History YMMV / TheFallOfTheHouseOfUsher2023

Verna is the mysterious, supernatural being that haunts the Ushers throughout the story to make them "pay their dues." An ancient entity that offers "deals" to humans that grants them immense power, status and immunity in exchange for something they cherish, Verna presented this very deal to Roderick and Madeline Usher in their youth, promising them total power in exchange for their bloodline one day in the far future. When the time comes, Verna manipulates each and every one of the Usher family to her tune, using their personal flaws and wickedness to trick them into their own deaths, often in brutal, bloody ways. Though considering herself above human morality, Verna nonetheless arranges a particularly agonizing death for the sadistic Freddie Usher, and is sincerely mournful that Lenore, the only genuinely kind Usher, must also die according to the deal she made with Roderick. Verna's machinations result in the complete collapse of the Usher clan and their corrupt corporation, all while she never loses her affable, regal persona.
Arthur Pym, "the Pym Reaper", is a hardened attorney who witnessed horrors beyond human comprehension on a global expedition years ago, coming out as one of the only survivors through sheer will. Through Pym's tactical genius, the Ushers have evaded legal consequences for years, Pym always finding loopholes, bribes and blackmail to toss around that has resulted in none of the Ushers facing penalties for their litany of crimes. Far more coldly efficient and professional than the Ushers, Pym expertly tracks down Verna and gets the drop on her, only outdone by Verna because of her supernatural powers. Even when he witnesses what Verna can do, Pym remains calm and holds an intelligent conversation with her, ending with Pym being one of the few, if only, humans to ever reject one of her "deals", remarking that he refuses to let anyone have leverage on him. Pym gracefully turns himself into the police when the Ushers are beaten by Verna, earning the dark woman's respect as Pym silently accepts how his hand plays out.

%% Do not add Base Breaking Character, Broken Base, The Scrappy, or Overshadowed By Controversy examples until six months after the work's release (April 12th, 2024).
%% Complete Monster and Magnificent Bastard entries require approval on their respective cleanup threads.
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** If you're hosting an event that relies on some special tech or equipment like a sprinkler system, make sure you test the system ''before'' the event to make sure everything is working properly and there's no risk to anyone.

* AlternativeCharacterInterpretation:
** Were [[spoiler: the people who died horribly at Prospero's orgy]] [[AssholeVictim asshole victims]] or AesopCollateralDamage? The fact that Verna [[spoiler:made a point of using her powers to evacuate all the wait staff and attempted to do the same with at least one of the guests (Morella)]] implies that she actively chose who to spare and who to let die in a horrific fashion, so the whole incident was far more targeted than a casual viewing might imply. Following the themes of the story, [[spoiler: all non-charitable rich people are evil and deserve horrific deaths. This is stated almost verbatim by Verna in the finale, where she considers that even inaction by capital to solve the world's problems is practically a deadly sin (any dollar not spent on saving the world will cause people to die). She evacuated (or tried to evacuate) everyone at the party who didn't have a negative ledger to their actions: the working-class wait staff, and Morrie, whom we later learn causes net good in the world through her actions.]]
** Was Camille being arrogant and BullyingADragon when she was facing a Verna-possessed chimpanzee or was she [[FaceDeathWithDignity facing death with dignity?]] The latter could be inferred from her final moments, when she decides to take a picture of the chimp anyway, regardless of the consequences. Or even a case of TakingYouWithMe--if she's going to die anyway, she's at least going to get the evidence needed to take down Victorine first. [[TakeAThirdOption Or perhaps]] she was still tricked by Verna's illusion, seeing the chimpanzees only when it finally lunged at her?
** Were Victorine's, Napoleon's, and Tamerlane's hallucinations caused by Verna, extreme stress and exhaustion, or early-onset CADASIL inherited from their father? Regarding Leo, did the amount of drugs in his system [[spoiler: and the deaths of his younger siblings]] contribute?
** Camille is responsible for the entire Usher corporation's public image, including everything from giant businesses in trouble with the [=EPA=] to five loose-cannon siblings just ready to start a new controversy. She even maintains a secret charity wing on the side so that any member of the family can take credit for some charitable contribution in case they need a quick hit of media good will. Was she justified in being angry that Victorine might be hiding something in her lab that could turn into a massive scandal, which Camille would be responsible for cleaning up if it got out? Or was her obsession with Victorine's project a case of SiblingRivalry taken to fatal extremes?
** While the series stylistically jumps around to different perspectives, this masks the fact that the entire story is simply a narrative being told by Roderick to Dupin; at its most basic level, it consists only of how Roderick ''[[UnreliableNarrator claims]]'' the downfall of his family unfolded. All of the evidence for Verna--the pictures, the video, the direct interactions with other characters outside of Roderick--we are merely told existed through Roderick. Though it is entirely possible the Ushers managed to hide it through their evidence tampering, the authorities never show awareness of there being a person in common at all of these deaths, meaning the only ''indirect'' circumstantial evidence to back Roderick's claims of a third party pulling strings, acknowledged independently from Roderick's story, is the one Dupin points out in relation to the first tragedy, that is, [[spoiler:the fact that all the wait staff at the orgy left the premises at the same time right before the sprinklers were activated, and don't recall being told to do so by any specific person.]] So, [[spoiler:is Verna a real supernatural entity the Ushers made a deal with in 1980 for success and freedom from legal consequences, or a fiction created by Roderick's unstable mind to explain a horrible series of coincidental deaths and to represent via curse the actually entirely mundane destructive pall his and his sister's choices cast over his family?]]
** Did Auguste Dupin [[spoiler:really, objectively see Verna perched on the ruins of Usher House? Or was he unnerved by the story and subsequent events he just fled from to the point where Roderick's story played tricks with his own mind for a second?]]
** Did Victorine [[spoiler: block out the memory of Al's death and believe that the fight ended with Al storming out without her throwing the marble bookend? Or did she convince herself that because she implanted the heart mesh prototype, Al had survived her injury?]]
** Would Camille have [[spoiler: died in the chimpanzee accident anyway, without Verna's involvement?]]
** Did Victorine really [[spoiler: deliberately stab herself? Or did Verna possess her and do it for her (seemingly explaining her surprisingly calm and collected final monologue, and look of surprise to find herself stabbed afterward)? If so, was her confused, panicked "Daddy?" because ''she thought Roderick had been the one to stab her''?]] Alternatively, [[spoiler:did Roderick hallucinate Victorine's final monologue, and Victorine killed herself without saying what Roderick believes she did? Victorine's monologue references and supports Roderick's earlier contemplation of suicide to spare his family, which Victorine couldn't have known about, but in later episodes we see very clearly that Verna refuses to let Roderick get out of the terms of the deal via suicide, so Victorine isn't expressing anything Verna would agree with. At the moment of Victorine's death, the only person who knew about Roderick's suicidal line of thought and agreed with it was Roderick himself. Or, is it Verna twisting the knife in Roderick, since Victorine's monologue concludes that she would have "ha[d] to do this" even if Roderick had jumped, because "success is everything"?]]

