Carrie Season 2 Theories: Does Carrie White Have the Shine, and Who Is Really Hunting Her?

Mike Flanagan's Carrie breaks with every earlier version of the story by letting Carrie White live, and that change also works as a way to fully bring her into the wider Stephen King universe. My theories for season 2 range from Carrie having the Shine to Margaret possibly being responsible for her husband's death, along with three candidates for the mysterious group chasing her.

There have already been four attempts at bringing Carrie to the screen, and this one brings King's debut novel into the modern day with a lot of big diversions from the source material. Updating things for modern audiences can often be terrible, but I think Flanagan has done a cracking job of using it to expose modern day bullying. There's also a big change to the book's ending, and with three seasons reportedly planned, there's a lot to talk about.

Carrie White survives the ending of Mike Flanagan's Carrie

Episode one comes hot right out of the gate, literally. We see the high school burning to the ground and hear various students calling it in to the police, with nearly half the town engulfed. The show's ending is another massive change from the book that leaves us with a lot to unpack.

In the novel and every other adaptation, Carrie dies at the end, although how it happens is a bit different depending on which version you watch. In the book, she bleeds out in the street after she's stabbed by her mother. She then draws Sue to her with her mind for help and dies with her last thought being to cry out for her mama to tell her that she's sorry. This series continues the tale instead, and that leaves a lot of questions I want to try to answer.

The mysterious girl is real, and I think she's taking Carrie to other psychic kids

Let's start with the mysterious girl who takes Carrie away. Is she real? She is for sure real. I'm not so sure what her plans for Carrie are, but I think the show lays out the clues pretty well. If we go back to episode two, she pretty much tells us exactly what she's here for: "I'm a spy and you're my mission. I'm just surprised that you caught me, that's all."

Her mother's business could explain why she wanted to find Carrie in the first place, and she likely knows that Carrie is being looked for by the psychic group as well. My guess is that she used to be part of them but then decided to go her own way. As for where she's taking Carrie, I'm guessing it will be to meet up with more psychic kids she's teamed up with. That could call back to her mother saying how these kids find each other online and then form their own covens.

Why letting the darkness take the wheel fits King's themes

Even though she's a real person, I still think she's meant to represent the darkness that Carrie becomes consumed by. When I first saw her taking over Carrie, I wasn't really sure how I felt about it, and I could see it as the show taking away some of Carrie's agency in her final act of revenge. After thinking about it some more, I actually really like it, and I think it fits a lot more with the themes King was portraying in Carrie's tragic fall into madness by the end of the book.

In the novel, Carrie is fully aware of what she's doing while murdering her classmates, but King still emphasizes that it's the evil of everyone else that has turned her into a monster. Carrie deals with the evils of society rather than the supernatural or cosmic evil of King's later works. Here, evil takes the form of teenagers being mindlessly cruel to each other and unable to really feel empathy. Carrie's turn is a response to the cruelty of the other students and staff, and King suggests that if everyone had a little more empathy, their ultimate fate would have been very different.

The show echoes this, with Carrie basically begging people to set their pettiness aside for one night and just be nice. She doesn't lose her mind because she's a devil spawn, as her mother wanted to believe, but because she's been made into a vessel for the entire town's anger, becoming that hatred in physical form. That also makes her a victim, since she gives in to her darkest impulses and can't stop herself spiraling.

In the show, Carrie is similarly consumed, this time in the form of the mysterious girl, but she's allowed to maintain who she truly is. It's "a have your prom and pig blood too kind of deal." It's not just losing control of her emotions and power but embracing it by letting the girl take the wheel. She has already been corrupted by the world's evil, so she can take the violent revenge she thinks Carrie deserves but wouldn't take herself, which is why she appears as a shadow, the literal darkness consuming Carrie. I feel this change lets Carrie not just live and die as a victim of everyone else's cruelty, as she does in the book, but become a fully realized person who takes her revenge by getting the chance to live a real life.

Carrie White may have the Shine, tying her into the wider King universe

This also works as a way to bring Carrie fully into the wider Stephen King universe, something she's never been able to do because King killed her in his first book. That was before he fleshed out a lot of these themes in novels such as Firestarter, It, The Shining and The Institute, so there's lots of potential here. I think Flanagan has put some pieces in place to make the connections King never had the chance to.

