Here Are All the Big Differences Between the ‘Carrie’ Book and the Prime Video Series

Mike Flanagan’s new adaptation of Carrie is both a modernized take on the Stephen King novel that builds out the universe in fascinating ways and puts several aspects of the book on screen that other adaptations have not touched. If you’ve only seen Brian De Palma’s 1976 movie, you might not realize that some changes aren’t changes at all. Curious as to what the actual differences are between Carrie the show and Carrie the book? As a fan of both, let’s get into it.The bare bones of the story are intact: Carrie White is a sheltered teenager whose religious mother, Margaret White, keeps her on a tight leash. When she gets her period for the first time in the school locker room, she thinks she’s bleeding to death and panics. The other girls, lead by a notorious popular bully Christine “Chris” Hargensen, make fun of her ignorance. This gets Chris banned from prom and she exacts revenge by arranging for Carrie to be voted queen and dumping a bucket of pig’s blood on her head in front of everyone. Carrie’s date is Tommy Ross, boyfriend of the reformed bully Sue Snell. Little do any of them know, Carrie has telekinetic powers and unleashes a violent hell on her classmates and the whole town.Since this is a series and not a novella, the story fleshes out a lot of characters, especially when it comes to the teachers and their parents in Chamberlain, Maine. Carrie and Margaret’s mother/daughter relationship is still abusive, but more complicated and grey than it is in the book. We see more of Chris and Sue’s home lives as well. That firecracker incident, however? Absolutely in the book.The teacher played by Rahul Kohli and his fairly significant storyline is totally new Flanagan invention. So is Emaline, a fellow outcast who befriends Carrie at school, knows her supernatural secret, and helps her practice honing her skills—but we’ll get to her in a minute. Let’s start at the beginning...The documentary aspects are ripped from the page. In the book: Stephen King’s Carrie is what’s called epistolary, meaning that it breaks up the narrative with fictional newspaper articles, court transcripts, sections from autobiographies, and encyclopedia entries that foreshadow the Black Prom massacre before it happens.In the show: This aspect of the book has not really been adapted to the screen until now. David Carson and Bryan Fuller’s 2002 movie dips a toe in with a framing device set a police station, but the series takes that even further. The first episode opens with 9-1-1 calls from Prom Night. Kate Siegel’s mysterious character Adelaide begins every episode with narration about the history of telekinesis. We also see interviews with some of the massacre’s survivors. Sue Snell’s opening line, about how they were just kids doing their best? That’s direct from the book!Robert FalconerCarrie’s neighbor is one of her earliest allies and mentors. In the book: The free-spirited woman next door to the White family encourages her teenage daughter Stella to provoke Margaret White by sunbathing in a bikini. When little Carrie sneaks into their backyard, she asks the daughter about her “dirty pillows” (what her mother called breasts). When Margaret punishes her for speaking to the “slut” next door, young Carrie makes rocks fall on their roof in retaliation.In the show: Basically the same, with a few changes. Stella and little Carrie don’t talk about boobs, they talk about books. Margaret still calls her a whore, and the rock incident happens shortly after. But in the show Stella and Carrie remain secret friends. She lets her borrow books that aren’t the Bible, instilling a love of literature in little Carrie. One of the things that I, personally, love about this change is that it’s like a little homage to another abused telekinetic girl: Matilda Wormwood. When she’s grown up, Stella even drives Carrie to her first high school party.Carrie’s history at Thomas Ewan High School is very different.In the book: Carrie has been attending public school her whole life, and has been the butt of her classmate’s jokes for years. When we meet her in the books, she’s awkward and naïve but has a simmering hatred for peers.In the show: Carrie was homeschooled until her father dies in a construction accident. (Another key update: her father is not just religious, but a conspiracy theorist.) A social worker requires that her mother get a job and Carrie enroll in public school. This means that she’s a lot more clueless and a lot more willing to make friends.Let’s talk about the social media of it all...In the book: It’s 1979, five years after the book was published in 1974. But even though the story is technically set in the future, Stephen King did not predict the internet and social media.In the show: Chris bullies Carrie (and the rest of the school) anonymously with a Burn Book-esque meme account on Instagram called @carrie_red. This causes a whole thing. Even Margaret White gets involved and becomes something of a local conservative social media presence. Flanagan’s not the first to modernize this story, however. The 2002 and 2014 