Alan and Edith get back together, ultimately getting married and having children together.
- “Back” together? They were never in a relationship to begin with
Sir Thomas Sharpe needs Edith Cushing to bear his child
Specifically, he needs her to bear the child that will inherit Crimson Peak. We know he has an ulterior motive; in the trailer, his sister doubts that Edith is "the right choice" and he says "Trust me." He picked Edith to be his wife because of her ability to see ghosts (maybe it runs in her family). Children, family, legacy, and bloodline are important recurrent themes in Del Toro's work up to now. Over the course of the movie Edith will fall pregnant, and this will further agitate the ghosts of Crimson Peak.- Incidentally, this would really up the horror ante — in Victorian England, pregnancy meant a "confinement" within the house for a period of months. A pregnant Edith would be barred from leaving Crimson Peak, no matter how scary it gets...
- This would certainly give a meaning (beyond the obvious) to the brief shots of them having sex in the trailer.
- Jossed. The Sharpes need Edith's money. She is the right choice because she's rich and her father is her only family. Once he's dead they think nobody will come looking for her once she vanishes.
The house is the true villain
They keep going on in the trailers, and in the 'Beware Crimson Peak' experience,
about how houses take on a life of their own over the centuries. Thomas and especially Lucille are essentially servants/children of the house, raised by it and subconsciously believing it to be their parent figure, and wanting to preserve it at all cost - while also feeding it. Guillermo del Toro has explicitly stated that the ghosts are not evil; they're trying to warn Edith to get out before she's sacrificed to the house as well.- Jossed. Thomas and Lucille (but mostly Lucille) are the villains of the story. All the ghosts in the house are trying to warn Edith and prevent her from being murdered. What's more, it is the fact that they're blind to the supernatural that foils their plans.
- However, the book says otherwise; the house as an entity is outright referred to in the book, and in interviews Guillermo del Toro refers to trying to make the house a character.
The Sharpe siblings are involved in an incestuous relationship
In the trailer we see that Lucille apparently spies on her brother while he's having sex with his wife. Then there are pictures like this
◊. And now there's the promo that shows her lovingly caressing his face while telling him that he can never leave her, and that they would both be disgraced if anyone found out what they had done. In an interview, Hiddleston hinted that the film was 'kinky' and that it was about all three of the main characters trying to 'pursue love'. What if Lucille's love is for her brother Thomas? It would certainly put an interesting spin on her seeming dislike of Edith.- Confirmed
One or both of the Sharpe siblings is actually a ghost.
Sir Thomas Sharpe says that the house 'holds on to things', keeping things alive that should have been let go. We also see a ghost that looks suspiciously like Lucille at her piano, and another shot of Edith going through a series of old pictures of the family. This will be her discovering that the brother and sister are actually far older than they appear, and that the house has been keeping them alive so that they can continue to feed it.- Partially confirmed. Both siblings are killed near the end of the movie and become ghosts.
Variations on an homage:
The Skeleton Key
In the film a married couple possessed two siblings ages ago (who were paralyzed via hoodoo and lynched by their own parents while trapped in the couple's old bodies) are now on the hunt for younger bodies. The husband was able to "switch" first and presented himself as a possible love interest for Kate Hudson's character.Possible situations:- Both Sharpes are ghosts and want living bodies (Alan is now screwed)
- Both Sharpes are alive and want unrelated bodies (same as above)
- Thomas is alive and Lucille is not (or very sick) and wants to give her Edith's healthy, unrelated body.
- Lucille is paranoid about Thomas actually falling in love with Edith, or at least caring about her enough to not sacrifice her
- The Sharpes can only possess blood relatives and there wasn't another "Lucille" so he's hoping Edith will do (the "vats" were his experiments to get Lucille into unrelated bodies).
- All Jossed.
The Fall of the House of Usher
Thomas is going insane over his beloved sister and Edith is a pawn in his mad plan to bring his sister back to life.- Jossed
Psycho / Inception
"Lucille" is dead and the "living" one we see is the dark manifestation of Thomas' guilt about loving her (if that's true) and his hand in her (possible) death. The "black skeleton ghost" is the real Lucille, trying to protect Edith from Thomas' madness or expose it.- Jossed
Dr. Alan McMichael will show up at Crimson Peak at one point and attempt to pull a Big Damn Heroes.
If Alan remains in love with Edith even after she marries Thomas, at some point during the film he will figure out something is wrong or uncover something about the house and hurry to Crimson Peak to help her. Whether he gets killed for his efforts or manages to escape with the woman he loves remains to be seen.- Confirmed. He and Edith escape alive but a little worse for wear.
Sir Thomas isn't as innocent as you think.
- Sure, he was 12 when his mother was killed, but it seems he said nothing to the authorities when questioned. Also, he did marry three women for their money, intentionally leading them on, while sleeping with his sister the whole time. The audience assumes that he never slept with his three other wives because he didn'the love them, but he more than likely didn't sleep with them because he knew they wouldn't be around long to wonder why their loving husband wasn't fulfilling his marital obligations. And his Anguished Declaration of Love to Edith sounds more like trying to come off as innocent to the one girl he does love.
Thomas isn't actually the Gadgeteer Genius he aspires to be
As Cushing observes, Sir Thomas is great at making toys, but the digger has already consumed all the money he had left and the fortunes of three heiresses and he still can't get it to work... and it's not really that elaborate for the period- by now the Industrial Revolution has even deep mining working well- the digger would be obsolete already.
- He also isn't very wise with it. He sticks his hand almost directly into a gear wheel that's running at full speed- it's actually quite implausible when he gets only a superficial burn from doing something so obviously stupid.
The entire film is actually a depiction of Edith's revised story.
Edith originally wrote a ghost story (or at least a story "with ghosts" where they serve as a "metaphor for the past," if we're to believe her claims), but was refused by every publisher she approached and told to write a love story instead. So that's what she did; she changed the original plot she had in mind and added romance to it. However, since Edith has no real passion and/or understanding of romance, it ended up resulting in a sloppily thrown-together tale that was full of holes and chock-full of idiocy.
Enola intended to adopt Lucille's baby
It's not stated whether the wives knew- or were able to object to- the true nature of Thomas and Lucille's relationship- it's possible all Enola knew was that when she arrived at the house Lucille was carrying an illegitimate baby. The photographs look very much like a mother posing with her own child, and she still seems to be caring for it when they're both dead. Possibly she thought that if Thomas wouldn't or couldn't consummate the marriage for some unexplained reason then Lucille's unfortunate mistake would give her the chance to be a mother.(It looks like she worked it out in the end but that doesn't make her stop loving the baby as her own.)
The Sharpe's parents abused one or both siblings sexually as well as physically
- Lucille and Thomas' incestuous relationship started at a precocious age- twelve and fourteen. It's certainly unlikely that Thomas initiated sexual contact with his sister at that age- unless an adult had already opened his mind to the issue, but even then (in fact even at the time he'd be legally regarded as unable to consent at that age)... And Lucille seems to have thought that performing sexual acts on her pre-teen brother was a valid way to show him 'love'...
- It also fits Thomas' generally emotionally stunted personality: only when he develops adult sexual and romantic feelings for Edith does he start to realise that there was something 'not right' in the 'love' that he's experienced with Lucille since he was a little boy.
Edith is pregnant.
However, the child will be born sickly because she was poisoned early in her pregnancy.
Eunice wasnt the original target of the Sharpes
Her mother was. All the other women seemed a bit older and independently wealthy, while Eunice seemslooks like a young socialute. Also, Eunice has a brother who would also have a claim to the family money.But If the mother remarries and signs over all her money to her new husband, there is nothing her children could do.