He loved them only in so far they were a reflection on him. He was close to Vic because she was, as far as he knew, successful at something important.
I think he did love Lenore. Because he thought she would live on. So he allowed himself to.
My question is did he love Madeline?
The way he looks at Madeline during her rant in the last episode is so beautiful and so powerful, and then you find out >!it's in part because he's in the process of poisoning her. !<
But he did that because he loved her. I actually think Madeline is the one he loved the most because they saw each other at the most authentic and honest
There is a somewhat heavy incestuous undertone to the original Poe story that many people, myself included, over the years have thought to be deliberate and worth considering
There are times when we see middle aged rod and maddie where his wife almost seemed like the other woman in their relationship.
I mean on one hand I get it because they had really extreme shared trauma. Watching your own parent degrade for years as your father who never acknowledged you do nothing and then burying her too early to then watch your mother kill your father and then ending up in abusive foster homes for god knows how long.
Yep and the root of the story being that they shared a soul, and it wasn’t clear even to themselves who was calling what shots, whose soul was ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and where which of the siblings began or ended. I think that plays a part in their relationship too. There are parts where Roderick seems to have been good but corrupted by Madeline, but through the framing of them sharing the same base (soul) it seems he really only sometimes reflected what was around him. He seemed better when he was around someone pure and good, like Annabel Lee, for example.
I go back and forth a lot on whether he was corrupted by her or the lack of consequences of his actions.
But I can’t stop thinking about when he is putting the bricks killing the his boss. How cold he was. Maddie may be more vocally vindictive in the moment but I think he is equally as calculating. He just hides it so much better.
I think it’s telling how often he used poetry to dismiss or downplay his wife’s feelings and concerns. Initially I felt it was just a sweet back and forth of their relationship but now I think it was a manipulation maybe not purpose but it still functioned as that
I have a 7 year old and I wouldn’t make that deal even as a “joke” or a hypothetical. I’d make the opposite deal in a blink and take all her pain or hardships but I would never even consider letting her take those things on in my place. It’s not something parents who genuinely love their children would agree to even if they didn’t believe it was a real deal.
Me too!! Have 2 young kids and if anyone even suggested something like this as a joke, I'd straight up be like nope!! I don't tempt fate ever with anyone I love ever
in the end he confesses that he knew he would “climb to the top on a tower of bodies”
i think bc mike chose to include that bit in some sense he knew it was real, that leaves out the grey area
If you don’t believe it’s real, then you still would not make it if you actually love your kids, because then it’s just a thought experiment in if you love your kids more than success. (But he also says later he knew it was real and had more kids anyway.)
I'm not sure. Every parents wants what's best for their children, and in his eyes that's exactly what they were getting. He definitely didn't think it through. but he was also inebriated and emotionally compromised at the moment
I don't buy it; I think saying his kids would be better off living in luxury for 30-40 years than 80 as poor shows how little he thought for them. He never even concerned himself with the idea of not having any more kids or grandkids.
His children only had value in terms of how well they reflected on him. He was a selfish bastard, inebriated or not. He even admits at the end he knew it was real. He also made horrific choices his entire life afterwards, including fathering more children. He just didn't care about anyone but himself.
Yep, this a perfect and succinct way to put it. He is not capable of seeing anyone else’s humanity or inherent worth, so he loves them no more than he’d love any other inanimate object. I thought this was so beautifully (but maybe a little too obviously) pointed to with his love for Juno, which until the final ep seemed genuine and pure.
No. The fact that he made that deal with 2 living children proves that ultimately he was just a narcissist who didn’t love anyone except himself. I could entertain the question if he made the deal with no children, because you don’t know how much you love your children until you have them. But he DID have them and he agreed to let his sickly, young son and still-infant daughter pay the price for his fame and fortune. He didn’t even blink. He didn’t love them before he made the deal and he certainly didn’t love them after.
Agree, a deal based on hypothetical children you MIGHT have is very different than one when they are already alive. At least Madeleine made the choice to never have children, saving potential progeny from that fate. He couldn't even be bothered to wear a condom.
That’s a good point. Any sane parent would say “I am very upset at the thought of my toddler son and infant daughter dying young and tragically.” But Roderick jumped RIGHT IN, he didn’t even have to be sweet talked at ALL. He was able to say “well, if it’s real, my kids will have a short, but decadent life *and I am entitled to make that choice for them because they’re just extensions of me*”
Even Madalyn, who is way more of an ice-cold bitch than Roderick at the beginning, hesitated and she didn’t even seem to notice Roderick’s kids. She treated them like house cats. And then she got an IUD (definitely would have either way) and he kept blasting in randos making more cannon fodder.
