Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher is just oozing with Poe references

polygon.com:

It’s clear when Pink Floyd’s rollicking protest song “Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2” begins to play in the opening moments of The Fall of the House of Usher that viewers are in for a wild ride.

The song itself came on the radio in 1979, an important year for the ill-fated Usher siblings in this iteration of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story. Its lyrics are emblematic of a complicated childhood, which Roderick and Madeline Usher contended with in their youth. It also feels like an ironic and pointed choice — a conspiratorial wink and a smile from Mike Flanagan to his audience — when you consider Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado,” a story in which a man traps one of his rivals behind a brick wall in the basement of his home.

[Ed. note: The rest of this post contains spoilers for all of The Fall of the House of Usher.]

The Fall of the House of Usher is packed to the brim with moments like these. Some are small details, easily missed if you’re not looking for them, and others appear on screen with the force of a wrecking ball. The first episode alone, appropriately titled “Midnight Dreary,” is a veritable minefield of Gothic Easter eggs. Roderick’s doomed offspring — Camille, Prospero, Tamerlane, Victorine, Frederick, Napoleon, and even his granddaughter Lenore — are all named after characters who appear throughout Poe’s poems and stories. Even Roderick’s daughter-in-law’s name, Morella, is a reference to a Poe’s short story that shares the same name. Many have theorized over the years that the name “Morella” comes from “great morel,” another name for the poisonous plant belladonna, or deadly nightshade — and that plays an important part in Morella’s story arc.

The names Flanagan has chosen carry weight throughout the show