Carrie – Season One – Review: Stronger than Muscle and Bone

She is an outcast. Young, innocent, scrutinized by her peers, and dressed up for a special occasion. On stage, a dream comes true: for the first time, everyone accepts her, and she is finally free of the burden of being mistreated. Then cold water — a bucket of something viscous and colorful, to be more precise — is thrown on her night.

If you think I am talking about Carrie, think twice. I was about five when, during the first rerun of Chocolate com Pimenta (a Brazilian telenovela internationally known as Pepper Chocolate), I watched main character Ana Francisca be thrown a bucketful of green paint on her head during prom. I can’t say I remember it all when it comes to those early years, but I could never forget the feeling I had watching that harrowing scene, anxiety and nausea making me feel deeply moved by what happened to Aninha.

It would take some good years until I finally heard of Carrie, the Stephen King book. Looking back now, it’s curious how I first experienced something akin to the prom incident without Carrie even being involved. This is the extent of Carrie’s impact. Besides the film from the 70s, which created the iconic imagery surrounding the bloody prom queen, besides the 1990 sequel, the 2002 film for TV, the 2013 remake, the stage musical adaptation, besides all of that, Carrie has undoubtedly inspired multiple other works across all media — and it still does.

Carrie. Pictured: Summer H. Howell as Carrie, Samantha Sloyan as Margaret. Photo: Liane Hentscher /Prime ©2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

Knowing this, is there anything new an 8-part adaptation for TV could say about Carrie? Mike Flanagan and his team found it absolutely possible.

With episodes written by Mike Flanagan, Elizabeth Padden, Justina Ireland, Dani Parker, Elan Gale & Alexandra Magistro, Rebecca Klingel, Jamie Flanagan, and directed by Mike Flanagan, Kate Siegel, Axelle Carolyn, Kyra Sedgwick, and Hiromi Kamata, this version is set in the present day, and social media/cyberbullying play a huge part in it. It also touches on school shootings more explicitly. It goes deeper into the lore of girls born with powers, bringing new information about well-known characters and expanding the universe with new ones. It goes deeper into the drama of the young and how adults in general (their parents, teachers, everyone in their community) are at fault for what is happening to them.

I should start by saying I don’t love the first two episodes. By the end of episode 2, I felt tired and questioned whether the decision to release all eight episodes on the same day was justified. Not to say they are bad, they just feel like a different version of something I had already seen, which had me fearing the rest of the batch.

Carrie. Pictured: Alison Thornton as Chris, Siena Agudong as Sue. Photo: /Prime ©2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

I watched FIRST PERIOD and FOREIGN LANGUAGE on a Saturday morning. At night, I decided to continue with episode 3 before I went to bed — just one episode, I said to myself. By the time I actually went to sleep, way deep into the night, I had watched the whole thing but the last two episodes. And I was feeling thrilled and amazed by the show, in equal parts curious and excited by the inevitable chaotic, tragic ending — so much that despite sleeping late, I woke up early that Sunday to finish it.

And if that happened, it’s among other things because of the cyberbullying arc. Chris creates the “Carrie Red” Instagram account by the end of 1×02, initiating the conflict that drives the story. But Chris doesn’t stop at Carrie, gradually coming for many of her colleagues. And the most interesting thing about it is that she doesn’t do it all by herself: multiple people DM her secret information, pictures, and videos of students and teachers involved in what seems to be unfavorable situations for their image, highlighting their insecurities, their hidden problems, their mistakes. So it starts with Carrie, but soon it becomes much bigger than her.

Meanwhile, our main character gets close to Sue and Chris, naively believing that they are past the locker room incident and that she has real friends for the first time. Carrie goes to a party, gets drunk, and in another episode she even gets high after unknowingly eating an edible. She thinks Chris is her friend, and the show builds tension upon the expectation of the truth being revealed.

Carrie. Pictured: Samantha Sloyan as Margaret. Photo: /Prime ©2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

By the end of DRAMATIC ARTS, Margaret enters the game after a tearful Carrie tells her what has been happening to her and who is behind it. Then begins one of the most interesting new things this version has to offer: instead of being someone who is completely unable to connect with modern society, this Margaret creates an Instagram account to report the bullying her daughter has been suffering, becoming some sort of influencer in the process. An opportunistic influencer, I must say, because as much as the show wants you to believe she loves her daughter in a twisted way, her love for the power she gets after creating and leading an entire movement of outraged parents against Chris and the school administration is bigger.

