‘Carrie’ Creator Mike Flanagan Reflects On Season 1

Editor’s note: This article features minor spoilers on Carrie Season 1.

With a second season of YA horror Carrie now greenlit, the Prime Video show’s showrunner, Mike Flanagan, has been reflecting on Season 1.

The horror guru also assessed the genre’s ongoing moment in the sun and why working on the upcoming Warhammer 40,000 series has been “the time of my life,” in an interview with Deadline.

Flanagan was keen to address how Red Room Pictures, Reunion Pacific Entertainment and Amazon MGM Studios series Carrie redefined the story for a modern audience, mixing the “body-horror story” of teenage years with the social pressures and fears young people face today – a familiar trope for Amazon YA viewers.

“What I really wanted this to be was a look at what today’s teenagers have to deal with when it comes to cruelty – and the consequences of choosing cruelty,” he said. “We’re talking about a story that has always been about the choice between kindness and cruelty in small moments that add up to something much larger, and the tragic consequences when we choose cruelty.”

Amazon MGM Studios has pushed heavily into young adult content through the likes of The Summer I Turned Pretty, Maxton Hall – The World Between Us and Off Campus over recent years. Carrie blends elements of that genre, while really leaning into the horror that made Carrie an enduring property – applying those tropes to modern teenage life.

Carrie follows Summer H. Howell in the famous title role, this time an optimistic teenage girl who ends a life of seclusion with her mother and starts high school after her father’s untimely death, only to find its challenges and the other students pushing her to unlock dangerous telekinetic powers as a viral bullying scandal tears through her community.

The Carrie character is significantly changed from Stephen King’s version from the 1970s, who was timid and terrified, with Flanagan saying, “In a lot of ways, I think of her as the anti-Carrie.” Similarly, his script reflects an era in which teenagers grow up with the very real fear of public shaming through social media in their heads.

“In today’s climate, on planet Earth, we have normalised and encouraged cruelty to such a degree that I think it has honestly reshaped the face of the planet in a few short decades,” said Flanagan, who is himself father to a teenage boy. “It felt like that was a story worth considering. “I was thinking about the world he was stepping into, how different it was from the world I entered in the 1990s, and how different that was from the 1970s, when Stephen King was writing about it.”

Flanagan noted how previous generations’ high school embarrassments, torments, mistakes and growing pains “came and went” as they became older. “They didn’t have a digital shelf life that could follow them, potentially for the rest of their lives, and be viewable by the entirety of the internet,” he added.

As for blending YA with horror, Flanagan said: “Horror goes hand in hand with being a young adult. Adolescence is a period of life that’s particularly conducive to relating to horror stories, and our emotions are at their peak. We’re living through a kind of body-horror story as we grow into ourselves and our bodies start to go crazy. I do think there’s a natural marriage there.”

Shades of grey

Season 2 of Carrie was greenlit a week ago following strong Nielsen numbers, as it ranked as Prime Video’s top show in the week of its October 7 premiere and the top streaming title in the U.S. between October 5-11. Flanagan indicated in an interview with Collider that in a “dream scenario,” the show would run to three seasons. “I think Carrie has a wonderful three-step arc,” he said. “It’s a trilogy, really.”

Carrie has been met with good reviews, with many focusing on how Flanagan has favored shades of grey over the black-and-white texture of the original novel or Brian DePalma’s classic horror, which first released 50 years ago in 1976. Characters such as Carrie’s strict mother Margaret White and high school bully Chris Hargensen are fleshed out, with their own fears and backstories at least partially explaining their shocking behavior.

“This is a story for younger people, and we’re hoping to encourage them, when they come to those moments where they have to choose between cruelty and kindness, to think a little longer than they might and lean towards kindness,” said Flanagan. “It didn’t seem helpful to paint the antagonistic characters as entirely other, entirely unsympathetic. In fact, I thought that would be counterproductive to the goal.”

