Board 8 > Haunting of Hill House ending [SPOILERS obv]

(+) Yeah! (+)

Everything in this post is unmarked spoilers for the last episode.

I loved almost everything in this series, especially towards the end, but man that ending was dumb as hell. The final parts were the worst but even the montage of all the siblings breaking out of their dreams was lame as hell. The new Sabrina did a better take on that, and it wasn't even in the finale. But the happy endings and distortion of the original book's quotes were the most egregious. So I'm trying to think of reason the writers actually thought this was good, and I think this solution is kind of a stretch but it also fits really well with the themes and especially Steve's scene in the beginning.

Basically, they're all 100% dead, no question about it. The instant they decided to go back to the house, they were dead. This applies to Olivia, Nell, Luke, Hugh, and all the others. Everything after that is just a trick from the house. We see Steven's fake happy ending at the beginning, and it's HIS happy ending. But to the viewers, it's pretty obviously bullshit, and becomes even moreso as it goes on. There's really no reason for the viewer to believe it was real. These dreams work on the Crains, but they don't work on us, do they? So that's the goal of the final episode - to give the viewer their happy ending and make them believe without a doubt it's the reality. Would we really have accepted this show to end with the whole family dead in the house? Or did we kinda really want to see Luke become sober and Shirley/Steven save their marriage and Theo get laid etc? Or one level of meta deeper - don't we prefer to be disappointed in a thing, rather than loving it so much that we feel that weird lingering pain after finishing it?

What do you guys think? Is this giving too much credit to the writers? It feel cheap because it's a very circular logic. But I do like how it makes the viewer look a level deeper than just what was shown on screen. That was always a big theme of the show and the finale should emphasize it.
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Clearly everyone agrees
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I thought the dad sacrificed himself to appease the mom/house and allow the rest to escape.
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I read that the ending would have originally implied that they were still stuck in the red room but the director decided he liked the characters too much so they were given a happier ending.
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Mobilezoid posted...

I read that the ending would have originally implied that they were still stuck in the red room but the director decided he liked the characters too much so they were given a happier ending.

Yeah, I read the same thing. The changed the original because they felt it was too depressing.

Which is a shame because it is HOT GARBAGE but the first 9 and a half episodes were some of the best tv in recent memory. Like episodes 4-7 or so were phenomenal.
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Forceful_Dragon posted...

I thought the dad sacrificed himself to appease the mom/house and allow the rest to escape.

Well that's what was shown on TV but I don't think it's what "really" happened

Because it's dumb as hell
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I would have been fine with them being stuck as the canon ending honestly.

And then cut to a new family moving into the house X years later talking about cheap they bought the mansion at auction.
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Oh my other theory is that the show is just a spooky Arrested Development S4

So I don't think a different family would work as well in the house... this one was just so perfectly shitty
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