Netflix
Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Luke in "The Haunting of Hill House"
- "The Haunting of Hill House" ends on an uplifting note, but one clue could change that.
- Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays Luke, told The Wrap that whenever a family member is having visions from the Red Room, something is red in the scene.
- Jackson-Cohen pointed out that Luke's sobriety cake at the end of the series is red, suggesting that the family never made it out of the Red Room.
The secret of the Red Room is one of the biggest mysteries of Netflix's hit horror series, "The Haunting of Hill House." And Oliver Jackson-Cohen, who plays the adult Luke on the show, pointed out a clue that suggests the mystery still hasn't been solved.
Jackson-Cohen told The Wrap that throughout the series, when someone is having visions in the Red Room, "something in the fantasy is red." He pointed out that Luke wears red shoes in one fantasy, and "it's so slight you can barely even see it. And I think Steven is wearing a red jumper."
Throughout the series, the family can never enter the Red Room when they live in Hill House as children. Years later, as adults, they return to the house and discover that the room was actually each person's personal space. They had each been in the room numerous times, but nobody else could unlock their space.
The season ends on an uplifting note, with the oldest sibling, Steven, being given the responsibility of keeping the house in the family. In one of the final scenes, the family is surrounding Luke celebrating his sobriety with a cake. But there's something about the cake that suggests the ending isn't as happy as viewers have been led to believe, according to Jackson-Cohen.
"And so there's something at the end - it was Kate [Siegel], who plays Theo, who kind of pointed it out to me - with Luke's sobriety cake," he told The Wrap. "Um, she went, 'The cake is red.' And on set I went, 'Oh, my God!' And she went, 'I don't know!' And I asked [director] Mike [Flanagan], and he went 'I don't know.' And so I can't tell whether or not I'm just crazy with this - or whether or not it's something that could have legs."
Below is a look at the scene with the red cake:
Netflix
Flanagan told The Hollywood Reporter last month that the series' original ending was a lot darker, and it was more comparable to what Jackson-Cohen pointed out. According to Flanagan, the original ending featured the Red Room window in the background of the scene above, but he ultimately changed it because he felt it was "mean and unfair."
"We toyed with the idea for a little while that over that monologue, over the image of the family together, we would put the Red Room window in the background," Flanagan said. "For a while, that was the plan. Maybe they never really got out of that room."
It looks like it's up to viewers to perceive the ending the way they want.