The Fall of the House of Usher Creator Reveals Key Detail About "The Black Cat" Episode

Nearly every episode of Mike Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher series is an adaptation of a different story from Edgar Allan Poe. The fourth episode, based on Poe's The Black Cat, sees Leo Usher (Rahul Kohli) suffer from hallucinations of a killer feline that he brings home after seemingly killing his boyfriend's pet. There has been some confusion amongst viewers about the episode's ending, as well as what actually happened to Pluto, the original cat. Flanagan took to social media over the weekend to clear things up. WARNING: This article contains spoilers from The Fall of the House of Usher...

In "The Black Cat," Leo wakes up after an all-night bender to find that he's covered in blood, with Pluto the cat dead in the corner of his apartment. He cleans up the animal and goes to a shelter to find a replacement that looks just like the one that he apparently killed. This new cat, who no one else ever seems to see, tortures and hides from Leo for days, driving him mad until he falls off his balcony trying to kill it.

It's heavily implied that the replacement cat is simply a hallucination that only Leo can see. The bathtub where Leo piled the dead animals that were left around the apartment was shown to be empty and clean at the end of the episode. And it turns out that the original Pluto was never actually killed, in the first place, that the death of the cat was also a hallucination.

A fan tagged Flanagan on social media to ask why he has an issue with cats, to which the creator responded that he actually changed Poe's story in order to not kill the cat in the first place.

Okay. So... "The Black Cat" was written by Edgar Allan Poe. In HIS version, a cat is killed. In MY version, the cat is...

(spoilers)

... in MY version, the killing of the cat is revealed to be a hallucination. In MY version, the cat is alive and well. So who hates cats? :) https://t.co/3EyukDXiYB

— Mike Flanagan (@flanaganfilm) October 12, 2023

"Okay. So... 'The Black Cat' was written by Edgar Allan Poe. In HIS version, a cat is killed. In MY version, the cat is... (spoilers) ...in MY version, the cat is alive and well. So who hates cats?"

In a reply, Flanagan pointed out the important detail that fans seemed to miss when watching the episode. Pluto wears a specific Gucci collar, which is referenced on several occasions. Any time the hallucination cat is seen, there's no collar at all. At the very end of the episode, after Leo's death, the cat shown in the apartment is wearing that collar, confirming that Pluto has been alive and well the entire time.

"That's why we made such a big deal about the fact that Pluto was wearing a Gucci collar, and the new cat was not. Look at the cat in the final shot of the episode, who is wearing the collar... and the empty bathtub, which means ALL of the animal violence was imagined."

What did you think of Mike Flanagan's take on The Black Cat? Let us know in the comments!