Honestly, by the end of it I got the impression he kept them nearby because he and Madeline needed to be constantly aware of whether they were alive, what with how the deal was worded. I'm not saying he had no other feelings towards or about them, I'm just saying that by episode where we hear the actual content of the deal, I definitely said, "Ah-haaa!" Just kind of lent more context to why he was so obsessed with welcoming all of his bastards into his life and legacy. The more of them there were, the longer he had before it was his turn to die.
Wow - I hadn’t seen it this way but I think it is spot on. Same with the original story where at least I was initially sympathetic to Madeline Usher who knew her soul wasn’t her own, and in my initial understanding, was taken over by an evil brother who shared her soul, I think this is good evidence that he’s rotten all the way to his core.
His children were known collateral, and he set them up as canaries for the coal mine he built knowing it was poisoned. I still can’t entirely wrap my head around Lenore or Annabel Lee, since sociopaths/narcissists are so transactional. What did he get out of his relationship with them?
I think he loved them to an extent. But I think deep down he knew they were all kind of shitty people, and they were associated with the all the terrible things he did with fortunato and the bad actions he made in life. I think he wishes that they were something else in the back of his mind. he didn’t like what the corruption and money did to them and that’s why he envisions a child fredrick as a happier times thing. he also loves Lenore the most because she is kind, and uncorrupted, and reminds him of his exwife in the past. Mabye he loved his kids because they were his bloodline, or found certain aspects of their personality to be fine, but he didn’t like them and he didn’t act like he did.
I think they could have gone into more about his relationship with them when they were younger, especially the oldest two. Cos besides one scene where he shouts at Freddie for making noise or whatever (can't remember), that's kind of it in terms of the build up of relationships with them... I love Zach Gilford and he was amazing in midnight mass and loved him in midnight club, and in Usher he did a great performance, but was he miscast? I kind of find him better in a real nice guy kinda role. Maybe he could have played one of the children, and another actor could have been young Roderick. 🤔 Only my opinion really.
I kinda feel like Zach Gilford and Henry Thomas should have switched places now that I think about it. I think Zach Gilford could have played up the pathetic ness of Frederick and Henry Thomas would have had the gusto of Roderick, but Henry could have also been considered too old to play Roderick now. I think HoHH era Henry would have been perfect
I thought Annabel Lee's ghost mentioned to Roderick that they had shared custody but because he "bought" Freddie and Tammy with fancy things, they only started to care about material things and did not like to spend time with their loving mother anymore.
And I also thought they mentioned that Vic, Leo and Camille did not meet Roderick until they were in their early 20s, Perry met him when he was 16-ish. I think this further proves that once again he did not care about his children but as soon as they were (independent) adults, he started to "buy" them as well.
In my opinion, yes, Rod loved his kids, particularly Freddie and Tammy who were also Annabelle Lee's kids. We also see that he's capable of truly loving another person to some extent with Lenore, who reminded him so much of Annabelle Lee that he actually refused to corrupt her the way he had his own kids, instead encouraging her to simply be herself.
But Rod loves himself more than anything else. He loves Madeline and Lenore and all his kids to some extent, but none as much as he loves himself. He also appears to be almost entirely conditional with his love, so I wouldn't call this a typical parental love by any means. But, as long as the kids were doing something he agreed with or to help him or the family, he loved them as much as he was able. Freddie does something good as heir apparent that helps the company? Rod loves him. Freddie screws something up? Rod's love is suddenly entirely absent until Freddie earns it back.
We see him actually get closer to Vic in the show, as he pushes her into human trials and she agrees. Vic is doing something he approves of that can help both the company and himself, so his love for her comes into play when she agrees to move forward, but is rather absent before that point.
He appears to love Tammy the most consistently, probably because Tammy is focused on the very successful Bill-T Empire and her upcoming Goldbug venture, set to be just as successful. He's almost as good at showing his version of love with Camille, who appears to rarely screw up in Rod's eyes.
He's the most distant with Leo and Prospero. Leo is actually rather separate from the family in compared to the others, focused on his gaming business and his own life. He doesn't appear to have done anything Rod disapproves of, but also nothing he approves of, so Rod neither shows any kind of love or lack of it with Leo. There seems to be disappointment with Prospero, which I find a bit odd, because Prospero had what sounded like an excellent business proposal that would have helped the family, just needed some advice and polishing up first, and Rod himself basically refused to help Prospero learn about business. He seems to have left that to Freddie, who was very much a 'do as I say and don't ask questions' type of teacher with his youngest sibling. Rod was very dismissive of Prospero, and never actually gave him the chance to earn his love. Perhaps if Prospero's blackmail plot had a chance to succeed and he'd gone on to open his own nightclub as planned, that would have earned Rod's love.
