‘Carrie’ Episode 5 Recap: Psychological Warfare

Welcome to the back half of this electrifying season of television: Carrie Episode 5 on Prime Video. “Physical Education” starts with a recounting of Joan of Arc’s story, from prophet to pariah. “Power, imagined or misunderstood: first fear, then betrayal, and finally, oblivion,” Kate Siegel narrates. The intro wraps with accelerating images of dozens of women, landing at last on Carrie. It’s time to start asking: beyond presenting psychically powered ladies through history, how are we going to intersect with Carrietta? When will we get back to that mystery mansion?

Margaret White closed the last episode by promising to “make them pay,” and now she’s back in Principal Grayle’s office with an ultimatum: face a war, or expel Chris for running the Carrie Red Instagram. A tracking shot takes Margaret through the halls of Ewen High, where she drops “Chris Hargensen is Carrie Red” into as many ears as she can.

Grayle’s second meeting of the day is with Chris and bastard/attorney John Hargensen. He calls “lunatic” Margaret’s crusade against Chris a “witch burning.” As soon as the conversation ends, John tears right into Chris, who goes from giddy to shocked. 

At soccer practice, Sue’s running herself ragged, battling guilt over being a bystander to the “plug it up” incident and claiming Chris as a bestie for years. A few days later, Tommy goes to pick her up for school and she’s not home, doesn’t pick up the phone. She’s running again. He finds her and gets the excuse that she’s got “a lot going on.” She tells him she knows she’s “been a dick” for weeks, mainly by avoiding him; he agrees, reminds her he’s also dealing with a lot, and gently peaces out. Joel Oulette’s tender take on Tommy is really special.

Carrietta and Emaline chat outside the house, since nobody’s allowed in. Emaline wants Carrie to lean into her power and get back at Chris, not hide or leave it to Margaret. (She also idly wonders if Marg’s got psychic abilities too, if it “runs in the family.”) “Listen: god, or the universe, or whatever higher power you fuck with, didn’t give you these abilities for you not to use them,” she says. “You are at war and you are holding back your best soldier. I’ll help — whatever you need, I got you.”

Some more encouragement/goading from Emaline across the episode:

• “Remember: you are your own greatest weapon, okay? No offense to your mom.” 
• “I’d put the fear of god into those bitches over there. … You are in a room full of storm troopers and you’re a little fucking Jedi. Have a little fun!”
• “Do not feel guilty for finding your power. And do not feel guilty for becoming who you are meant to be, because you are amazing.”

Margaret has bought supplies to wage the war she and Emaline are separately hyping up. She shares with Carrie one of Ralph White’s sentiments from his military days: “You wanna win, you turn your enemies’ tactics against them.” Margaret circles back to Carrie’s outburst about pretending her dead dad will just waltz back through the door any day, telling Carrie she was right, that they can collect his ashes together. They cry together in their most touching moment we’ve seen, Carrie’s hug marking the first time anyone’s actually comforted the grieving Margaret.

At Emaline’s encouragement in the cafeteria, Carrie lightly experiments with her powers, messing up Tina’s eyeliner application and tipping Sue’s drink into her lap. Sue begs Chris to take the account down and apologize to Carrie, threatening to expose her if not. “You’re better than this. … You could still have a chance to fix things,” Sue insists. Chris does say sorry — for Carrie’s mom being such a C-word. “Honestly,” she spits, “if I was married to her, I would throw myself into an open trench, too.” Famous last words before her nose is telekinetically crunched in a scarlet splatter. Carrie’s self-satisfied parting shot as she walks by the profusely bleeding Chris? “Plug it up.”

Carrie skips the rest of her classes and hustles home, victory curdling to guilt. Emaline follows, and Carrie can’t get rid of her, even once she’s in the house. Carrie can’t believe she “lost control”; Emaline can’t believe she won’t accept that she took control. She gets between Carrie and the prayer closet she wants to repent in, pushes her to admit “it felt fucking great” to hurt Chris. For Carrie, dropping the F bomb surprises her almost as much as her lunchroom vengeance.                          

Emaline whisks Carrie to a junkyard to start “popping the cork” — exploding bottles while imagining her bullies. Next up: floating a bunch of items in a spinning circle high above. Then it’s on to tying a metal bar in knots and, with great effort and a little scream, getting a dead car’s engine to combust and subsequently explode. “Fucking run, superhero!” Emaline shouts.

Venting to Tina, Chris says the nurse explained her broken nose by saying she squeezed it too hard trying to stop the bleeding. “I’m gonna fucking kill Carrie White,” Chris vows. She eases her troubles by posting about Brooklyn, her would-be stepsister, having sex with teachers. “What is Carrie Red if not a factory of joy, right?” Tina philosophizes. 

At the bar frequented by our Ewen educators, Peter Morton tells Rita Desjardin that he’s receiving 30 students a day who’ve been targeted by Carrie Red. “And almost half of those, I’m sending more and more to the suicide and crisis lifeline.” Seth Peist gets in a shouting match with the bartender, who calls him a “fucking pervert” and “pedo” based on Carrie Red gossip. 

A glowing Carrie fixes a nice dinner, telling Margaret she had her “first good day in a long time.” Margaret is equally buoyant now that they’ve “built the foundation” for their campaign against Chris. She sets up her new ring light and opens an IG as realmaggiered, “Mother. Parental Rights Advocate.” It’s officially “Put Chris On Blast Hour.” This, to grab a phrase from Miss Desjardin in Stephen King’s novel, really hits Chris where she lives. By the time she sees Maggie Red’s video, it’s past 800 likes and en route to 700 comments. “Tagged the whole fucking school,” Chris murmurs, a hitherto unseen level of fear and pain dawning on her face.

