeline were written when their mother fell in love, or at least lust, with her boss. From those points forward, the next generations of both the Ushers and the Roys were destined for greatness and for heartbreak; for success and for sin.
For every victory that would come to Kendall, or Frederick, or Roman, or Leo, or Shiv, or Tamberlane, they would lose a part of themselves. Like their fathers before them, each successful deal, each new patent, would come at the price of their souls. Both shows are fiction, but that is the very true reality, the very real tragedy, that comes for many of the people who work for corporations like RoyCo or Fortunato. Or Fox. Or Purdue Pharma.
It’s said that “money can’t buy happiness,” and maybe that’s true. But Succession and The Fall of the House of Usher both offer glimpses into how “the other half” lives and it seems like when the smoke clears, or when the drugs run out, or when the last nihilistic, alcohol-fueled orgasm is felt, it doesn’t seem like a very fun life. It seems sad. And empty. And maddening.
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And it’s tragic because, at the end of the day, all these people want is to know, really know, that they are loved, that they are respected, that they have something to offer the world, that they matter. If only to just one person.
In Succession, Logan’s three children are all vying for both their father’s affection and for his seat at the head of the table. When Logan retires (or, more likely, dies) Kendall, Roman, and Shiv want to, well, succeed him and garner the same amount of respect, admiration, and, yes, success, that Logan has. And maybe that’s partly because of their ego. But, more importantly, it’s because they want to know that they’ve made their father proud.
They don’t need the money; their children’s children’s children will still have millions of dollars in the bank for the rest of their lives. They don’t even necessarily want the acclaim from the outside world, though it would be nice. At the end of the day, they just want that nod of approval from Logan because if he doesn’t love them maybe, at the very least, he’ll respect them. The tragedy, of course, is that that nod will never come. That approval will never be given. That respect, that love, will never be offered.
Logan Roy can never, and will never be able to show his children the love that they crave; the love that they should inherently be given simply for being his children. That love will never come because Logan was never taught what love, real love, actually is. Logan grew up in an environment plagued with desperation, anger, and hurt. Though he was able to rise above his circumstances, he never escaped that desperation. He never lost that anger. He never stopped hurting.
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Similarly, Roderick Usher grew up in a home without a father, and with a mother who believed that fear is the heart of God. Roderick and Madeline’s mother never hugged them because she was too busy praying for them.
At least Roderick and Madeline had each other. They looked out for each other and protected each other. But did they love each other? It’s debatable. Like Logan, they never really learned about love. Instead, they learned how to protect, manipulate, and survive. But they never learned how to love and that’s why Roderick was never able to offer Anabelle Lee a love that was stronger, by far, than the love of those older and wiser than they were. It’s why Madeline chose to never marry at all. As their attorney, Arthur Pym noted so eloquently, love is collateral, and collateral is leverage. Logan Roy probably knew that, too.
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And maybe that’s the biggest tragedy of all. The thing that the Roy children and the Usher children were searching for, hoping for, praying for, it never even existed. That’s the biggest similarity between Succession and The Fall of the House of Usher, and it’s why audiences gravitate so much towards both of those shows. We’re curious about how the other half lives. We want to see bad people get worse and, eventually, get their comeuppance.
We want to see them rise but oh, how badly we also want to see them fall. More than anything, we want to be reminded that, though we may not have millions or billions of dollars, we have somebody we can go home to. We have children that we’ll hug a little tighter and parents whose hands we will hold a little longer. We may not have what Logan Roy or Roderick Usher have. But they don’t have what we have, either.
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The Fall of the House of Usher is a cautionary tale about what could happen if we’re offered the world for the price of our hearts. Succession is a story about how somebody can have everything and yet nothing at all. Both shows offer a glimpse into a world not wholly unlike our own, but one that is just barely out of reach. Luckily, they also remind us that we’re better off if we keep our hands to ourselves.
The Fall of the House of Usher is a love letter to Edgar Allen Poe. But it’s also a love letter to the rest of the world; one that reminds us that maybe, just maybe, we’re richer than we thought. It’s one of the very few Mike Flanagan works that doesn’t really end on a note of hope. Instead, it ends with the house of cards crumbling, sealing the tombs of Roderick, Madeline, and the rest of the House of Usher. But even though the final scene of the series shows the foundation crumbling and the walls crashing and the ceiling caving in, the real fall of the House of Usher began decades prior, when a brother and a sister walked into a bar and decided that it was better to be feared, to be respected, than it was to be loved.
Categorized:Editorials
