Was Viola a sympathetic character who lost her mind due to her sickness and was right to be suspicious of her sister? Or was she a Control Freak who directly caused her own death by repeatedly abusing her sister who had only ever been loyal to her? Was Viola being paranoid towards the end of her life and building her sister up as an antagonist to cope with slowly losing her place among her loved ones, or was she accurate when she accused Perdita of trying to seduce/have an affair with Viola's husband while Viola was sick and dying?
Similarly, Perdita. Was she secretly jealous of her sister her whole life, which led to her murdering Viola and assuming her place in life? Or was she always loyal until her sister abused all the goodwill out of her?
Was Rebecca really a good person, or mostly self-interested but with a Morality Pet relationship with Flora? While she decides to save Flora from Peter's plan, she doesn't lift a finger to help Miles until it's too late, possesses Flora frequently against her will for seemingly little purpose, and aids Peter's assault and kidnapping of Dani by leading Dani to the attic so Peter-as-Miles could attack her. Rebecca prioritizes protecting Flora but otherwise doesn't do much to stop Peter or even herself from hurting others.
It's worth noting that Rebecca was even introduced with a self-interested agenda, though not a morally wrong one. While she did care for the children, especially Flora, caring for them wasn't her priority: she intended to use the au pair position to emotionally bond with the family in order to backdoor her entry into a law career with Henry's firm.
Was Rebecca always secretly planning on protecting Flora from the point Peter told her his plan, or did she have a Heel Realization when Flora called her out for the effect Rebecca and Peter are having on Flora and Miles?
Viola gets an entire episode that puts the plot on hold, devoted to her backstory and how she became the first ghost at Bly - and thus the chief antagonist of the season. She's stopped extremely easily when Dani lets her possess her and doesn't return until years later. Even then, she barely puts up a fight.
Likewise, Quint gets thwarted very easily, leaving Miles's body on his own after learning Rebecca didn't possess Flora. He's last seen apologising to Miles before vanishing.
Ass Pull: It's really quite fortunate that Henry has his sudden, unexplained intimation of disaster and both Jamie and Owen have exactly the same terrifying dream about disaster befalling because otherwise the last dramatic scenes at Bly Manor would have been sadly ill-attended and probably fatal for Flora or Dani or both. And the actual cause of their breakneck race towards who knows what is never explained.
Broken Base: The fake accents on some of the cast. It's near universally agreed that Henry Thomas and Alex Essoe's were poor attempts. Carla Gugino's is somewhere in the middle - some finding it terrible while others thought it was a decent attempt. Oliver Jackson Cohen's Scottish is split with some thinking it just as bad as everyone else's, while others thinking it quite convincing.
It's not difficult to figure out that the Storyteller is Jamie long before the final episode confirms it. It's obvious the Storyteller is someone who was around Bly Manor a lot or was at least close to someone who was, the characters have the same accent (well, most of the time in Carla Gugino's case) and it's not unreasonable to assume that the Storyteller could be Jamie twenty years older, given the age of the two actors playing the same character twenty years apart.
Many viewers managed to guess that Hannah is a ghost prior to The Reveal, as it's quite clearly telegraphed to those familiar with the genre. However, her being dead isn't even half the story, and by the time it's revealed, most viewers probably will not have guessed that 1) she doesn't know she's dead, and is essentially Unstuck in Time, drifting between the present and her memories - real and imagined - of the past, and 2) she isn't one of the Manor's long-serving ghosts, but had died just seconds before meeting Dani and first appearing on screen.
Dani shows many signs of having some kind of anxiety disorder, but it's never made explicit.
Hannah occasionally spaces out and doesn't register her surroundings in a manner similar to disassociation, and her frequent refusal of food may speak to some sort of eating disorder. Except these are all symptoms of her true nature as a ghost.
Die for Our Ship: To be fair, Eddie dies in universe, but he is very disliked. Especially by Dani/Jamie shippers.
Director Displacement: Downplayed; while he is the show's creator, Mike Flanagan is not the sole writer-director for the series as he was on Hill House, only handling those duties for the first episode.
