Let’s fly to China, 2010, where a (real-life) traffic jam has created a world-record 12-day gridlock in Carrie Episode 4 on Prime Video. A (fictional) 31-year-old woman is among those trapped with little sleep, water, food, or respite from the August heat. “Build enough pressure and it will find a way to escape,” our narrator says. The woman sits on the roof of her car and breathes deep, eyes closed. When she opens them, she’s shocked to find herself hovering high above, and instantly drops to her death.  We’re told the clip was dismissed as a hoax but went viral nonetheless, “because whether they believed she floated in the air or wrote it off as a hoax, people love to watch a woman fall.”

And we’re back to Carrietta White being faced with Chris’s Carrie Red Instagram. In crimson horror-font, kids are being memed as “dick licker,” “STD stud,” “bulimia teeth,” “meth head,” and other trash. The days roll by, the follower count shoots up, teachers (and the principal) start scrolling, someone hides a bloody tampon in Carrie’s backpack and puts gum in her hair. Two girls break out into a hallway fight over a post — there’s now an epidemic of knock-down drag-outs at Ewen High — and Miss Desjardin gets hit in the face trying to break it up. Tina claims one girl’s parents put her in an eating disorder clinic after a post called her a whale; another boy was outed to his family and church. Sue isn’t tuned in — her period’s late, she’s avoiding Tommy with increasing obviousness, and researching the fallibility of condoms.

Margaret watches Carrie on hidden home cameras and tries to get off janitor duty. When her appeal to manager Joanie fails, Margaret starts getting even, dipping her mug in a shit-filled toilet (euuugh) and planting seeds for her downfall. Margaret claims Joanie’s been saying racist stuff, wearing the guise of someone who appreciates their boss and doesn’t believe the nonexistent rumors. “She’s never, ever said anything even a little bit racially controversial to me!” Margaret, with practiced indignation, tells two people of color in the break room. “Some people, they don’t care who they hurt.” Corporate suspends a baffled Joanie soon after. It’s a fascinating wrinkle to Margaret, our first time seeing her with coworkers and menacing someone besides her daughter.

Most frustratingly for Mrs. White, she can’t get Carrie to open up about what’s plaguing her lately. “I’m here, if you need my help,” she stiltedly says. “It’s really the only thing that I am here for, on this Earth.” Alone while Margaret’s working another night shift, Carrie finds the funeral parlor’s letter and sees the specter of her father watching from his chair at the table; he crumbles into ash, the kitchen rumbles. She stumbles outside barefoot in a bereft daze and walks aimlessly, streetlights flickering in her wake. Sue spots Carrie and welcomes her inside, where Mrs. Snell bandages her foot.

Upstairs, Carrie opens up to Sue in a way she hasn’t to anyone. Asked about her dad, she says, “He was great. Complicated. I think he was really afraid all the time.” Of what? “Radio signals, chemtrails, biological warfare, the deep state.” Carrie’s questioning his paranoia, and realizes she wouldn’t choose to go back to the sheltered life she led, preferring to know what the world’s actually like, “even if it’s bad.” Back home, she waits with the letter to confront her mom, begging her to bring Ralph’s remains home. Sadly it just earns Carrie a two-hour stint back in the prayer closet.

We cut to the Hargensen house with a split diopter shot, which Brian De Palma famously used all through his ’76 adaptation. John’s life is continuing to unravel, partially thanks to the death of Ralph White, which has shut down the construction operation Hargensen had a stake in. Chris overhears and realizes he’s talking about Carrie’s father. “Oh shit, that’s the secret closet kid, right?” asks the ever-disgusting John. Outside, Chris’s Mercedes-Benz G-Wagon is getting repossessed, which sends both Hargensens spiraling. She calls Burnout Billy to whisk her away. Bored by her troubles, he injects some chaos on an out-of-service overpass, holding a brick over traffic. He tests Chris’s appetite for actual, physically dangerous cruelty. She calls him a psycho, then tells him to drop it, clipping a car. It’s foreplay for these two.

