Carrie Officially Confirms The 2 Biggest Stephen King Book Theories

Published Oct 9, 2026, 7:46 AM EDT

Adrienne Tyler is a movies & TV features writer, with a focus on horror. She has written for Netflix, FanSided, & more. She was a regular guest on the Netfreaks podcast and was a YouTuber at some point. Guillermo del Toro said “hi” to her once.

Warning: spoilers for Prime Video’s Carrie TV show.

The first TV adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie is now streaming on Prime Video, and though it makes big changes to the novel, it’s thanks to them that the show officially confirms two of the biggest theories about this story. The works of Stephen King continue to be a source of inspiration for many and keep on being picked for adaptations. Some of them, as is the case for Carrie, have been adapted to other media more than once, and now it has gotten its first TV adaptation.

Developed by Mike Flanagan for Prime Video, Carrie is based on Stephen King’s 1974 novel of the same name, but it’s a reimagining and a modernized version of it. However, Carrie keeps the core elements of the novel, following teenager Carrie White (Summer H. Howell) as she begins to attend high school after years of being homeschooled and isolated by her abusive mother, Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). Although Carrie is excited about joining the outside world, a bullying scandal not only changes her perspective but also awakens her telekinetic powers.

While Carrie is the main focus of the story, the show also follows Margaret’s struggles, as she has to find a job if she wants to retain custody of her daughter. In addition to her extremely religious and conservative views getting in her way, Margaret also has to deal with Carrie’s powers and the confidence and agency they give her. Carrie develops Margaret’s character and story a lot better than in the book and other adaptations, and thanks to that, it confirms two theories about her and Carrie's powers.

Carrie TV Show Confirms Margaret White Has Powers Too

Throughout eight episodes, the audience sees how Carrie’s powers awaken, strengthen, and how she learns to control them, and learns that her powers began to manifest when she was very little. Prime Video’s Carrie also shows that many other women throughout history and in different parts of the world have had powers similar to those of Carrie, and even in the present day, there’s a mysterious group of psychics that have become aware of Carrie’s existence.

It’s the leader of that group, Adelaide (Kate Siegel), the one conducting the interviews with the survivors throughout the show, and in the final episode, she interviews Margaret. It’s during that conversation that Margaret admits to having powers, which she discovered while praying when she was young, and which she used to save herself when Carrie destroyed their house. Although the book doesn’t give any powers to Margaret, it has been theorized that she’s the reason for Carrie’s abilities.

Throughout the novel, Margaret has “visions” that she attributes to God and sees as messages from Him, which has made readers believe she might have had powers too. In addition to this, the book explains that Carrie’s powers are genetic and dominant in women, meaning it’s highly likely that Margaret had them. The novel doesn’t offer a concrete answer to all this, but in Flanagan’s adaptation, Margaret had the TK Gene and passed it on to Carrie.

Carrie TV Reveals Her Powers Are Linked To The Shining

Courtesy of Prime

Not only does Margaret have powers in Prime Video’s Carrie TV show, but those powers are linked to those in The Shining. In the latter, Danny Torrance, Dick Hallorann, and Jack Torrance possess “the shine”, a psychic ability that mostly manifests as telepathy, though some characters also have powers like astral projection and telekinesis. Although they manifest in different ways, “the shine” and the powers shown in Carrie do have a lot in common, and the show confirmed their connection.

During the above-mentioned interview with Margaret, Adelaide mentions that “some people have a bit of shine”, officially linking Carrie to The Shining. Now, one of the most popular theories about the Stephen King universe is that Carrie and Margaret have “the shine”, due to the similarities between their powers and those of Hallorann and the Torrances, and Flanagan has now confirmed this is true in his version of Carrie.

As a fun note, another popular Carrie theory was that her father was Randall Flagg, which is why she had such powerful yet destructive abilities, but this, unlike Margaret’s theories, was debunked. Mike Flanagan did an excellent job connecting his version of Carrie to the rest of the Stephen King universe, and he successfully expanded the stories of Carrie and Margaret White.

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  Summer H. Howell

  Carrie White

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  Samantha Sloyan

  Margaret White