Chris, sporting nose tape and blackened eyes, gets Billy to break her into the White stronghold. He rearranges things just-so, flips stuff over, unsettling adjustments to get under their skin. She spits in their leftovers and plans to “piss on their toothbrushes, smear just a little shit on their pillows.” Billy finds one of Margaret’s hidden cameras on the mantle and is able to fend off a freakout by yanking the SD card. Chris’s consolation prize for their vandalism being cut short is to drop and shatter Ralph’s portrait. Back at Billy’s scuzzy little pad — complete with weed plants and a big old lizard — they comb through Margaret’s clandestine footage of her daughter, striking gold. We’ll come back to that. When the Whites arrive home with Ralph’s ashes, Margaret refuses to call the cops (agents of the deep state, y’know) about the break-in. 

Henry Grayle leads a gym assembly for parents and the school board about prom plans. Margaret takes the floor in an admittedly sick burgundy suit, livestreaming all along the way. She wants support from fellow parents, putting the administration on blast for its lack of action over Chris’s mayhem. “Raise your hand if Carrie Red has followed you home,” she says, and many do. Margaret names Chris again, and Matthew Lillard’s quiet “ah, fuck me” is perfect. Seth stands up for Margaret when Grayle tries to shut it down, upset that students are getting in 10 fights a day and Carrie Red has gone beyond the school to terrorize all of Chamberlain. Margaret wraps with the “we have god on our side” line she delivered to Grayle earlier, now preceding it with “we are an army.”

“This bitch has got a fuckin’ clit-boner for me,” Chris (admittedly hilariously) decrees when Sue debriefs her. Sue tearfully asks her again to shut down the account “before something bad happens, like real-life bad.” Chris is convinced their friendship is dead and lays out the ways her “whole life has imploded” already. “You’ve dug yourself into a grave and I am just trying to give you a way out,” Sue implores. Chris has convinced herself Carrie Red is her way out, and now she’s all about “freedom of fucking speech.” Sue’s devastated to hear it; stellar single-tear acting by Siena Agudong, and equally potent stuff from Alison Thornton. But Sue’s also shrewd enough to grab a secret voice memo of Chris’s admission and bring it to Mr. Morton. 

Carrie’s final indignity this episode is a twofer, and marks our discovery of what Chris and Billy found on the SD card. Footage from Margaret’s spy camera has hit Carrie Red, and…Carrietta’s evidently been talking not to Emaline but to thin air. “Is that your imaginary friend?” Tina asks. A valid question, as Emaline — walking with Carrie moments before — is nowhere to be seen on the video or IRL. Meanwhile, every kid in sight is filming Carrie yet again.

Odds & Ends

• This episode is helmed by Kyra Sedgwick, the Emmy/Golden Globe–winning star of The Closer, who’s been a director since 2017. It’s written by FBOY Island creator Elan Gale (Midnight Mass, The Midnight Club) and Alexandra Magistro, Mike Flanagan’s former assistant turned producer, writer, and VP of Creative at his Red Room Pictures shingle.
• A close-watch of Episode 2 shows that Emaline wasn’t just standing out of sight in the corner of the bathroom when Carrie cracked the mirror. The camera panned over that spot and she absolutely wasn’t there a second before. 
• Michael Trucco played a hall-of-fame corporate asshole in Flanagan’s final Netflix series, The Fall of the House of Usher. In Carrie, their sixth collaboration, he’s managed to outdo himself. John Hargensen must go.

Stephen King Trivia Corner

• Not a ton from this episode, so I’ll note that the day before Carrie premiered, King published the splendid Other Worlds Than These. It’s the sequel to his and Peter Straub’s 1984 fantasy adventure The Talisman and its 2001 follow-up Black House. Straub died in 2022 but King was adamant that he got co-authorship credit on Other Worlds. Besides wrapping the Talisman trilogy, it’s also King’s latest — and maybe last — trip to Mid-World, where the majority of The Dark Tower transpires. For my money, Other Worlds Than These is King’s best novel in 15 years, since 11/22/63. There’s been lots of gold in the interim, but this is on another level. Also Patton Oswalt narrates the audiobook, which is fun.
• Prepping for Carrie season, something caught my ear listening to the indispensable The Year of Underrated Stephen King podcast. Host Kim C. said, “Looking at Carrie from the eyes of 2023, and knowing what I know about King and his extremely amazing character-writing, it would be really nice to know more about our character lineup. … Sue Snell, Tommy Ross, Chris Hargensen, Billy Nolan — they’re all reading as very archetypal and not fleshed out. For example, when you really think about it, what do we know about Chris Hargensen other than she’s the mean girl? We do have a slight bit of detail in terms of her relationship with her father, but do we really, really know, guys, why she is this way? We don’t. … Sue Snell is probably the most beguiling, because she’s the one who kinda has this not necessarily literal come-to-Jesus moment, but she does flip 180 from being a very cruel tormentor of Carrie to feeling extreme regret and remorse, and wanting to do the right thing, wanting to make amends. Why and how did she get there? I would love to know.” This is a valid and oft-heard critique of the novel and previous adaptations, and it’s so satisfying to see it remedied here in 2026.

Zach Dionne writes Decider’s Streamin’ King column and makes King things on Patreon.