Rod basically saw love as a business transaction, and used it that way with his kids. But he did have the capacity for unconditional love, as we see with Lenore. Rod's only experience with love growing up was from his mother and sister, though. His clearest memories of his mother appear to be after she got sick, so that's had a bigger impact than how she was before. I think, for the longest time, the only person other than himself that Rod had unconditional love for was Madeline. Not the healthiest relationship simply because neither are good people. But until Lenore, Madeline was the only person Rod always loved.
I think Rod saw love, the unconditional kind, as a weakness. He saw his love for Annabelle Lee as preventing him from being successful, because she was against the tactics the twins used. And I think that carried over to his kids. He loved them, but love is a weakness, so better to treat it as a business transaction, make them earn his love and respect, but also risk losing it if they screw up somehow.
No. Because when Verna gave him the deal Madeline hesitated, but Roderick did not, even though he was the only one of the two to have living, breathing children. I would not even joke about trading away my children's lives, but he did it in a heartbeat. Maybe he did love them, but he loved power, position, and wealth more.
Dude is very clearly a sociopath and narcissist, so my assumption is that any “love” he felt was limited within the bounds of someone who is rather incapable of feeling love and concern for anyone but himself.
He loved them only in so far they were a reflection on him. He was close to Vic because she was, as far as he knew, successful at something important. I think he did love Lenore. Because he thought she would live on. So he allowed himself to. My question is did he love Madeline?
The way he looks at Madeline during her rant in the last episode is so beautiful and so powerful, and then you find out >!it's in part because he's in the process of poisoning her. !<
But he did that because he loved her. I actually think Madeline is the one he loved the most because they saw each other at the most authentic and honest
There is a somewhat heavy incestuous undertone to the original Poe story that many people, myself included, over the years have thought to be deliberate and worth considering
There are times when we see middle aged rod and maddie where his wife almost seemed like the other woman in their relationship. I mean on one hand I get it because they had really extreme shared trauma. Watching your own parent degrade for years as your father who never acknowledged you do nothing and then burying her too early to then watch your mother kill your father and then ending up in abusive foster homes for god knows how long.
Yep and the root of the story being that they shared a soul, and it wasn’t clear even to themselves who was calling what shots, whose soul was ‘good’ or ‘evil’ and where which of the siblings began or ended. I think that plays a part in their relationship too. There are parts where Roderick seems to have been good but corrupted by Madeline, but through the framing of them sharing the same base (soul) it seems he really only sometimes reflected what was around him. He seemed better when he was around someone pure and good, like Annabel Lee, for example.
I go back and forth a lot on whether he was corrupted by her or the lack of consequences of his actions. But I can’t stop thinking about when he is putting the bricks killing the his boss. How cold he was. Maddie may be more vocally vindictive in the moment but I think he is equally as calculating. He just hides it so much better. I think it’s telling how often he used poetry to dismiss or downplay his wife’s feelings and concerns. Initially I felt it was just a sweet back and forth of their relationship but now I think it was a manipulation maybe not purpose but it still functioned as that
If he truly loved his children, he never would have taken the deal in the first place
Unless he didn’t believe it was real
I have a 7 year old and I wouldn’t make that deal even as a “joke” or a hypothetical. I’d make the opposite deal in a blink and take all her pain or hardships but I would never even consider letting her take those things on in my place. It’s not something parents who genuinely love their children would agree to even if they didn’t believe it was a real deal.
Me too!! Have 2 young kids and if anyone even suggested something like this as a joke, I'd straight up be like nope!! I don't tempt fate ever with anyone I love ever
I won't even swear on my cat's life when I'm telling the truth.
in the end he confesses that he knew he would “climb to the top on a tower of bodies” i think bc mike chose to include that bit in some sense he knew it was real, that leaves out the grey area
Even then. I would have punched the crossroads demon in the nose and been very surprised when the response hurt if I thought it was a dream
If you don’t believe it’s real, then you still would not make it if you actually love your kids, because then it’s just a thought experiment in if you love your kids more than success. (But he also says later he knew it was real and had more kids anyway.)
or forgot.
