'Carrie' Star Samantha Sloyan Officially Explains Margaret White's Brutal Ending

Published Oct 21, 2026, 7:00 AM EDT

Perri Nemiroff is the 2025 Press Award winner at the ICG Publicists Awards.

She's the senior producer at Collider where she hosts and produces the interview series, Collider Ladies Night, a show geared towards highlighting the need-to-know female voices in film and television.

On top of that, Perri frequently moderates post-screening Q&As and panels at film festivals and conventions including San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con, and can be seen on the big screen in the Noovie pre-show segment, Close-up with Perri Nemiroff. She’s also a Top Critic on Rotten Tomatoes, a proud member of the Critics Choice Association and is a Gold Derby Expert.

Perri splits her time between Los Angeles and New York. Wherever the film and television coverage takes her, she goes!

Mike Flanagan has amassed an impressive roster of frequent collaborators over the years, but Samantha Sloyan continues to be a major standout. She made a big impression with limited screen time in projects like Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, but her turn in Midnight Mass was the game changer. She proved to be a singular force as Bev Keane, a performance that should have earned her an Emmy nomination. Now she soars in yet another Flanagan series playing an iconic Stephen King character, Carrie White’s (Summer H. Howell) mother, Margaret.

With the first season of Flanagan’s Carrie series now available to stream on Prime Video, Sloyan visited the Collider Ladies Night studio for an extended chat about her journey in film and television thus far. We revisited how she first met Flanagan and Kate Siegel, what it meant to earn her first series regular role in Midnight Mass, and how she approached playing Margaret White in Carrie, including the character's brutal demise.

Margaret Was Always Trying to Protect Carrie

"Carrie's all that's left that Margaret sees as good in this world."

Margaret crosses quite a few lines throughout the season, and her motivation for doing so always comes back to one particular thing, protecting Carrie.

“She knows exactly what her daughter is capable of, and I think that moment with the rocks falling was really Margaret making the choice that this child was not going to leave the house because, what does this world do to monsters? And I think she just was like, ‘No, they're not getting her.’”

Protecting her daughter is also heavily tethered to protecting her own heart. In Episode 4, Margaret has a rare vulnerable moment with Carrie while discussing the situation with Ralph’s remains. She tells her daughter, “I’m here if you need my help. It’s really the only thing that I am here for on this earth.” Margaret clearly means what she says, but the statement is also tinged with sadness. While discussing the emotional weight of the line, Sloyan explained:

“I really feel like through the series, we're watching Margaret's heart break. She can't let her daughter grow up, and she can't let her go because she has, I think, made Carrie her life. She had Ralph, and they had their cult of three, and now they've lost Ralph, and so truly Carrie's all that's left that Margaret sees as good in this world.”

At that moment, Margaret can sense that the only good that remains is slipping away. Sloyan added, “She just feels her daughter pulling away, and she knows her daughter isn’t telling her stuff. She's losing her.”

What Was Margaret Really Thinking in Her Final Moments?

"She’s pushed everything else away. She has no other connection."

Image via Prime Video

Despite spending much of the season trying to protect Carrie, Margaret ultimately loses the very person she's fighting for, all while having her faith rocked to its core. While discussing Margaret's final moments sitting opposite Kate Siegel's Adelaide as she uses her powers to bring Margaret’s heart to a “full stop,” Sloyan revealed what she thinks is going through Margaret’s mind at that very moment:

"There is a religious component to Margaret, but we really only see, I think, her intimately talk about God a handful of times, and one is in this [scene] when Kate's character asks, ‘Did you ever have the shine, the power?’ And she said, 'I did,' and she's like, 'I thought it was God.' I think it's so close in that moment of her really having it clear to her that that was not God talking to her. And then in this moment, to choose to reach out to him again. She’s pushed everything else away. She has no other connection.”

Image via Prime Video

Sloyan added, “It's a terrible death, and I think similar to what Bev is going through, but with a kinder heart, of just having it laid so bare that you just made the wrong choices, you know? And in the moment, there's nothing. The only thing to do is just hope someone can forgive you, and that the next phase is better.”

Looking for even more from Sloyan on her experience making Carrie? Be sure to check out her full Collider Ladies Night interview at the top of this article!

• 

  Summer H. Howell

  Carrie White

• 

  Samantha Sloyan

  Margaret White

Carrie White struggles through school life after her father's passing in this new adaptation of Stephen King's classic novel. The challenges she faces include bullying, a domineering mother, and the the development of her telekinetic abilities.