'The Haunting of Bly Manor' Ending Explained: Why does [SPOILER] kill herself and who is the narrator?
Spoilers for 'The Haunting of Bly Manor'
The sequel to Mike Flanagan's Haunting saga, 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' kicks off with a rehearsal dinner. We never hear the name of the bride and groom until the finale and ninth episode. Neither do we catch the name of the strikingly beautiful and captivating gray-haired guest at the dinner who recounts the story of Bly Manor sitting next to the fireplace, surrounded by guests. She says the story isn't about her, but about a young American au-pair who had traveled across the pond to seek a new life in England. It's striking how well our narrator knows the story, almost as if she wrote it herself, or had it happen to someone very close to her. And it is not until the final moments that we discover that the narrator is in fact the Bly gardener Jamie (Carla Gugino), who had fallen in love and built a life with the tragedy struck au-pair Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti), who eventually killed herself to vanquish the purgatorial curse that had befallen the manor and its grounds.
Dani's story begins with convincing the aloof and detached Bly owner, Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), to give her the live-in position of nannying his orphaned niece and nephew - Flora (Amelie Bea Smith), 8, and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), 10. Dani's stay at Bly is plagued from the very first day by mysterious phone calls, muddy footsteps walking the manor at night, and an evil-looking man whom only she keeps seeing every now and then. Soon Dani learns of the house's purgatorial nature and supernatural horrors that leave those who die on the grounds, trapped in Bly forever, but by then it is too late. All the way in the last episode, when Dani is being choked by the Lady of the Lake who led to the origins of the curse at Bly.
This Lady of the Lake is the faceless Lady Viola Lloyd of Bly Manor (Kate Seigel), who had died centuries ago from cancer, or what was called "the lung" at the time. Viola's vengeful spirit prompted her to lie in the lake within the property grounds and along with her fading essence, but firm will to stick around, she turned Bly into a purgatorial ground where people, just like her, would roam the estate after death. There was no escape for these people, and while not all were harmless, most of them just wanted to get out of Bly. Among them were Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and who planned on possessing Miles, and his lover and the kids' ex-nanny Rebecca (Tahirah Sharif), who was supposed to possess Flora, thus getting out of Bly in their bodies.
On one fateful night, the Lady of the Lake makes her usual walk around the castle and comes across Flora. Thinking she is her daughter, Viola carried Flora to the lake, to drown and lay her with her own decomposing body right at the bottom. But Dani is able to stop her in time, and before Viola can submerge into the water with Flora, Dani says with conviction the magic words Peter and Rebecca would tell the kids, to convince them to allow being possessed by the two ghosts. When Viola hears those words from Dani, her spirit transfers into the au-pair and the kids are saved, and restless souls within the grounds, released from their purgatory.
Dani moves back to America with Jamie (Amelia Eve playing the younger version), whom she sparks a romance with during her stay at Bly, and together they live a long and peaceful life, getting married as far as American law at the time would allow a same-sex couple to be. But their life is also interrupted by Dani's recurring sightings of Viola's faded face and decaying body; one of her iris' turn to brown the way Viola's were and as days pass, these hallucinations get more frequent in her reflections. Jamie sticks by Dani's side and assures her with love and support that they are going to do this together, but one night Dani wakes up from a nightmare where Viola was strangling Jamie, and sees her own self atop her wife, her hand almost wrapped around Jamie's throat.
Dani decides it's time; she can't evade her fate anymore and decides to leave Jamie with a note. She travels all the way to Bly and sinks down to the bottom of the lake that had become Viola's resting place for centuries and makes peace with what's become of her. Dani kills herself to reconcile Viola's haunting spirit with its home, but since it's her - a loving, kind heart without animosity, she doesn't drag others down with herself. The new Lady of the Lady goes back to sleep, to wake, and to walk the grounds of Bly Manor, but she won't let anybody else suffer the same tragic fate.
As for Jamie, she stays in America and when we meet her, she is at Flora's wedding. The kids don't remember their past at Bly, and Flora is stunned to hear the story. But Jamie doesn't tell her the truth of it. When she goes back home, she waits for her new Lady of the Lake with bated breath, every night. She keeps the door ajar, and sits in the sofa set staring and waiting.
'The Haunting of Bly Manor' premiered on Friday, October 9, and is now available for streaming only on Netflix.