** This version's take on ''Literature/TheMasqueOfTheRedDeath'' involves 78 people being [[spoiler: horrifically burned to death when the sprinklers are revealed to be acidic]]. Although Verna does tell Morella and the wait staff to get out of the building in advance, and we can infer that the guests being selected by Prospero aren't good people, the lack of on-screen {{Jerkass}} behaviour beyond hedonism can make their fate seem somewhat unwarranted. Especially since Prospero was filming them without their consent ''and'' with the intention to blackmail them later. The point seems to be that because they're rich they have done or condoned bad things in the same way the Ushers have and that is why Verna condemns them, but we don't actually know what any of those bad things ''are'' beyond the implication.

** While the story stylistically jumps around to different perspectives, this masks the fact that the entire story is simply a narrative being told by Roderick to Dupin; at its most basic level, it consists only of how Roderick ''[[UnreliableNarrator claims]]'' the downfall of his family unfolded. All of the evidence for Verna--the pictures, the video, the direct interactions with other characters outside of Roderick--we are merely told existed through Roderick. Though it is entirely possible the Ushers managed to hide it through their evidence tampering, the authorities never show awareness of there being a person in common at all of these deaths, meaning the only ''indirect'' circumstantial evidence to back Roderick's claims of a third party pulling strings, acknowledged independently from Roderick's story, is the one Dupin points out in relation to the first tragedy, that is, [[spoiler:the fact that all the wait staff at the orgy left the premises at the same time right before the sprinklers were activated, and don't recall being told to do so by any specific person.]] So, [[spoiler:is Verna a real supernatural entity the Ushers made a deal with in 1980 for success and freedom from legal consequences, or a fiction created by Roderick's unstable mind to explain a horrible series of coincidental deaths and to represent via curse the actually entirely mundane destructive pall his and his sister's choices cast over his family?]]

** While the story stylistically jumps around to different perspectives, this masks the fact that the entire story is simply being told by Roderick; it is simply how he, in his mind, understands the downfall of his family. All of the evidence for Verna--the pictures, the video, the direct interactions with other characters outside of Roderick--we are simply told existed through Roderick. Though it is entirely possible the Ushers managed to hide it through their evidence tampering, the authorities never show awareness of there being a person in common at all of these deaths, meaning the only ''indirect'' circumstantial evidence to back Roderick's claims of a third party pulling strings, acknowledged independently from Roderick's story, is the one Dupin points out in relation to the first tragedy, that is, [[spoiler:the fact that all the wait staff at the orgy left the premises at the same time right before the sprinklers were activated, and don't recall being told to do so by any specific person.]] So, [[spoiler:is Verna a real supernatural entity the Ushers made a deal with in 1980 for success and freedom from legal consequences, or a fiction created by Roderick's unstable mind to explain a horrible series of coincidental deaths and to represent via curse the actually entirely mundane destructive pall his and his sister's choices cast over his family?]]

* IncestYayShipping: Roderick and Madeline have a fair bit of this with the fandom due to their close relationship (especially when keeping the fact that they're [[{{Twincest}} fraternal twins]] in mind) and Madeline's disdainful relationship towards her sister-in-law Annabel.

* SugarWiki/SheReallyCanAct: Samantha Sloyan had mostly been in supporting roles in Mike Flanagan's previous projects and, although she had moved into a more prominent one for ''Series/TheMidnightClub2022'', her role as Tamerlane sees her holding her own alongside the others, especially for the scenes at the Gold Bug launch.
* SignatureScene: The [[spoiler:orgy-turned-acid-shower]] scene at the end of the 2nd episode in particular has stuck in viewers' minds, both for the jaw-dropping BodyHorror on display and how it serves as a good taste of what [[AssholeVictim the Ushers]] are [[CruelAndUnusualDeath in for.]]