After school, Chris pressures Carrie to get a ride home in Billy’s car. Chris and Tina let Carrie assume weed gummies are normal candy, and Tina sneakily captures Sue buying a pregnancy test. Soon night has fallen and Billy’s driven them to the construction site where Ralph died. Carrie was wasted on the contents of numerous Solo cups in the last episode; now she’s high as hell. Chris says the site is haunted, increasingly alluding to Ralph’s death within earshot of Carrie, then pointing out the exact spot where he perished. Carrie’s drawn inexorably to the trench. She hears something, then sees hands clawing their way out. The jump-scare sends her right in, crawling through mud and calling for her father. She vividly envisions the fatal rain of cinderblocks and fully unravels, weeping, “Daddy, I’m sorry.” 

Tina, who’s really on a roll, films it. Confronted by Sue, a stoned Tina gives away the fact that Chris is Carrie Red. It’s the final trauma for Carrie this evening, heart broken anew. Recall Chris in school, promising Carrie she’ll figure out “who’s behind the account [and] fuck ’em up good for you.” We’re officially primed to see these bullies taken straight to hell, even if we’re understanding Chris’s damage more than we have in any previous iteration of Carrie, book included. Sue seeing Chris’s rotted soul is more than Princess Hargensen can take. This isn’t just a preordained story beat, Sue finding Chris to be a true monster. These two have been friends since childhood; they planned to be college roommates. Sue told Carrie her favorite trophy on the mantle was a summer camp consolation prize Chris made for their losing team. Chris can’t even deny her descent, answering Sue’s “what is wrong with you?” with an honest “take your fucking pick.”

Carrie’s alone on the streets again, lost and covered in mud this time. Her primal scream sends out the biggest psychic shockwave yet, bursting streetlights, shattering at least one car’s windshield and setting off the alarms of others. And somehow Emaline’s right there, “just taking a walk,” thrilled to have her suspicion proven true. She guides Carrie home.

As soon as the door opens, Margaret begins a “you are in so much trouble” tirade before being wrecked by the sight of her child. (Whom she earlier chastised for acting “just like your father, tracking mud through my house.” We love foreshadowing.) Carrie whimpers, “You were right about everything. They’re awful people, momma, they’re evil people. And I tried, I tried so hard, but they were just laughing at me the whole time.” She apologizes for not buying into her mom’s misanthropy and begs for her help. 

“You tell me everything that happened and we will make them pay,” Margaret promises, three times for emphasis.

Odds & Ends

• This one’s titled “Dramatic Arts,” directed by Axelle Carolyn (Flanagan’s The Midnight Club and The Haunting of Bly Manor), and penned by Dani Parker (The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass).
• Margaret White marks one of the biggest shifts in this re-envisioning of Carrie. Mike Flanagan told TV Guide‘s Eric Goldman, “We got to take a character who is defined in every other version by fear and hatred of her daughter, and we got to render this version of her that is motivated entirely by love for her daughter and a desire to protect her, and Margaret having to take this very interesting belief system that she’s cultivated within this house and venture out into the world.” Samantha Sloyan, a seven-time Flanagan collaborator, has given a slew of tremendous interviews for Carrie, going deep into Margaret’s psychology. She told Esquire‘s Anthony Breznican, “The more I have talked about Margaret, the more I really believe it’s just her heart slowly breaking the whole time. Her whole world was Carrie, by her own doing.”

Stephen King Trivia Corner

• Let’s talk about Carrie’s dad, since she said more about him this episode than we’ve heard all season. In the book, he was similarly crushed in a construction site accident, but before Carrie was born. “The damage was caused by an act of God. Poetic justice, huh?” the Whites’ neighbor Stella says. Unlike the show, Margaret did get “a lot of money when he died.” The funds ran dry when Carrie turned five, so Margaret got a job “on the speed ironer and folder down at the Blue Ribbon Laundry.” Here’s the most descriptive passage about Ralph, the best bit being that he carried a gun to work every day “in case he met Antichrist on the job”:

King seemingly makes a mistake about Ralph’s death preceding Carrie’s birth. Margaret sees Carrie in her crib “laughing and gurgling, watching a bottle that was dangling in thin air over her head.” King goes on: “Margaret had almost killed her then. Ralph had stopped her. She should not have let him stop her.”

Zach Dionne writes Decider’s Streamin’ King column and makes King things on Patreon.