However, Flanagan failed to find new layers for Billy Nolan, Chris’ boyfriend, and said he is the “closest we have to a black-and-white monster on the show.”

Flanagan also linked between the stresses of teenage years and horror stories, as he criticized how “young adult entertainment has a tendency to talk down to those viewers.”

He added: “I’ve never liked the demarcation between adult entertainment and young adult entertainment that suggests younger viewers aren’t capable of dealing with heavy themes, real anxieties and real-world stakes. “My experience of this generation is that they’re acutely aware of things that even many adults have blinders on to.

“Most of the young adults I know are very aware of the dangers facing our planet politically and environmentally. Many are also acutely aware of the challenges they face entering a depleted workforce. Their odds of owning a home, or of converting a university education into a career, are getting slimmer and slimmer. They’re aware of this at younger and younger ages, and it comes with a real weight.”

Asked how tastes in horror have changed, Flanagan said it was “the question that keeps me up during every project,” before providing an assessment of the market in 2026.

“You look at last year and films such as Sinners and Weapons, and then this year you look at Backrooms and Obsession,” he said. “These are very different films, with very different approaches, speaking to very different fears. All of them resonated with audiences in a major way; unpacking why is difficult. Every studio in town has teams of people trying to figure out what makes these stories speak to audiences.

“The thing about the horror genre – and the reason it endures, why it’s one of our most vital and most frequently underestimated genres – is that it reflects some of the most universal emotions we have.

“The first emotion we all feel – we don’t remember it because we’re brand new in the world – is fear. That stays with us for the rest of our lives. It changes form and is triggered by different things, but it connects every human being on the planet. Horror is one of the only genres that lets us confront fear head-on. It holds a mirror up to our anxieties, shortcomings and the things about our lives, our world and ourselves that terrify us and make us uncomfortable.”

He noted that young audiences’ responses to Backrooms and Obsession were “driven by their anxieties about the world they’re inhabiting and the futility of their wishes,” adding: “The idea that even wanting things in this world might turn around and hurt them is something that really strikes me about Obsession.”

‘Warhammer’ update

As for his future, Flanagan has been attached to Henry Cavill’s ongoing mission to develop a live-action Warhammer 40,000 series for Prime Video. The motto of the franchise is ‘In the grim darkness of the far future, there is nothing but war,’ which could tap into his darker sensibilities, but Flanagan wasn’t giving much away when Deadline probed for an update.

“Henry Cavill would be furious if I divulged anything about what we’re working on,” he quipped. “All I can say is that Warhammer is a fascinating world. The challenge, as anyone familiar with it knows, is finding a way in – it’s so big. There are 700 novels, discounting the [table top] game, the interactive elements and so much of the rest of the lore.”

He did reveal that the show has found “a very cool and unexpected on-ramp into it, which I think is very exciting. I’m sworn to secrecy on all of it, but I’m having the time of my life working on it.”

Flanagan is one of film and TV’s most prolific horror creators, with movie credits including Absentia, Doctor Sleep, Hush and the upcoming The Exorcist: Martyrs, as well as writing the first draft of the script for current box office hit Clayface. On the TV side, he was showrunner for Netflix horror series The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and The Fall of the House of Usher. He’s keen to adapt more King novels in the future, as he works up Carrie Season 2.

The writer, producer and director has an optimistic stance on the future of the horror genre, predicting recent events in entertainment such as the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger would play into its favor “for reasons that are both romantic and cynical.”

Horror, he said, “Will always appeal to studios and producers because it can be made more cheaply [than other genres]. It can be done without movie stars and without major effects, and it can draw huge audiences without requiring as much money up front. The cynic in me says horror will always be popular for that reason.

“The romantic in me says horror will endure for a better reason. These stories don’t require all the bells and whistles, movie stars and other elements you have to throw at different genres to make them appealing. Horror is universally appealing because of what it is: Our anxieties, insecurities and darkness aren’t going to abate. However it manifests, there will be an audience for it. Horror is going to survive. It’s going to outlive all of them.”