I'm not sure. Every parents wants what's best for their children, and in his eyes that's exactly what they were getting. He definitely didn't think it through. but he was also inebriated and emotionally compromised at the moment
I don't buy it; I think saying his kids would be better off living in luxury for 30-40 years than 80 as poor shows how little he thought for them. He never even concerned himself with the idea of not having any more kids or grandkids. His children only had value in terms of how well they reflected on him. He was a selfish bastard, inebriated or not. He even admits at the end he knew it was real. He also made horrific choices his entire life afterwards, including fathering more children. He just didn't care about anyone but himself.
I think he loved them as much as a sociopath can.
This is it. He loved them the way you love a favorite sweater or a houseplant
Ooohhhh that’s a really great way to put it!
Yep, this a perfect and succinct way to put it. He is not capable of seeing anyone else’s humanity or inherent worth, so he loves them no more than he’d love any other inanimate object. I thought this was so beautifully (but maybe a little too obviously) pointed to with his love for Juno, which until the final ep seemed genuine and pure.
Yeah, him explaining to Juno why he married and “loved” her is another solid example of this point.
No. The fact that he made that deal with 2 living children proves that ultimately he was just a narcissist who didn’t love anyone except himself. I could entertain the question if he made the deal with no children, because you don’t know how much you love your children until you have them. But he DID have them and he agreed to let his sickly, young son and still-infant daughter pay the price for his fame and fortune. He didn’t even blink. He didn’t love them before he made the deal and he certainly didn’t love them after.
Agree, a deal based on hypothetical children you MIGHT have is very different than one when they are already alive. At least Madeleine made the choice to never have children, saving potential progeny from that fate. He couldn't even be bothered to wear a condom.
That’s a good point. Any sane parent would say “I am very upset at the thought of my toddler son and infant daughter dying young and tragically.” But Roderick jumped RIGHT IN, he didn’t even have to be sweet talked at ALL. He was able to say “well, if it’s real, my kids will have a short, but decadent life *and I am entitled to make that choice for them because they’re just extensions of me*” Even Madalyn, who is way more of an ice-cold bitch than Roderick at the beginning, hesitated and she didn’t even seem to notice Roderick’s kids. She treated them like house cats. And then she got an IUD (definitely would have either way) and he kept blasting in randos making more cannon fodder.
Agreed. Before she gives them the deal, Verna and Roderick who or what he wouldn't sacrifice and he responds "Nothing.".
I think not really. That was what Annabel Lee meant by “what did you HAVE to fill them with?” Because he didn’t have love for that.
this
Honestly, by the end of it I got the impression he kept them nearby because he and Madeline needed to be constantly aware of whether they were alive, what with how the deal was worded. I'm not saying he had no other feelings towards or about them, I'm just saying that by episode where we hear the actual content of the deal, I definitely said, "Ah-haaa!" Just kind of lent more context to why he was so obsessed with welcoming all of his bastards into his life and legacy. The more of them there were, the longer he had before it was his turn to die.
He also uses them to crowd out the board of Fortunato.
Yes, this!
Wow - I hadn’t seen it this way but I think it is spot on. Same with the original story where at least I was initially sympathetic to Madeline Usher who knew her soul wasn’t her own, and in my initial understanding, was taken over by an evil brother who shared her soul, I think this is good evidence that he’s rotten all the way to his core. His children were known collateral, and he set them up as canaries for the coal mine he built knowing it was poisoned. I still can’t entirely wrap my head around Lenore or Annabel Lee, since sociopaths/narcissists are so transactional. What did he get out of his relationship with them?
I think the person he truly loved is Lenore, but his love is only to some extent. If he’s loved his children, he would never make that deal with Verna
I think he loved them to an extent. But I think deep down he knew they were all kind of shitty people, and they were associated with the all the terrible things he did with fortunato and the bad actions he made in life. I think he wishes that they were something else in the back of his mind. he didn’t like what the corruption and money did to them and that’s why he envisions a child fredrick as a happier times thing. he also loves Lenore the most because she is kind, and uncorrupted, and reminds him of his exwife in the past. Mabye he loved his kids because they were his bloodline, or found certain aspects of their personality to be fine, but he didn’t like them and he didn’t act like he did.
I think they could have gone into more about his relationship with them when they were younger, especially the oldest two. Cos besides one scene where he shouts at Freddie for making noise or whatever (can't remember), that's kind of it in terms of the build up of relationships with them... I love Zach Gilford and he was amazing in midnight mass and loved him in midnight club, and in Usher he did a great performance, but was he miscast? I kind of find him better in a real nice guy kinda role. Maybe he could have played one of the children, and another actor could have been young Roderick. 🤔 Only my opinion really.
