The Haunting Of Bly Manor: 8 Things To Look For On Your Rewatch

It's been nearly a week since The Haunting of Bly Manor premiered on Netflix: Wouldn't it be a perfectly splendid time to make a trip back to that great, good place?

Like The Haunting of Hill House, Mike Flanagan's adaptation of Henry James The Turn of the Screw (and a few other works) was made for repeated viewing. The subtle call-outs! The blink-and-you-miss-them visual hints! And, as Hill House taught us, the ghosts! THE GHOSTS!

So now that you've experienced the woeful love story from the eerie premiere to the heartbreaking finale, it's time to get drawn back into Viola's gravity well again.

The list below is made up of eight moments — in no particular order — we think you might want to give a second look during your inevitable rewatch. But beware: Our selections cover all nine episodes of the anthology's second season, so here there be spoilers.

So scroll through the selections below, and when you're done, hit the comments with the little Bly Manor bits that you picked up on during your second (or 22nd) viewing. Because if you take nothing else away from the gothic ghost story, know this: When it comes to wringing every little ounce of pop culture goodness outta a show like Bly Manor, it's you, it's me, it's us.

Now that you've got the lay of the haunted land, and before the storyline makes it obvious, see how quickly you can tell who is and isn't dead in a scene. Maudlin fun!

The number of the hostel room where Dani's staying — 217 — recalls the ill-fated room in Stephen King's The Shining. (In Stanley Kubrick's movie adaptation, however, the eerie action was moved to Room 237 — a change Mike Flanagan kept when he directed the Shining's big-screen sequel Doctor Sleep, which was released in 2019.)

The Haunting of Hill House's ghosts were an unexpected, if unsettling, treat. But when it came to the Netflix anthology's second season, creator Mike Flanagan and his team knew fans would scour every frame of footage to see what he'd hidden in the shadows. Accordingly, they made Bly Manor's resident phantoms even harder to pick out — but we have confidence in you. Some show up as lurking silhouettes or blink-and-you-miss-them dark masses.  Others, like the Doll Face Ghost lurking in the upper right corner in this shot from Episode 5, are fairly easy to see. But if you have a tough time, you're in good company: Even cast member Oliver Jackson-Cohen admitted to us that he was scared by an actor playing a ghost while filming a night scene.

And once you start noticing the non-corporeal entities, here's an advanced version of the hunt: See if you can nail down at least one sighting of every one of the ghosts represented in Flora's dollhouse.

"O Willow Waly," a song that was written for The Innocents — the 1961 film adaptation of The Turn of the Screw, aka the novella which also was the basis of The Haunting of Bly Manor — turns up several times in the season. Flora sings it by the lake just before she meets Dani, Violet sings it to her daughter, Peter whistles it... pay attention to how many times you hear the tune as the episodes unspool.

When Dani finds Mrs. Grose praying in the chapel in Episode 1, the older woman has just lit four candles. Two for Miles and Flora's deceased parents, one for Rebecca and... for whom does the final votive burn? Wait — is this evidence that Hannah knows, on some level, that she's no longer among the living? We asked T'Nia Miller, who plays the housekeeper, for her thoughts on the matter. "I think two things. I think it's herself and Sam," she said, citing Hannah's never-seen, unfaithful husband, who wasn't dead but surely was lost to her.

Now that you're in on the ghostly game — aka the way the spirits of Peter Quint and Rebecca Jessel inhabit the bodies of Miles and Flora, respectively, throughout the season — marvel at how Benjamin Evan Ainsworth and Amelia Bea Smith subtly manage to work their older castmates' mannerisms into their performances (something that Oliver Jackson-Cohen told us took quite some rehearsal).

If you were too busy weeping over Jamie's devotion to looking for Jamie's reflection in the sink and bathtub each night, you might've missed the evidence in the season finale that their love actually has survived into the afterlife... even if the former groundskeeper can't see her wife. Sniff!