movie adaptations of Carrie were set in their respective present times. Carrie uses the internet in both of them, and Chris posts a video to YouTube in the latter.Prime VideoSue Snell’s pregnancy scare disrupts her plans. In the book: Sue’s ongoing existential crisis about being on track to become an average American housewife right out of school is part of the reason why she decides to skip out on her senior prom. She’s late, but ends up getting her period at a pivotal moment that connects her to Carrie in a dark and poetic way.In the show: Sue has a pregnancy scare, just like the book. But it happens earlier and for a different narrative reason. Tina sneaks a video of her buying a pregnancy test that Chris posts to her meme account.There have always been other women with powers. In the book: The epistolary passages detail the “TK gene” (TK here stands for telekinesis), and how scientists have determined that it only presents in women. Many suspect that Carrie’s grandmother has the gene. Other passages, in particular the very haunting last page, talk about other girls around the country and the world who have the same abilities as Carrie.In the show: Margaret herself has powers, but suppressed them as a girl. Not only does Adelaide’s narration tell us about other supernatural women, but she has a whole gaggle of them living in a mansion together. Adelaide’s powers are similar to Carrie’s, but they’re not all telekinetic. Caitlin, one of her associates, can read minds. Emaline, the girl who reaches out to Carrie at school, is what Adelaine calls an AP, or astral projector. Many of these women show up to the prom, including Emaline, and assist Carrie’s destruction in various ways. A woman named Amanda, played by Katee Sackoff, may or may not be Emaline’s mom and arrives at prom intending to kill Carrie, or Emaline, or both.Otherwise, prom night goes down the same way. In the book: Tommy picks Carrie up. They have a nice night, at first. Carrie wears a pink dress that she made herself. Chris uses her popular influence to rig the king and queen elections. After Billy and Chris dump blood on Carrie, and the bucket knocks out Tommy, she stumbles out of the gym and flings Miss Desjardin across the room as she goes. From outside of the gym, Carrie locks the doors and starts a fire using the sprinklers and electrical cables. Except for a few survivors, the students and chaperones are all either electrocuted or burned to death while Carrie watches from the window.In the show: Carrie wears a blue dress that she made herself. Billy uses a random IP generator to rig the election in Carrie’s favor for Sue. They dump the blood by hand. (In the book, Tommy rigs a whole pulley system... even delinquents used to have STEM skills back in the day!) Carrie does a little damage from inside the room, but not nearly as much as other adaptations. The deadliest part happens when she’s outside the doors, and Carrie does peek through the window as the prom-goers get electrocuted. And, of course, she has some help from other supernatural ladies with unknown agendas. That’s a big difference.Prime VideoThis major death is the same, but different. In the book: After the prom, Carrie goes home to deal with her mother. Margaret stabs her, citing the Bible passages about witchcraft that conservatives used to get Harry Potter books banned 20 years later IRL. In a fevered haze, Carrie kills her mother by using her powers to slow her heart down until it stops beating.In the show: Margaret does die because a telekinetic woman stopped her heart, but it’s not on Prom Night and it’s not Carrie. Adelaide does it while interrogating her about Carrie’s whereabouts. The chilling language she uses is almost verbatim from the book.This “homage” extends the Stephen King universe. In the book: A bystander mentions a guy he used to know named Teddy Duchamp who owned a gas station. King would go on to use that name for his novella “The Body,” which was adapted into the movie Stand By Me.In the show: Adelaide says that a lot of people have “a little bit of shine,” which in King’s world is a broad term to describe people with powers. Ever heard of The Shining?The ending leaves things open-ended.In the book: Sue witnesses Carrie die, right after she gets her final bit of murderous revenge on Chris and her nihilistic boyfriend Billy. The town never fully rebuilds after Carrie sets fire to it. A little girl named Annie in Georgia has similar abilities that will likely go unchecked because the press and the government did not take the supernatural allegations against Carrie seriously.In the show: Carrie escapes with a corporeal Emaline. She refuses to tell Carrie where they’re going, in case Caitlin is reading her mind, but she’s alive. This is not the first adaptation to change the ending. In the 2002 movie, Sue promises to drive Carrie to Florida. Even the De Palma film has Carrie coming back from the dead. But this really sets things up for a continuing adventure. Will Adelaine and her associates find them? Why don’t we want them to find them? Mike Flanagan clearly has ideas cooking for another season, and I would like to see it.