WARNING! Major spoilers for The Haunting of Bly Manor ahead.
Mike Flanagan's The Haunting Of Bly Manor concludes with a hopeful and heartwarming tone, but its book ending is much darker. The second installment in The Haunting series is based on Henry James's 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw. It is known for being one of the greatest ghost stories in literary history and includes themes that breakdown the walls of reality around its characters. While James's story includes a much darker tone, Flanagan's The Haunting Of Bly Manor makes use of the very minimal hopefulness hidden between the lines of The Turn of the Screw to craft its ending.
When The Haunting of Hill House premiered in 2018, it was an immediate success for its terrifying take on Shirley Jackson's 1959 novel of the same name. While The Haunting of Bly Manor does not feature as many ghosts as its predecessor, its impeccable story has garnered a wealth of positive reviews. The story follows Danielle "Dani" Clayton portrayed by Victoria Pedretti, who returns to the series along with several other cast members. She is an au pair who is hired to care for the children of Bly Manor, Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora Wingrave (Amelie Bea Smith). As the souls trapped in the manor continue to threaten their lives, Dani must keep them safe while attempting to keep herself sane.
The Haunting of Bly Manor: Every Easter Egg & Hill House Reference
The Turn of the Screw was adapted earlier in 2020 with Floria Sigismondi's The Turning but with far less success than Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor. There have been several adaptations of James's novella but only a few have captured the darkness of the original story's ending. Most notably, Jack Clayton's 1961 psychological horror movie The Innocents is nearly an exact adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor takes influence from several Henry James stories. As a result, its overall storyline as well as its conclusions have a much different tone than the 1898 novella.
How The Original Ending Was Much Darker
Flanagan's The Haunting of Bly Manor begins as a ghost story when introduced by The Storyteller (Carla Gugino) and concludes as a love story when the bride points out that the conclusion of the tale focuses on Jamie's love for Dani. Henry James's novella was produced during the gothic literary era, which came as a result of the darkness of the romantic period. It includes the tragic ending familiar to romanticism as well as the period's use of the intense emotions the character experiences as a result of their environment. Flanagan's ending is tragic in its own way, with the death of Dani and Jamie's longing for her lost love, but James's ending is much darker with the death of the young Miles Wingrave.
The Haunting of Bly Manor ends with the Wingrave children going on to forget their time at Bly, with Miles unscathed and alive. Dani, on the other hand, has fallen victim to the ghosts of the manor. The Turn of the Screw concludes as the governess attempts to protect Miles from the ghost of Peter Quint, who has controlled the boy for the majority of the story. Once she tells Miles that Quint no longer controls him, she looks down to discover that he has died. It is alluded to that he died once he was dispossessed but it also appears as though the governess has killed him. There are several debates over the novella's ending due to its ambiguity that makes it entirely plausible that she may have killed him. In fact, one theory suggests that the entirety of the tale is actually the governess losing grip on her reality and the ghosts are a figment of her imagination.
Miles's death is much darker than the ending of Flanagan's adaptation of The Turn of the Screw because it offers a glimpse of hope only to be lost entirely. The series ends with Dani's ghostly hand resting on Jamie's shoulder in order to showcase that love lives on even after death and no one ever fully leaves their loved ones, offering hope to the audience unlike its original source. The Haunting of Bly Manor ends with a heartwarming tone in order to avoid the shock of including a child's death as well as the obscurity of the governess's original story line.