Throughout the series, Carrie can not only move things with her mind but also has recurring visions of her dad. She sees him around the house and even has a conversation with him when she comes home drunk from the party in episode 3. That is one of the main powers in The Shining. We also see numerous instances of Carrie seeing flashes of her eventual fate on prom night. This makes me think Carrie isn't just a typical telekinetic but that she has the ability to shine.

You can see hints of this in the book through Carrie's ability to implant her thoughts into people's minds. King wouldn't come up with the Shine until about three years later, but Flanagan may be taking the opportunity to retroactively fit the pieces together and update Carrie to better fit the world King created after the book's release. That would also explain why the Shine gets a name drop in episode 8 from Kate Siegel's character.

My theory: Margaret may have been responsible for Carrie's dad's death

This builds into the changes to Margaret too. We see her communicating with her dead husband, and she's later revealed to have telekinetic abilities herself. That brings me to my theory that Carrie's dad may not have been just a vision, and I do even wonder if his death might have been Margaret using her powers.

One of the first things we see is the death of Carrie's dad, which sets off the whole string of events. The dirt starts to rumble under the cinder blocks right before they mysteriously fall on top of him, and he's the only casualty of the accident. Given that Margaret has psychic powers like Carrie, I feel there's a possibility that she or Carrie may have been responsible. We've seen how strong Carrie's powers can be and how far they can spread, like making rocks fall on the house when she was a kid or the psychic blasts at the high school. We also know these powers manifest in moments of extreme stress or trauma.

So I don't think it's too much of a reach to think there may have been troubles at home between Margaret and Ralph. She could have lost control out of anger at him and accidentally killed him with a power she didn't know she had. I think that's why Margaret keeps his shirt on the chair in the kitchen and can't bring herself to pick up his ashes. Deep down, I think she feels guilty and knows she was responsible. It would also explain why she's so protective of Carrie and wants to keep her pure, because she knows firsthand what could happen if Carrie discovered her powers. I think this is something they'll explore in season 2.

The group hunting Carrie could be the Shop, the True Knot or the low men in yellow coats

The group after Carrie is a new addition for the show, so it's anyone's guess other than Flanagan's as to who they really are, but I think we can make some pretty good guesses from King's other work. My first thought is that they could be inspired by the Shop, also known as the Department of Scientific Intelligence, a secret government organization that investigates psychic phenomena. They abduct kids with psychic powers to experiment on them and were the main antagonist in Firestarter. The Shop have also turned up in books such as The Tommyknockers, The Stand and The Langoliers, and it's theorized they have a link to The Mist too.

King never explicitly confirms it, but many believe the Shop are also behind the Institute, from his 2019 novel of the same name, another covert government agency that kidnaps psychic kids, experiments on them and uses their powers to assassinate political targets, with origins tracing back to the Cold War. It's unclear if the two groups are related, but both are pretty in line with the group in the show. They clearly have major connections, bringing people together to interview them and casually covering up their murder of Margaret. That would also be a good reason for the kind of war they're in over the psychic kids.

We also have to consider that they could be members of the True Knot. If Carrie has the Shine, as I'm theorizing, it would make sense that they want to feed on her immense power. I'm not sure I'm really leaning that way, because the show's updated timeline would mean it's been 17 years since Danny Torrance took them out in 2011. But they're psychic vampires, so it isn't a stretch to think some could still be hanging around.

My last guess that I think has some merit is that the group's leader and her gang are the low men in yellow coats, who work for the Crimson King, the ultimate evil in King's universe. They hunt powerful psychics called Breakers, whose minds can destabilize the magical Beams holding the universe together, and they play a big role in The Dark Tower series. I feel this is the weakest of the three, but it would explain their interest in Carrie, since one of the leader's psychic henchmen says in episode 1 that she'd never felt a power like Carrie's. There's also a small detail that could give it a wee bit more weight: the leader wears a lion pendant. The lion is one of the 12 Guardians protecting the Beams, like Maturin the Turtle, and I did wonder if the necklace was a subtle hint that she's one of the low men trying to destroy the Beams and their Guardians.

Where I think seasons 2 and 3 are heading

Thematically, I think the show will be about Carrie breaking free of the influence of an oppressive mentor, and that season 2 will be about her breaking free of the mysterious girl. I think she'll finally get out of her darkness only to be taken under the wing of the group for season 3.

I think that once she learns they killed her mother, they'll become an antagonist to her too, and in the end she may finally escape them.

Which of these theories about the group hunting Carrie seems most likely to you?