Netflix’s ‘Fall of the House of Usher’ is gory, gruesome & gay AF

*Spoilers ahead for Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher.*

Forget the House of Extravaganza and the House of Balenciaga – there is a new house we are obsessed with this Halloween season: The House of Usher.

Mike Flanagan’s latest for Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, adapts Edgar Allan Poe tales to tell the story of the wealthy Usher family (think of it like a spooky Succession). The limited series premieres October 12, and it is the horror auteur’s queerest entry yet, with multiple LGBTQ+ characters — and like the rest of the cast, most meet gruesome deaths.

Scroll through below for a refresher on queer characters from past Flanagan Netflix series, and what to expect from The Fall of the House of Usher, but warning: It’s not for the faint of (the tell-tale) heart!

Theodora Crain in The Haunting of Hill House

From the first episode, viewers learn that Theodora “Theo” Crain (played by Kate Siegel) is a lesbian when, in a nightclub scene, she forgoes a man for Trish, a woman whom she locks eyes with, and eventually brings home. The Haunting of Hill House is filled with gruesome deaths, but luckily Theo is not one of them. She survives — and even ends up with Trish — thankfully allowing Haunting of Hill House to avoid the tired “Bury Your Gays” trope.

Dani Clayton and Jamie Taylor in The Haunting of Bly Manor

It's been 3 years since The Haunting of Bly Manor and 0 days since the tears stopped flowing. pic.twitter.com/yHpVYgzzxB

— Netflix (@netflix) October 9, 2023

While Bly Manor is a more uneven entry than Hill House, the series scores points for the central love story being between two women, the American au pair, Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti) and Bly Manor’s gardener, Jamie Taylor (Amelia Eve). Flanagan’s adaptation of Henry James’ works is worth it for the finale’s emotional epilogue, where we discover what happens to Dani and Jamie after they leave Bly Manor and if they ever truly escape the ghosts haunting them.

Sarah Gunning in Midnight Mass

Midnight Mass takes place in a tiny town on Crockett Island, which has a strong religious community, vampires, and violent deaths, but it doesn’t exactly have a bustling gayborhood. Thankfully, there is some representation with Sarah Gunning, a lesbian and local doctor played by Annabeth Gish. In the second episode, “Book II: Psalms,” Sarah brings another woman to the town’s annual Ash Wednesday festival for their second date. Sarah’s love life is never fully explored, but that’s not surprising when the town residents are busy fighting off a vampire invasion.

Spencer and Mark in The Midnight Club

After Shirley Jackson and Henry James, Flanagan turned his sights to more recent works, adapting books by one of the kings of teen horror, Christopher Pike, with his series, The Midnight Club. The Netflix original followed a group of teens who start a secret society, telling ghost stories, during their stay at Brightcliffe Hospice. Viewers are introduced to Spencer (Chris Sumpter) whose AIDS diagnosis is a death sentence since the series is set in the ‘90s before the lifesaving HIV drug cocktail. In addition to Spencer, The Midnight Club also features another gay character, Mark (Zach Gilford), a nurse at Brightcliffe who takes Spencer under his wing. 

Even though The Midnight Club was canceled after one season, in a Tumblr post, Flanagan revealed his plans for Season 2, which included Spencer surviving:

“The advancements in HIV treatment in the late ’90s would come into play, and we’d see his prognosis change. The HIV cocktail came out in Dec 1995, and we really wanted to explore that,” he wrote. “Spence would ride the swell of antiviral advancements, and by the end of the season, he’d no longer be classified as terminal. In the finale of season 2, Spence would leave Brightcliffe just like Sandra did in Season 1, heading off to manage his disease and live the rest of his life.”

Practically everyone in The Fall of the House of Usher

Auguste Dupin

Dupin (Carl Lumbly) is a detective who has known brother-sister duo Roderick and Madeline Usher for decades. His sexuality is never really discussed except when he casually comes out to the Usher siblings early in their friendship, and years later when he mentions his husband and children during his reunion with Roderick.

Victorine Lafourcade

In this 21st-century update of The Tell-Tale Heart, Victorine (T’Nia Miller) is a surgeon on the verge of a revolutionary heart mesh that is about to leave animal testing and begin its human trials. The first patient? Victorine’s girlfriend, Alessandra “Al” Ruiz (Paola Núñez), who she accidentally kills in a moment of rage. But even after Al is dead, Victorine can’t stop hearing the beating of the heart mesh — which drives her to the brink of madness and ultimately to her own death.

Napoleon Usher

Played by everyone’s favorite internet daddy crush, Rahul Kohli, Napoleon “Leo” Usher is a party playboy, who lives with his boyfriend Julius (Daniel Chae Jun) in a stunning loft, which is begging for an Architectural Digest home tour. Sadly, he trashes his spectacular space in the episode, “The Black Cat,” when Leo is driven mad by a phantom feline, eventually leading him to chase the cat off a balcony, throwing himself to his death.

The Fall of the House of Usher is streaming now on Netflix.

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