The Haunting of Bly Manor is going to be “much scarier” and feature even more ghosts.
Writer-director Mike Flanagan definitely had some good karma while making The Haunting of Hill House because the first season of the anthology show was a massive hit with audiences around the world.
Well, with such good vibes going around, there’s no need to call an exorcist just yet because the show’s spiritual sequel, The Haunting of Bly Manor, has announced a raft of new hires, with some some familiar faces returning.
We already knew that Victoria Pedretti (Nell Crain) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Luke Crain) were confirmed for the new season and they’re going to be joined by Henry Thomas, who played the younger version of Crain patriarch Hugh Crain.
Kate Siegel (Theodora Crain) will also be back, but as of yet, there is no news about which new characters they’ll be playing.
Elsewhere, Catherine Parker, who starred in Hill House as Poppy Hill, will also return.
In addition to the returning Hill House cast, Flanagan also confirmed that there would be plenty of new faces showing up in Bly Manor too.
Among the newcomers are Years and Years star T’Nia Miller, who is set for a lead role.
Rahul Kohli (iZombie and Supergirl) will also be joining the cast, playing “a small-town guy with a worldly mindset, who has returned to the country to take care of his ailing mother”.
Rounding out the new additions are Amelia Eve (Big Boys Don’t Cry) and two young actors called Amelie Smith and Benjamin Ainsworth.
As for the plot, the new story unfolds over Christmas Eve as a group of friends gather around to share ghost stories. One of the guests, a man named Douglas, begins to tell the tale of two children (Flora and Miles) and their governess (played by Victoria Pedretti)
The governess is hired by a man to take care of his young niece and nephew after the death of their parents. However, both children are strangely distant and oddly silent.
The children also live in a forlorn estate and are frequently haunted by a mysterious evil. With growing horror, the helpless governess realises these fiendish ghouls want the children, while both children are drawn to the darkness for reasons unknown.
In a previous interview, Flanagan said that he plans on making The Haunting of Bly Manor even more scary than Hill House.
“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. I already think it’s much scarier than season one, so I’m very excited about it,” he said.
The Haunting of Bly Manor is expected to arrive on Netflix in 2020.
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