The Fall of the House of Usher: Episode 2 Explained – “The Masque of the Red Death” compared to Edgar Allan Poe’s work

“The Fall of the House of Usher” on Netflix is ​​not an anthology series like “American Horror Stories”, but each episode focuses on a different short story by Edgar Allan Poe – sometimes more, sometimes less clearly.

In the second episode, “The Mask of the Red Death”, the first Usher family member loses his life. The story of the young influencer Prospero appears extremely modern, but his tragic end is strongly inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s original.

The Mask of the Red Death

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death”, a large part of the population dies of a dangerous disease called “the Red Death”. Prince Prospero, however, doesn’t want to know anything about it and plans a spectacular masked ball that is divided into seven rooms and where he sets the mood himself using colorful lights.

The exuberant celebration is disrupted by an unknown guest who walks through the rooms wearing a skull mask. The guests retreat from him and as Prospero pursues him, the masked stranger turns to him and Prospero falls to the ground, dead.

Now the guests want to unmask the stranger, but there is nothing under the mask. The guest is not a person, but “the Red Dead” himself, i.e. the disease, which has arrived in the castle and is spreading among all the guests.

Of course, Netflix’s version of the story also features Prospero and his masquerade ball, although it’s not a disease that kills everyone present, but rather the chemicals from the tanks at the old Usher factory. Prospero still receives a visit from the “Red Death”. Whether the shape-shifting Verna is a demon, Death, or the Devil is not clearly answered in “The Fall of the House of Usher,” but her appearance is definitely never a good sign for the Ushers.

All episodes from “The Fall of the House of Usher” and their Poe scripts explained: