Netflix Has Announced an October Release Date for 'The Haunting of Bly Manor'

Marisa LaScala
·7 min read
Netflix Has Announced an October Release Date for 'The Haunting of Bly Manor'

From Good Housekeeping

  • The follow-up to the terrifying The Haunting of Hill House will be called The Haunting of Bly Manor.

  • The story for the Netflix series is based on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

  • The season will feature a new setting and all new characters, but some of the actors will return.

  • The Haunting of Bly Manor will return to Netflix on October 9.

This fall, when you're home alone, you might feel the urge to curl up in the darkness and settle in for something scary. One of 2018's biggest delights for horror fans was the Netflix hit The Haunting of Hill House. Good news for fans, the second season of the show is coming to Netflix in time for Halloween. (Horror nerds: If you haven't seen it, you have plenty of time to catch up with the first season before the second one premieres.) Creator Mike Flanagan has already divulged lots of details about what to expect when it does return, and there are lots of reasons to get excited.

The Haunting of Hill House season 2 will return in October, but the title will be different.

Netflix has announced a return date for the series: October 9. But on the date, don't go looking for Hill House — the new title is The Haunting of Bly Manor.

Wait a minute, no Hill House? Does that mean no Crain family, no Bent-Neck Lady, no hidden ghosts? Well, partially. "As I’ve ever been concerned with this, the story of the Crain family is told," Flanagan told Entertainment Weekly. "It's done."

The Haunting of Bly Manor will feature a new cast of characters, then, and a new location and story. But that doesn't mean that it won't feel like the first season. “It’s a cool way to expand on some of the things I loved about season one, but within the framework of a new story, without having to be restrained by the decisions we made last time," Flanagan told Birth. Movies. Death. "In particular, we’re having an enormous amount of fun talking about how to take some of the ideas from season one about hidden ghosts and things like that, and find new gears for them this time. It’ll be the same type of story, and we’ll treat the ghosts very much the same way." So the Crains may be gone, but what we loved about the show — the deep-down bone-chilling scares — will still be there.

The Haunting of Bly Manor is based on the book The Turn of the Screw by Henry James.

Okay, so if we're done with the Crains, just where is this Bly Manor, and who lives there? The same way The Haunting of Hill House was based on a novel of the same name by Shirley Jackson, Flanagan looked to a literary heavyweight for season 2 inspiration.

This time, the basis is the work of writer Henry James, especially his 1898 novella, The Turn of the Screw. The story follows a young governess who travels to a country house in Essex, England — a house named Bly Manor, naturally — to care for an orphaned boy and girl entrusted to their uncle, who is uninterested in raising them. The governess starts to suspect the kids are being visited by ghostly apparitions. Is it a true haunting, or the governess's madness? Or maybe a little of both?

Sound familiar? That's because The Haunting of Bly Manor isn't the first adaptation that got its inspiration from The Turn of the Screw.

In fact, earlier this year saw the release of a movie with a similar premise: The Turning starring Mackenzie Davis and Stranger Things' Finn Wolfhard. The James novel also provided some ideas for the 1967 movie The Innocents with Deborah Kerr and the 2001 movie The Others starring Nicole Kidman. (It's also been turned into an opera, a ballet and a run of Star Trek: Voyager episodes, among others.)

No matter how it's delivered, the story can make your blood run cold. "For Henry James fans, it’s going to be pretty wild, and for people who aren’t familiar with his work, it’s going to be unbelievably scary," Flanagan said in that same interview with Birth. Movies. Death., "I already think it’s much scarier than season 1, so I’m very excited about it.”

Victoria Pedretti, who played Nell in the first season and is returning for Bly Manor, agrees. "In some ways, it is [more intense] than season one," she tells Nylon during an interview for her other Netflix series, You. "It's its own thing. Even though it's the second season of a show that I've been in before, almost everything is different." (Including her hair: She's blond now, for the role!)

Even though it doesn't feature the same characters as season 1, some of the actors will be returning.

Poor Pedretti was sent through the emotional ringer in her performance as Nell Crain, but she's ready to do it all over again. Last summer she announced she's returning for season 2, playing Dani, the governess.

But she's not the only one coming back: Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who played Nell's twin, is also returning, as is Henry Thomas, who played the younger Hugh Crain and Catherine Parker, who played Poppy Hill (the ghostly flapper). Details about their characters have not been announced.

We were also hoping that Kate Segal, who played sister Theodora, might pop up again — and she is! It makes sense, because she and Flanagan are married in real life. (They named their baby Theodora! Awwww.)

Flanagan took to Twitter last August to make a bunch of cast announcements, too, starting with the addition of T'nia Miller, who will be taking on "a lead role." No word on what that "lead role" is, but it's exciting to those who know Miller from her role on the show Years and Years. Joining Miller, also in unidentified major parts, are iZombie's Rahul Kohli and newcomer Amelia Eve.

Then there are actors Benjamin Ainsworth and Amelie Smith. They're not household names — yet — but they are hugely important to the story: They play Flora and Miles, the two children who will be cared for by the governess.

There are plenty of scares to tide you over in the meantime.

For you Flanagan fans out there, there's still a long wait, but it doesn't mean you're going to have to live without the director's scares until then. For starters — and this is probably one of the factors that caused Bly Manor's delay — Flanagan directed Doctor Sleep, based on Stephen King's the sequel to The Shining, starring Ewan McGregor. Doctor Sleep is already available for digital rental, and should be on more streaming services soon.

But if it's more Hill House you want, more Hill House you'll get. As of last October, you can get a director's cut Blu-ray or DVD of the first season of The Haunting of Hill House. The director's cut features longer versions of some of the episodes, along with director's commentary, Bloody Disgusting reports.

Those are the only Flanagan scares that are available now, but they're not the only thing in the works: Netflix picked up another seven-episode series, Midnight Mass, from Flanagan. According to Deadline, the premise is this: "Midnight Mass follows an isolated island community that experiences miraculous events — and frightening omens — after the arrival of a charismatic, mysterious young priest." Hmmm, Exorcist, much?

A huge cast has been announced for Midnight Mass. This includes some Hill House regulars (Siegel, Thomas), in addition to new faces like Zach Gilford, Hamish Linklater and Annabeth Gish. No date for that has been announced for Midnight Mass — it's a safe assumption it'll premiere sometime after The Haunting of Bly Manor — but it's always good to know there's more Flanagan on the way.

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