How Does Flanagan’s ‘Carrie’ Connect to ‘The Dark Tower’?

Fans of Stephen King’s 1974 debut novel and Brian De Palma’s 1976 film adaptation of Carrie won’t recognize much of Mike Flanagan’s new Prime series. I don’t have any beef with Flanagan or his interpretation. He’s known for his liberal re-imaginings of source material, and this is a great one. But it’s a very different thing from the original. By giving characters we didn’t previously empathize with deeper motivations and modern nuances, Flanagan has created a world wider than just “high school” for Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) to inhabit.

In the series, Flanagan connects Carrie to the broader Stephen King Universe beyond the small town of Chamberlain, Maine, where the White Family lives.

All things serve The Beam, after all.

There are two big visual references to The Dark Tower in Carrie. In the first episode, we learn Carrie’s father, Ralph (Tahmoh Penikett), is working on a construction project for LeMerk Industries. The company is also a client of Chris Hargensen’s (School Spirits’ Alison Thornton) father (Michael Trucco).

In the world of The Dark Tower, LeMerk is a company that serves The Crimson King. Its employees are tasked with hunting down powerful telekinetics to weaponize them and break the beams that support The Tower.

When Chris and Billy Nolan (Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma’s Arthur Conti) hatch their prom night plan, they head over to Sombra Hog Farm to steal a bucket of blood. (Spoilers for a 50-year-old book, I guess?)

Sombra is LeMerk’s parent company in The Dark Tower. Obviously, The Crimson King has eyes and ears in Chamberlain.

Each episode opens with narration by long-time Flanagan collaborator and spouse Kate Siegel, explaining instances of telekinesis manifesting itself in historic and fictional women. Eventually, we’re introduced to her character and other members of a shadowy group of women who are psychically connected to Carrie through The Shine. So, Flanagan’s Carrie links to The Shining, but also possibly The Institute or even The Shop, where Charlie, the protagonist in King’s 1980 bestseller Firestarter (played by young Drew Barrymore in the movie), ended up.

The Shop was a government agency, and The Institute is more of an independent international organization. Both are in the business of collecting kids with “talents.” So it makes sense that they’d have a strong interest in Carrie White.

Stephen King’s world has a significant population of “talented” kids that include Carrie, Danny Torrence, Charlie McGee, Jake Chambers, and Alain Johns in The Dark Tower series, and Abra Stone in Doctor Sleep. If Flanagan is going to tackle The Dark Tower, he has laid a solid foundation already, and Carrie just adds to it.

There are other Easter eggs in the series too.

In an homage to the original film, Carrie cavorts down the burning Main Street, past a movie theater showing a Brian De Palma retrospective after she lays waste to Ewen High’s senior prom.

When Carrie’s mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan from Midnight Mass), gets a job, it’s at S-Mart. S-Mart’s other famous employee is Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) in Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead franchise. Does that make the Necronomicon part of Dark Tower lore? Is Ash a gunslinger? He does love that boomstick.

In one episode, we see a student reading The Exorcist (Flanagan’s next adaptation) in the school library.

Battlestar Galactica fans may have also recognized a lot of Chamberlain townsfolk. Michael Trucco, Tahmoh Penikett, Katee Sackhoff, Aaron Douglas, and Tricia Helfer all get some screen time in this series.

Flanagan is just the biggest of all Stephen King fans. Even though his series takes a sharp turn away from the novel and will potentially go well beyond the source material if he gets the three seasons he wants from Prime Video, it is grounded well enough in King’s universe to make the rest of us happy while we wait for his Dark Tower adaptation.

All episodes of Carrie are now streaming on Prime Video.