This post will contain major spoilers for Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher. If you’re reading this, I’ll assume you have viewed the whole series from beginning to end. Also, quick blanket attribution statement: unless notated otherwise, all photos used here are property of Netflix.

The moment Beethoven’s intense Symphony No. 7 played in the opening funeral scene, I knew we were in for something epic, and sure enough, at the end of every episode, Jessi looked at me and said the same sentence: “Mike Flanagan is a genius.” Still, there’s one piece of Flanagan’s The Fall of the House of Usher I want to explore a little deeper. While the show absolutely drips with references to Edgar Allan Poe (as well as some similarities to the Sackler pharmaceutical empire), I was struck by its central antagonist’s resemblance to something far older. Something mythological.

Sure, the set dressing in Usher is all Poe. The elaborate methods of death are all Poe. Even the character names are all Poe. But the downfall of the Usher family doesn’t follow a typical Poe plot line (which were so often short stories or poems centered around a single character flaw or tormenting object or creative revenge plot). The Ushers’ story is much wider spanning and comes closer to the style of a sweeping tragic epic, and nowhere is this clearer than with the figure of Verna, whose name is an anagram for raven. But while Verna carries the trappings of Poe’s raven, there’s something else going on with this character. Simultaneously teasing the Ushers and the viewers, Verna drops little clues about her identity throughout the series:

• Drawing on Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, Verna appears clad in red with a skull mask to Perry’s party, but while Poe’s tale was about the inevitability of death, Verna provides avenues of escape. She makes a point of sparing the innocent waitstaff and even offers Perry a chance to abandon with his plan. In fact, with every death except for Freddie, Lenore, and the Usher twins, Verna provides an opportunity for the victim to walk away (presumably to a less gruesome death, such as Lenore’s). This tells us Verna is balancing a ledger and carrying out justice, but she’s leaving the brutality largely to the Ushers themselves.
• When Camille breaks into the lab against Verna’s warnings, Verna embodies the chimps’ pain and makes it clear to Camille that the Ushers will suffer because of the suffering they’ve caused others. Balance and poetic justice will be recurring themes in almost all of Verna’s appearances.
• In talking with Leo, she delves heavily into the mythology of the black cat, which suggests she might be a figure of mythological significance herself. In fact, though surrounded in raven imagery, Verna’s behavior is a little catlike in the way she toys with Roderick and Madeline Usher— never hiding her identity and instead taunting and pursuing them openly.
• She provides Vic ample opportunities to tell the truth and abandon her project, and when the Tell-Tale Heart-inspired death comes, Verna makes it clear it’s Vic’s ambition and deceit which have led to this.
• Similarly, Tamerlane’s jealousy leads to her downfall, and in these encounters, Verna is increasingly phantom-like. She blinks in and out of Tamerlane’s perception, flashes in and out of mirrors, and even turns to smoke to slip through Madeline’s fingers. Verna has an ethereal quality about her.
• Verna tells Freddie that she doesn’t usually involve herself directly in vengeful deaths, but because of his heinous domestic abuse, she makes an exception. She also insures his death is particularly violent as a matter of justice, and unlike the other Usher heirs, she doesn’t offer him an opportunity to escape.
• When Arthur produces photos of Verna through the ages, she is always shown alongside powerful people with a particular emphasis on those who have skirted around the criminal justice system or had reputations as frauds (including nice little digs at Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, the Koch Brothers, Mark Zuckerberg, and others). Many of the figures shown experienced falls from grace or dynastic collapse, and Verna’s attraction to them is consistent with a set of mythological figures we’ll soon discuss.
• After again showing off her ethereal nature by escaping Arthur’s trap, Verna tells the family fixer about his expedition team’s various atrocities in their travels and implies justice will come to all who were involved. She can speak with detail about which crimes Arthur himself participated in and then predicts the precise length of his prison sentence.
• On meeting Madeline in the old Usher home, Verna delivers a poem about death and references “coming up from the ground.” She intentionally separates herself from demons but implies she’s connected to the underworld. A certain race of underworld-adjacent mythological characters also share the “coming up from the ground” origin.
• In her very first conversation with the Usher twins, Verna promises them freedom from judgment throughout their lives. Earthly judgment isn’t normally the territory of the Grim Reaper or other death-related characters, but this fits neatly in another mythological figure’s wheelhouse.
• Though the Ushers are clearly ruthless and ambitious from the start, Verna does not approach them until Roderick has committed perjury (breaking both his legal oath and his promise to Auggie), turned on Annabel Lee (breaking his marriage vows), and tricked and imprisoned Griswold (breaking an oath to a boss/friend).
• Verna is furious when Madeline attempts to “loophole” her, and Madeline’s desire for immortality (despite the terms of the deal) seems to draw particular scorn from Verna.
• Throughout the series, Roderick and Madeline show a fascination with antiquity (particularly ancient Egyptian and Greek artifacts). Though Verna doesn’t seem as fixated on these objects, she implies a familiarity with them— almost as though she is from the same era.
• In Verna’s last conversation with Roderick in his office, she shows him the fruits of his labors through a hallucination of bodies falling from the sky. Verna seems almost a little giddy at Roderick’s horror. She doesn’t just want to kill Roderick; she wants him to feel the guilt.
• Though they don’t speak to each other in the show, Auggie becomes aware of Verna and even sees the raven perched on the Usher tombstones. Auggie obsesses over justice, so if the raven is really who I think she is, it makes sense that Auggie would see her.

