The Fall of the House of Usher ending: who dies in final episode of Netflix horror series, who was Verna?

Gothic horror series The Fall of the House of Usher has landed on Netflix at the height of spooky season. The eight part series follows the collapse of the powerful Usher family as the heirs to the father’s company are killed off in gruesome fashion. 

At the centre of every death is a mysterious woman who the senior Ushers recognise, and who has a connection to their murky past.

The Fall of the House of Usher is adapted from several of American writer Edgar Allan Poe’s classic works. As well as the titular short story, other classic tales that inspired the series include The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven, and The Masque of the Red Death, though the series has translated them all for a modern setting, and tied them together in one overarching narrative.

The series is part Final Destination, part murder mystery, but the dramatic final episode answers the burning questions that cropped up throughout the show. This is what happened in the final episode of The Fall of the House of Usher:

*Major spoilers for The Fall of the House of Usher episode 8*

What happened at the end of The Fall of the House of Usher?

The gripping season finale, The Raven, saw the surviving Ushers come to terms with their past, and pay back a heavy debt.

The episode opens with Roderick Usher, who having just tried to kill himself, is resurrected by Verna who tells him that there are only a few transactions left.

We then see Arthur Pym, the Ushers’ shadowy lawyer, speaks with Lenore following the death of her father as her mother is taken to hospital for proper treatment. 

As we cut back to Roderick’s conversation with C. Auguste Dupin, we finally learn what happened to Annabel Lee, Roderick’s wife. After he had betrayed Dupin, Lee realised that Roderick was not the man she thought he was. She left him taking their two children with her, but Roderick won them back with his vast wealth. Devastated, Annabel took her own life.

In another flashback, Roderick explains what happened on New Year's Eve 1979. Madeline had drugged Roderick’s boss Rufus Griswald, and lured him down to the cellar. There, she and Roderick chained him against the wall in an enclave of the cellar and began to build a brick wall around him.

Griswald wakes up during the immurement and attempts to bargain for his life, but the pair ignore him, leaving him to die in the dark.

Madeline and Roderick next go to a local bar to be seen so that they have an alibi for the evening. A barmaid comes to sit with them - she is the mysterious woman who has murdered all of the Usher children.

The woman offers the pair a deal - she will provide them with an alibi and guarantee that they get away with their crimes, that their company will be successful and that they will live to old age. In exchange, they must agree that the entire Usher dynasty will die with Roderick.

They both agree to the bargain, and on leaving the bar they turn round to find it is an abandoned, derelict building.

Back in the present, Arthur has been tasked with tracking down Verna, the same woman who offered that deal decades ago, and who hasn’t aged a day. Though he subdues her and puts her in a body bag, Verna reappears before Arthur, leaving him speechless.

She tells him that she was present during his Arctic expedition, and that she knows the terrible things he saw there. Verna then attempts to offer him a similar bargain to the one she gave to the Usher twins - something he loves dearly in return for immunity for his crimes, but Arthur declines.

Verna then visits Lenore. She tells the child that her mother will go on to help millions of people with the money she inherits, and will name the charity she is yet to create the Lenore foundation.

Verna painlessly kills Lenore, and Roderick tells Dupin that the texts he was receiving from his granddaughter were a result of the AI programme Madeline had been working on, and that it had malfunctioned. Every message from Lenore read ‘Nevermore’.

Verna shows Roderick the weight of his crimes and the number of people that the Fortunato company has killed. She tells him to return to the derelict building where he would eventually make his confession to Dupin.

Madeline meets him there and Roderick offers her a drink - it is soon clear that he has poisoned her. He cuts out her eyes, replacing them with the ancient sapphires. As he is relating this to Dupin, the noises outside the room become louder, and Madeline, a walking corpse rushes into the room. 

She strangles Roderick as Dupin flees the house into the rain outside. As Dupin turns round he sees the building collapse in on itself, and Verna standing above the wreckage for a moment, before she turns into a raven.

In the final scenes, Dupin visits Roderick’s grave to tell him that Arthur was arrested and will die in prison, whilst Roderick’s wife, Juno, put her inheritance towards a foundation to help with rehabilitation programmes. 

Verna then visits the Ushers’ graves to leave a token on each tombstone as a symbol of their hubris.  

Who is Verna in The Fall of the House of Usher?

Verna is one of the few characters in the series not to have featured in any of Edgar Allan Poe’s works.

She was created especially for the Netflix series and helps to connect the tales that were combined into one narrative together. Verna is a mysterious supernatural being who often takes the form of a raven.

She provoked the deaths of all the Ushers by offering the sinister bargain decades before. Verna was also in some way involved in the deaths of each of the Usher heirs. 

Verna appears to have knowledge of the future and doesn’t age - she was seen to have been present at the side of many famous figures throughout history. Additionally, she suggests that she also made a bargain with Donald Trump as she had told one client they could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without facing any consequences.