Mike Flanagan Rewrote ‘Carrie’ Finale After Hearing Haute & Freddy Song, Says Band “Became Our Musical Identity”

Despite burning down prom in Prime Video‘s Carrie, the titular telekinetic teen still got to dance a little, thanks to Mike Flanagan‘s big finale needle drop.

The series creator recently noted that hearing Haute & Freddy’s single “Shy Girl” for the first time “made me rewrite” the finale episode “AP Physics” to include the track in a key scene of the show, all episodes of which are now available to stream.

“So, Haute & Freddy became our musical identity very early on. We heard ‘Shy Girl’ before the album was released,” Flanagan told Please Relate To This. “We heard ‘Shy Girl’ and it made me rewrite episode 8 to get it into the series. It became the foundation of our musical score. I listened to Haute & Freddy’s album, this was before it had been released, and was like, ‘This is our show.'”

Flanagan even wrote a piece of the band’s merch into the show, as Carrie (Summer H. Howell) finds Tina’s (Josie Totah) Haute & Freddy t-shirt in the school’s lost-and-found, upcycling it into her own creation. “We thought it would be great to make the t-shirt, I love that t-shirt,” he raved.

Noting that he also wrote the lyrics of Lana Del Rey’s “A Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd” into the script, Flanagan explained that other featured artists “came out organically through production and post.”

“But I think Haute & Freddy, more than anything else, defined the series for us,” added Flanagan. “They are huge. It’s been so awesome watching them explode. To me, they are the genetic identity of the sound of our show.”

The eight-episode series follows Carrie White (Howell), a misfit high-schooler who has spent her life hidden away inside the walls of her home with her fiercely protective and overtly religious mother Margaret (Samantha Sloyan). After her father’s sudden, untimely death thrusts her into the unforgiving ecosystem of public high school, Carrie is forced to navigate a viral bullying scandal that tears through her community, the relentless pressure and casual cruelty of the social media age, and the awakening of mysterious telekinetic powers that rise alongside her adolescence.