So, okay, that’s a lot to go on. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, I don’t think Verna is Death or a particular death deity (Morrigan, Ereshkigal, etc.). I don’t think she’s the Devil or a demon. Hell, I don’t think Verna is even Poe’s raven (who was a symbol of grief and mental illness sent to torment The Raven‘s unnamed narrator after Lenore’s death). Nope. Her personality and motives and M.O. are way too fleshed out for that. She’s something else…

A favorite antagonist of Greek tragedies, the Erinyes (also called the Furies or, ironically, the Kindly Ones) are immortal goddesses who bring justice and vengeance to wrongdoers, and they have a particular affinity for oath-breakers and powerful families. While sometimes shown with snakes for hair, they are most often depicted with bat or bird wings and wielding whips and other tools of punishment. While the number and origin of the Furies differs from story to story —sometimes they’re children of Hades and/or Nyx, but sometimes they spring from the ground where Uranus’s blood was shed; sometimes there are three, and sometimes there are more—, their goal and methods are consistent. When powerful people carry out injustice, the Furies work to ensure they meet appropriately tragic downfalls. The Furies stalk their prey, isolating them and tormenting them psychologically, before at last carrying out violent justice. While sometimes subject to the control of other deities (most notably Athena), they are a force of nature and one to be feared.

So, while we’re on this topic, let’s get one thing straight: The Fall of the House of Usher is absolutely a Greek tragedy. The Greek tragedies often spanned across multiple plays (which is the origin of the word “trilogy”), telling the stories of whole families meeting their fates, and their main characters (“tragic heroes”) always had some sort of irreparable flaw which precipitated their downfall— Oedipus’s fear of prophecy, Agamemnon’s pride, etc. In the case of Roderick Usher, while his ambition leads him to financial success, it also makes him cold and calculating. As such, he winds up starving his children of affection, making them vulnerable to Verna’s traps. As an added level of complexity, with the exception of Lenore, each Usher seems to carry their own tragic flaw: Perry’s unchecked hedonism, Camille’s insatiable curiosity, Leo’s inability to face reality (and retreat into substance abuse), Victorine’s ambition, Tamerlane’s jealousy, Freddie’s vicious impulsiveness, and Madeline’s survival drive. Roderick’s flaw makes him accept Verna’s offer, while Madeline’s makes her hesitate (arguably the only time in the entire series we see Madeline truly hesitate), and this interaction leads to the Ushers’ titular fall.

Back to the Furies, Verna fits the bill in many ways. Though not having snakes for hair, she shares the Furies’ ethereal nature and bird motif, and she stalks the Ushers throughout the series much in the same way the Furies stalked ancient Greek wrongdoers. Apparently omniscient, she’s drawn to Roderick and Madeline after they betray Auggie, Griswold, the government, and Annabel Lee (having broken oaths to all of them), and she sets up a punishment which involves multiple generations. In addition to her supernatural qualities, she seems to have dominion over earthly justice and not only punishes the guilty but protects the innocent. She speaks of coming up from the ground much as the Furies rose up after Uranus’s blood was spilled, and she offhandedly references a relationship to the underworld, just as the Furies have ties to Hades. And just in case the Greek tragedy connection wasn’t abundantly clear already, (1) she frequently wears masks (which were a key aspect of ancient Greek theatre), and (2) when stalking Roderick after Lenore’s death, she perches on top of a bust of Athena. (Admittedly, the Athena detail comes directly from Poe’s original poem, but it also lines up nicely with the idea that Verna is in fact a Fury since Athena was one of the few deities seen to influence them.)

So yeah, Verna is probably a Fury, but there’s more.

I also appreciate that, while not unreasonable, Verna can’t be dissuaded once she sets her plan in motion. In the final episode, while Roderick has pretty well accepted his doom, Madeline delivers some truly impressive rationalization, and while everything Madeline says about cultural treatment of women and the biases against her is true (enough so that I found myself siding with Madeline a little), Verna isn’t even slightly swayed. I also love that Verna and Madeline sit in the seats which will soon be occupied by Auggie and Roderick, respectively, which further cements Auggie’s role as an unwitting counterpart to Verna. Both seek to bring down the Ushers. Both seek justice, with Auggie seeking earthly justice and Verna bringing supernatural justice. And, even after all that conflict, both still feel compelled to visit the Ushers’ graves. I also love Auggie’s decision not to tell Roderick Usher’s story; just as Verna has denied them immortality through loopholes, Auggie refuses to immortalize them through story. In placing his recorder on Roderick’s grave, it’s as though he’s saying “No, you really were as cruel as I thought, no matter how you try to justify it. The world doesn’t need to hear ‘your side’ of the story.”

The Fall of the House of Usher is a fairly brutal viewing experience, but it’s an important set of schadenfreude-laced cautionary tales with an ensemble of incredibly compelling characters. It critiques the ruthless American billionaire class, and in doing so, it draws on Edgar Allan Poe’s complete catalogue of writings as well as something far older: a vengeful Fury from ancient tragedy— the raven herself, Verna.