The Fall of the House of Usher Finale Recap: Roderick and Madeline’s Deal With the Devil — er, Verna — Revealed! Plus, Grade It!
If you’ve stuck with the Usher family this far, chances are that you’d really like to know how the heck they got tangled up with Verna. Along those lines: What IS Verna? And while we’re tapping at this final chamber door, what has Madeline been doing, banging around in the basement for all this time? Oh, and what’s the deal with the creepy harlequin?
By the end of our recap of The Fall of the House of Usher finale, you shall have these queries nevermore. (I couldn’t resist.) Read on for the highlights of Episode 8, “The Raven.”
BACK TO LIFE, BACK TO REALITY | Even though Madeline thought she was outsmarting Verna by having Roderick kill himself at the end of Episode 7, surprise! Verna is NOT having it. Roderick comes to in the basement while Verna paces around him, fuming about how his sister “tried to loophole me.” (Ha!) She disappears, he hears the bells in the wall again and then the scary clown grabs him but then is gone as quickly as it appeared.
“Well, this is awkward,” Roderick says later when he walks into his office, very alive, to find Madeline and Pym there. New bad news: The board has pushed him out, and Madeline is now the head of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Old bad news, which Roderick relates to Dupin as he continues his storytelling at the scary ol’ homestead: Annabel left him after being appalled at his duplicity during the deposition. And over the years, he plied Freddie and Tammy with money and a lavish lifestyle so that they’d naturally chose him over their mother. Then we’re back at the funeral, where Annabel appears to Roderick and shames him for manipulating the kids away from her. “I thought you were a rich man all this time, but I see you now,” she says. “The poverty of you.” As she turns to walk toward the altar, we see there’s blood on the back of her head. And right after that he walks out to the limo, sees the unsettling harlequin, has the nosebleed and hits the ground — like we saw in the series’ premiere. (Refresh your memory with a recap here.)
I love that, at this point, Dupin is like, WE’VE BEEN SITTING HERE FOR HOURS AND ALL I’M GETTING IS COLD AND BORED. COUGH UP THE CONFESSION. So, Roderick does. Here’s what happened before he and Madeline arrived at Verna’s bar that New Year’s Eve.
WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE THEY ARRIVED AT VERNA’S BAR THAT NEW YEAR’S EVE | When the twins get to the party, Griswold has already had a few. While he’s loudly praising Roderick for taking one for the team at the deposition, he also admits that he took credit for Roderick’s actions when the matter was discussed with the company’s board members. Still, Fortunato will not shut up about how he’s mentioned to everyone — the board, the shareholders — that Roderick is his new right hand and someone who can be trusted with the future of the company. Madeline pours them all a glass of a special amontillado she brought, and if you noticed that Rufus downs his while the Ushers merely hold theirs… well, you’re far more observant than Rufus Griswold has ever been of anything in his life, ever. Ever ever.
Roderick says he has to go to the bathroom, and Rufus takes that as his entry point to start hitting on Madeline. She seems open to it, leading him down to the basement of Fortunato’s new headquarters, which is under construction. But when he tries to advance on her physically, he realizes that he can’t walk. He loses consciousness, waking only to realize that he’s chained up and that the Ushers are literally bricking him into the wall.
He screams for help, but no one is going to hear him. The twins resolutely go about their business as Madeline explains that even though Roderick lied to save the company, that doesn’t mean the feds were wrong: Fortunato has been engaging in some hinky stuff, like grave-robbing to cover the failures of their clinical trials. Griswold threatens them, then tries to bargain with them, but no bribe will stop the pair from their task. Right before they seal him in forever, Madeline claps the jester’s cap on his head, completing the outfit he wore to the costume party — ah, so he’s the menacing clown. Then she assures Roderick that the cyanide with which they dosed his boss will kill him by the morning.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THEY ARRIVED AT VERNA’S BAR THAT NEW YEAR’S EVE | The action then skips to the end of the night, when it’s just the twins and Verna sharing a drink at her bar. “What if I told you right now that you could achieve all the success you ever imagined, all the money, all the power. A lifetime of luxury, comfort. What would you do? What would you give?” she asks, but Madeline isn’t into boozy hypotheticals. “You’re a real killer, aren’t you?” Verna says admiringly. “Couple of real killers.” And when Madeline demurs, Verna makes it clear that she’s not speaking metaphorically. “What else would you call it?” she asks genially. “I mean, you killed Rufus Griswold tonight, didn’t you? And you’re here, building an alibi.”
While Roderick and Madeline quietly lose their combined stuff, Verna hits them with another shocker: “What if I said I can guarantee that you’ll get away with it?”
She lays out a future in which there’ll be “no legal consequences, guaranteed, for your whole life.” As they gape, she explains that they’re sitting somewhere outside of time and space, and “this is the moment luck meets opportunity.” The terms of the deal: They get everything they could ever want, and at the end of their lives “your bloodline dies with you.” The family will never want for anything… but the family also will die when its patriarch (and, um, aunt-riarch?) do. Gives a little extra oomph to Verna’s “buy now, pay later” comment from the start of the season, no? Both Ushers agree REALLY quickly, she pours them a cognac to celebrate, then she sends them off with a “Lots to do, you two. Lots to do.”
Outside, they turn back to look at the bar… and it’s the boarded-up, papered-over, empty property with a graffiti raven painted on it that Madeline saw earlier in the season. In the present, Roderick tells Dupin that they never talked about it again. No one ever found Griswold. And after the board voted him in as Fortunato CEO, it was the first step in the family’s Ligodone-fueled ascension.