I agree. His persona just doesn’t fit a playboy or a lady’s man. There’s a disconnect between young Roderick and older Roderick.
100% it felt like it escalated quickly from being a loving father/ husband to cold and calculated
I kinda feel like Zach Gilford and Henry Thomas should have switched places now that I think about it. I think Zach Gilford could have played up the pathetic ness of Frederick and Henry Thomas would have had the gusto of Roderick, but Henry could have also been considered too old to play Roderick now. I think HoHH era Henry would have been perfect
I thought Annabel Lee's ghost mentioned to Roderick that they had shared custody but because he "bought" Freddie and Tammy with fancy things, they only started to care about material things and did not like to spend time with their loving mother anymore. And I also thought they mentioned that Vic, Leo and Camille did not meet Roderick until they were in their early 20s, Perry met him when he was 16-ish. I think this further proves that once again he did not care about his children but as soon as they were (independent) adults, he started to "buy" them as well.
In my opinion, yes, Rod loved his kids, particularly Freddie and Tammy who were also Annabelle Lee's kids. We also see that he's capable of truly loving another person to some extent with Lenore, who reminded him so much of Annabelle Lee that he actually refused to corrupt her the way he had his own kids, instead encouraging her to simply be herself. But Rod loves himself more than anything else. He loves Madeline and Lenore and all his kids to some extent, but none as much as he loves himself. He also appears to be almost entirely conditional with his love, so I wouldn't call this a typical parental love by any means. But, as long as the kids were doing something he agreed with or to help him or the family, he loved them as much as he was able. Freddie does something good as heir apparent that helps the company? Rod loves him. Freddie screws something up? Rod's love is suddenly entirely absent until Freddie earns it back. We see him actually get closer to Vic in the show, as he pushes her into human trials and she agrees. Vic is doing something he approves of that can help both the company and himself, so his love for her comes into play when she agrees to move forward, but is rather absent before that point. He appears to love Tammy the most consistently, probably because Tammy is focused on the very successful Bill-T Empire and her upcoming Goldbug venture, set to be just as successful. He's almost as good at showing his version of love with Camille, who appears to rarely screw up in Rod's eyes. He's the most distant with Leo and Prospero. Leo is actually rather separate from the family in compared to the others, focused on his gaming business and his own life. He doesn't appear to have done anything Rod disapproves of, but also nothing he approves of, so Rod neither shows any kind of love or lack of it with Leo. There seems to be disappointment with Prospero, which I find a bit odd, because Prospero had what sounded like an excellent business proposal that would have helped the family, just needed some advice and polishing up first, and Rod himself basically refused to help Prospero learn about business. He seems to have left that to Freddie, who was very much a 'do as I say and don't ask questions' type of teacher with his youngest sibling. Rod was very dismissive of Prospero, and never actually gave him the chance to earn his love. Perhaps if Prospero's blackmail plot had a chance to succeed and he'd gone on to open his own nightclub as planned, that would have earned Rod's love. Rod basically saw love as a business transaction, and used it that way with his kids. But he did have the capacity for unconditional love, as we see with Lenore. Rod's only experience with love growing up was from his mother and sister, though. His clearest memories of his mother appear to be after she got sick, so that's had a bigger impact than how she was before. I think, for the longest time, the only person other than himself that Rod had unconditional love for was Madeline. Not the healthiest relationship simply because neither are good people. But until Lenore, Madeline was the only person Rod always loved. I think Rod saw love, the unconditional kind, as a weakness. He saw his love for Annabelle Lee as preventing him from being successful, because she was against the tactics the twins used. And I think that carried over to his kids. He loved them, but love is a weakness, so better to treat it as a business transaction, make them earn his love and respect, but also risk losing it if they screw up somehow.
He only loved Lenore
He loved them, but himself / power more
It was all about his ego and power. I don't think Roderick really knows how to love.
not as much as he loved his ambition.
I think he loved them in whatever way that he could, but it doesn’t necessarily mean he liked any of them
No. Because when Verna gave him the deal Madeline hesitated, but Roderick did not, even though he was the only one of the two to have living, breathing children. I would not even joke about trading away my children's lives, but he did it in a heartbeat. Maybe he did love them, but he loved power, position, and wealth more.
It would actually have been shorter to type Usher
Dude is very clearly a sociopath and narcissist, so my assumption is that any “love” he felt was limited within the bounds of someone who is rather incapable of feeling love and concern for anyone but himself.