This was it, this was the one that everyone had told me was going to be the craziest twist for me. Who was the Bent-Neck Lady? The unfortunate part was that I had already figured it out due to the fact of how everyone was like “Oh! It’s so crazy!” Between that and there being the distinct yet subtle sound of the neck snapping when all of the other siblings feel her death in the first episode and then the fact that Luke keeps grabbing his neck. That being said it didn’t make the reveal any less important. In fact, it made it even more heartbreaking.
Nellie is the purest of the 5 siblings. She’s very clearly meant to be seen that way as well. This episode does an incredible job of solidifying that as well. Here we learn about her marriage to her husband Arthur and she was happy. She had left the evils of Hill House behind her and while she had Arthur everything was alright, until he tragically died.
Nellie is interesting because she’s constantly searching for the light and it keeps being taken away from her. She’s a tragic hero that we root for even though we know that her end is coming. This is largely due to the abilities of Nellie’s actress, Victoria Pedretti. Pedretti has an innocence in her that you want to see live and thrive and the show uses this to their advantage by showing you what a good life that Nellie has…until it all crumbles around her. Even when she returns to Hill House there’s a beautifully shot scene with her and her husband dancing before she ultimately is hung from the spiral staircase. It’s here that we see a glimpse of how the house truly works as Nellie keeps falling into different points of her life and we discover that she herself was the bent-neck lady the entire time.
It honestly uses shadows to an exceptional effect up to this point because if I had watched this without any prior knowledge to it then that would’ve been a genuinely surprising twist.