PYM AND VERNA HAVE A CHAT | Elsewhere, and at another time, Pym goes to the old house to kill Verna. And he thinks he’s succeeded… until she reappears and asks him to sit down for a conversation. That’s where we learn a little more about who, or what, she is. She mentions that she first saw him during the Transglobe Expedition he went on as a younger man, and she knows about some of the shady/illegal goings-on (murder, rape, what have you) that took place during that trip. “I saw a lot,” he admits. “We were a virus, I think. People, I mean.” She smiles. “But you’re so interesting. That’s why I had to go topside, had to see the ship go by with my own eyes. And you saw me, too, standing on the ice, the aurora above.” If you recall, in Episode 6, Roderick told Dupin that Pym always stopped talking about that trip when he got to the North Pole, but he did one time tell the kids that the world was hollow and that he found an island at the top of the world called Ultima Thule “and that it was the realm of beings who lived beneath us, out of time and out of space.” And remember how Verna said that the bar was also outside of time and space? Interesting.
Verna continues, talking about how Pym hasn’t been held accountable for anything he’s done, either, but that’s because of the Ushers’ deal with her… which is about to end. With her protection, he’s golden. “Like I said to one of my clients: When I’m done, you can stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and it won’t cost you a thing.” Anyway, when the Ushers’ contract is up, his luck will end; Camille has a file on him that, if authorities find it, wil get him 20 years to life in prison. After a bit of back-and-forth, he decides to play out his hand as-is, but he thanks her for the offer.
THE SERIES’ SADDEST DEATH | Lenore — truly one of the very few characters to root for in thiw whole shebang — winds up at Roderick’s place after her father’s death and her mother’s relocation to a clinic. She consoles him about losing the company but says that maybe it’s for the best: “Our family did bad stuff. It’s not too late to fix it.” Then she retires to one of the guest rooms for the evening to find Verna sitting on the bed.
For the first time, the otherworldly being seems conflicted about the duty she has to carry out. “I told them. The terms were clear,” she says to herself. “It shouldn’t be on me to have to spell out the definition of the world ‘bloodline.’” But a deal’s a deal, and Usher blood runs through Lenore’s veins, so she’s gotta go. As a parting gift, she tells the teen that Morrie will recover over the course of three years, and she’ll inherit a ton of money when Fortunato collapses. She’ll use it to start The Lenore Foundation, which involves helping victims of domestic abuse, and it will save so many people. By calling the police on Freddie and getting her mother out of the house, “you did that,” Verna tells the girl. “The choice you made echoes through millions of lives. I thought you should know that.” And then she places a finger on Lenore’s forehead, she falls over, and it’s done.
But what about the nonstop texts he’s been getting, ostensibly from Lenore? They’re from the Lenore-bot that Madeline was building. And they all say only one thing: “NEVERMORE.”
BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE | Ready to wrap this all up? After Roderick finds his granddaughter dead, he runs to the office in his pajamas and rails at his dead relatives, whom he sees seated around the conference-room table. He rants a bit. Verna shows up and points out that the storm outside isn’t just rain, it’s his Ligodone body count. Corpses fall from the sky, piling up on the skyscrapers nearby, as Verna instructs him to call Auguste.
First, though, he summons Madeline to the basement of their childhood home, where he’s brought all the afterlife-related treasures they’ve amassed. He pours her a drink, she rails about how she’s not sympathetic to the plight of those addicted to Fortunato’s bestselling drug, and he just watches her lovingly. When she stands at the end of her monologue, she sways: The alcohol was poisoned. “I sent her off like a queen,” he tells Dupin dreamily, and the lawyer grows exponentially more concerned as Roderick explains that he used the tools — the brain-stabber/remover, the eye-replacing sapphires — on his sister’s body. Also: If Madeline is dead, why are so many bumps and thumps coming from downstairs?
It has to be asked. “Are you sure she was dead?” Dupin wonders, alarmed. “You know, maybe not?” Roderick says, reality growing ever farther away. But he’s got more pressing matters on his mind. “I promised my confession and here it is: I knew, deep down in the witching hour, I knew. I knew I would climb to the top of the tower on a pile of corpses.” He’s going on about how there’s no such thing as a painkiller when Madeline surges through the door, blood everywhere, gems in her eye sockets and screaming in a truly disturbing way. Roderick says, “Nevermore,” and she lunges at him, strangling him the way their mother did their father.
The storm is intensifying outside. The house is collapsing around them. Dupin knows that IT IS TIME TO GO, so he runs out and escapes just before the structure completely falls in on itself, crushing the Ushers. A flash of lightning reveals Verna standing on top of the wreckage, but she’s replaced with a raven, which flies off.
EPILOGUE | Dupin narrates the wrap-up, which lets us know how the non-Ushers fared. His case over — because there’s literally no one left to prosecute — he retires. Juno inherits everything, dissolves the company and creates The Phoenix Foundation with the money. The organization deals with addiction and recovery research, among other philanthropic efforts. Best of all, she weans herself off of Ligodone completely.
Pym is arrested weeks after Camille’s former assistants turned her files over to police. As he enters court, he sees Verna in the crowd. He’ll die in prison.
Dupin leaves his recorder, which includes Roderick’s confession, on Usher’s grave. He tells the dead man that he’s going home to his family, which makes him “the richest man in the world, you know that?” Nearby, Verna, decked out in widow’s garb, leaves a meaningful little token on each Usher’s grave (anyone else laugh when Freddie just got a bag of cocaine? What a jackass.) as her voiceover recites Poe’s “Spirits of the Dead” poem.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the episode? Grade it and the season as a whole via the polls below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
