'The Haunting of Bly Manor': Why do Peter and Rebecca's spirits keep haunting Miles and Flora?
Spoilers for 'The Haunting of Bly Manor'
Mike Flanagan's 'The Haunting of Bly Manor' follows the purgatorial haunted murder house concept that the first season of Hill House encapsulated. Much like the deluded and vicious spirit of the family matriarch Olivia Crain (Carla Gugino) in Hill House, Bly Manor's purgatorial history lies with Lady Viola of the titular property, whose murder and subsequent burial deep within the property's lake hunts for souls to accompany her.
But while Olivia wanted to murder her twins — Nellie (Victoria Pedretti) and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) — to protect them from the rest of the world and have their souls safely nestled with her in purgatory, Bly Manor sees a similarly cursed spirit — Peter Quint (Jackson-Cohen) — manipulate his lover Rebecca Jessel (Tahirah Sharif) into dying on Bly Manor's grounds to be cursed with him till eternity. Soon after, the two also hatch a plan to do the same with Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Flora Wingrave (Amelie Bea Smith), who our protagonist Dani Clayton (Pedretti) is taking care of at Bly Manor. The reason? A gateway out of purgatory.
After Peter is killed by Lady Viola (Kate Siegel) and condemned in purgatory, he tells Rebecca, the children's ex-nanny, that the only way she can be together with him is by dying the same way that he did. He promises to possess Rebecca's body so she can't feel the pain of dying but abandons her body last minute, thus betraying her yet again.
Torn and tormented from what she's done, Rebecca is desperate to get out of Bly Manor, so Peter suggests they possess Miles and Flora as the two can then get out of Bly Manor using their bodies, but that plan fails too because it's the spirits that are trapped in the grounds, not the bodies.
This prompts Peter and Rebecca to offer up the two children, Miles and Flora, to the Lady of the Lake, who has been haunting Bly Manor's grounds, looking for her daughter whom she had been forcibly separated from. The two think offering up the children to the real ghost of Bly Manor will satiate her search and lay her to rest forever, thus freeing the spirits from their condemned hell on the property. Luckily, Rebecca's spirit has a change of heart at the very last moment and helps Dani save Flora from being carried into the lake by Lady Viola.
'The Haunting of Bly Manor' is now available for streaming only on Netflix.