Margaret is manipulative and mean in a very smart way; she knows all about Law, she knows how to do wrong without getting caught, and she knows exactly what to say to make someone do something that will give her the upper hand. Samantha Sloyan is diabolic in this role. Her scenes at the new job she hates are some of the best character work this show has to offer, and I love everything about the influencer mom facet she assumes during the season’s second half. The moments she speaks to the community are brilliant, and the way Sloyan creates a character complex enough so we can believe she loves Carrie, although she is notably abusive towards her, got me enjoying this show a lot.

This whole social media plot also ends up revealing an explosive truth about Harold Allison, a teacher targeted by the Carrie Red profile. He was having an affair with Chris’ sister, an underage student, and the exposure of their relationship led to attacks and people doubting his character in society, so by the sixth episode he commits suicide. I was shocked by this whole thing — a very well-executed twist that adds up to the complexity surrounding the profile and Chris’ relationship with internet, moral, and her family.

The end of this arc in HOME ECONOMICS is intense and dramatic. The show becomes some kind of legal drama, with Carrie and Chris’s families trying to reach an agreement that will be good to both of them and the school. And things seem to be going well for a moment after much hard struggle, until Margaret blows everything up by manipulating Chris, continuing the sequence of events that culminates in the prom.

Carrie. Pictured: Thalia Dudek as Emaline, Summer H. Howell as Carrie, Alison Thornton as Chris. Photo: /Prime ©2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

But before we are crowned, we need to discuss Emaline. Up to now, Carrie’s biggest conflicts in adaptations involved either her mom at home or her colleagues at school. By adding the social media angle and further exploring the school shooting implications behind Carrie’s outburst during prom, the show adds a third dynamic to the school/home duo: Emaline, someone who also has powers and speaks to Carrie at a distance.

Emaline is not a part of that community, and neither Margaret, nor Chris, nor Sue, nor any teacher or adult knows anything about her. Her conversations with Carrie are not supervised, and if this allows Carrie to finally find ways to express her powers and herself, it also allows Emaline to get inside her head, influencing the young woman to become more violent and more reactive.

During prom, it’s not Carrie who causes most of the harm, as Emaline possesses the girl’s body and uses it to wreak havoc. In some way, a parallel can be established between Emaline and Billy Nolan, Chris’s boyfriend: both bring to light the darkest sides of their peers. Within the “Carrie as a metaphor for school shootings”, I feel like Emaline could represent people who talk to children online, serving as an invisible aspect no one can predict or fully control.

Carrie. Pictured: Summer H. Howell as Carrie. Photo: /Prime ©2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved

And if I find this compelling, the choices involving Carrie’s possession at prom also left me conflicted. I understand that they want to make a franchise out of this, a trilogy as confirmed by Flanagan himself. Was this an attempt to not make the protagonist someone people would find hard to root for in future seasons if we ever get there? Of course, Carrie kills Tommy by accident while trying to hurt Chris and Billy, and she seems to relish the moment as she spreads flames across the city with Emaline. But she also seems to be in deep pain when she comes out of the trance and realizes what was done to Chris and Billy. What she had done to them. She also is not the one to kill Margaret, who dies later at the hands of the coven’s leader played by Kate Siegel.

Amid choices I love and choices I find questionable, for me it’s when the show starts doing its own thing that it shines the most. The cyberbullying drama, the teacher exposure, Margaret the influencer, Carrie with a powerful friend who no one else sees, the coven — they are all welcome changes that make this show worth watching. I don’t love how most of the episodes look similar to other YA dramas at Prime Video, but I love the songs chosen for some of the episodes — they have this teenage feminist vibe that fits the show very well. Summer H. Howell is so lovely as Carrie; it’s so easy to understand how she sees the world and root for her. And every time she’s acting opposite Alison Thornton, who plays Chris, and Samantha Sloyan, it’s impossible to look away. This trio is magnetic, and they work as the foundation of this first season. What Thornton does as Chris is tempted to tell Carrie she is sorry in multiple moments before the finale until she finally gives in seconds before dying is so, so good. I also love Delainey Hayles in this. I was so excited to watch her tiny moment at the end of the first episode that I expected her character to show up again the entire season, and I am eager for a renewal so we can learn more about who she is playing.

People will talk about Carrie (2026) in terms of how good it is as an adaptation. They will compare it to the book, to the previous movies, to their expectations, good or bad, reasonable or not. I liked it very much as I find its additions and surprises very exciting — even the ones I don’t fully approve of. There’s ground to be explored with the coven and their hunters, with Emaline and Carrie travelling across the country as they deal with what they have done, maybe with Sue and Tina, who are alive and could reappear in the future, and with the coven coming for Carrie and Emaline. I’m very curious about their plans, and if Carrie could end her journey alive and free at the end of the intended future seasons. Sounds like a good way to finish this endless cycle of adaptations — until someone brings her back from the dead to be crowned at prom once more.