Mike Flanagan's Carrie Features A Dark Tower Easter Egg Only Major Stephen King Fans Noticed

Mike Flanagan heads to Prime Video with "Carrie," a new take on Stephen King's classic horror novel about a young girl with telekinetic abilities who finds that high school is actual hell. The show has proved quite polarizing, with reviews like /Film's own calling out that this adaptation changes enough that it often doesn't feel like "Carrie." Indeed, Flanagan's take includes some heavy characterization changes to many players in the classic tale, especially Carrie's bullies and her mother, while also taking elements from the novel and using them to expand Carrie's powers and take them to a whole new direction.

The result is a story that's still recognizably "Carrie" (even bringing to the screen oft-forgotten the book's epistolary elements), while giving the story some unique Flanagan flare. What is most curious is how Flanagan expands the story in a way that clearly sets up a second season. Flanagan, after all, is hoping to make his dream project in "The Dark Tower," a series of books that notably connects a lot of Stephen King's works.

This is to say, we shouldn't be surprised that "Carrie" features an Easter egg to "The Dark Tower," one that only major Stephen King fans may clock. It happens early in the very first episode of the season, as we follow Carrie's dad to his workplace at a construction site he later dies in. In the background of a shot we see a sign calling the construction site a project from LaMerk Industries. King fans may recognize that name from "The Dark Tower," where LaMerk is a metalworks company that's allied with The Crimson King in his quest to take down the Tower. In the books, LaMerk usually works in the creation of robots, though in "Carrie" they seem more interested in real estate.

Here's the deal. Mike Flanagan has been working on "The Dark Tower" for a while, and the main reason that project has been such a slow process is the intricate and ridiculously complex licensing agreements for the various Stephen King properties. Until that gets resolved, Flanagan can't really make progress on the production.

That being said, it is entirely possible that Flanagan is wasting no time and already building a Stephen King TV universe with what's available to him right now — starting with "Carrie." We see this with the ending to the show's first season, which opens up to a larger universe focused on psychics — of which there are many in Stephen King's library of work. It would be poetic that "Carrie," the first King book to be published, would be the show from which a whole King TV universe is born. And it's not like this would contradict or in any way impact the eventual "The Dark Tower" series. Flanagan can simply find other King novels to adapt that play into the ideas he introduced in "Carrie," slowly weaving them together the way "Welcome to Derry" connects "It" with "The Shining" without contradicting either source material — all while continuing to build up to the "Dark Tower."

And this is not the only Easter egg to King's 8-part series, either. In a later episode we see Billy Nolan feeding his pet and there's a glimpse of a tattoo on his arm that looks suspiciously similar to the Eye of the Crimson King symbol.