Ending Fatigue: In the final episode, the story keeps going for another half an hour after the climax. While it sums up what happened to the main characters and reveals who the Storyteller is, a lot of it ends up feeling long-winded, bordering on plot fluff, and could've been condensed without affecting the overarching story.
Epileptic Trees: Carla Gugino's accent occasionally veers from sounding like RP to having a hint of Yorkshire. Some have theorized it's that way on purpose to conceal the twist that she's really Jamie. With her more obviously feminine appearance, there is the possibility she could be Dani, and her accent faded over the years. Further supported by The Reveal that the bride is Flora all grown up, and her accent has changed completely.
Fanon Discontinuity: Even for those able to accept Bly Manor for what it is (a Gothic Romance, not a straight up horror story), some like to pretend the show wrapped up thirty minutes before it did, with Viola's ghost mollified, the dead set free, and the survivors able to Earn Their Happy Endings, since the story seems to wrap up perfectly only to still meander for another thirty minutes with nothing to show for it except Dani dying by inches over thirteen years until she finally became the new Lady of the Lake, and Jamie deciding Her Heart Will Go On.
Dani and Jamie's entire relationship, right up until the last frame, where it's shown that Dani is still with Jamie.
Rebecca unable to save her herself, due to her being a ghost, promises Flora, as she is helplessly being carried by Viola to the lake, that she will possess her, and go through her death for her, so the little girl won't feel the pain and horror of drowning.
Rebecca: (tearfully following closely behind Flora and the Lady in the Lake) It's alright sweetheart. You won't feel it, I'll feel it for you. I'll just tuck you away like before. You let me handle this part love, just let me in.
Some don't care for the plot and tune in for the romance between Dani and Jamie.
Others tune in just for the performance from Victoria Pedretti. While she was in a supporting role in Hill House, she's the unambiguous lead here, and got rave reviews. Many even find her work here to be superior to how it was in Hill House.
LGBT Fanbase: While The Haunting of Hill House (2018) had a lesbian lead character (with a minor romantic sub-plot), Theo's presence in that series didn't draw nearly as much attention as the romance between Dani and Jamie in Bly Manor, who have become very popular among LGBT+ viewers, especially WLW. Some viewers who initially skipped Hill House were even drawn into giving the franchise a go by this series because of its more prominent focus on a same-sex romantic relationship. The show has even managed to avoid catching any particular flack for its use of the Bury Your Gays trope in the end—presumably because Dani's death is actually quite well-handled and justified in context.
Henry Thomas' overly plummy, wobbly RP and Carla Gugino’s grating attempt at a Yorkshire accent quickly got many complaints from real Brits, who cringed every time they got a line. And then there's Alex Essoe's attempt, which almost sounds like a parody of bad English accents. Oliver Jackson-Cohen's comically broad attempt at a Scottish accent has received a similar response from Scots.
Episode 5 appears to be trying to recreate the same shocking reveal from Hill House that Nell herself was the Bent Neck Lady with revealing Hannah Grose to be Dead All Along. But the episode's disjointed structure - which is also the first time it's really used in the series - kills some of the power by making it a little difficult to figure out what's happened.
The penultimate episode, which should have been the beginnings of an exciting climax to the story, is set in the 1600s and shot in black and white. Not only do the casts’ accents slip all over the place, but the period-setting is badly costumed (suggesting renaissance-fair rentals), and the black and white filter looks cheap and televisual, which diminishes any sense of genuine horror.
The way Henry screams when he sees The Doppelganger for the first time is so over-the-top that it's comical more than anything else.
The "It's you, it's me, it's us" reminded some people too much of the lyric "It's you! it's me! And there's dancing!" line from the song You! Me! Dancing! by British pop band Los Campesinos! to take seriously.
Narm Charm: While leading Hannah to the well where she died, Peter compares her not fully realizing that she's dead to Wile E. Coyote, running off a cliff and only falling when he looked down. After Hannah looks down the well and sees her own corpse, Peter says Roadrunner's iconic "Meep meep." The cold mockery is as hilarious as it is gutwrenching.
Most of the North American actors' attempts at the English accent leave a lot to be desired, and it's especially glaring in comparison to many actual British actors. It makes one wonder why they didn't just cast actual Brits for those roles and find other ones for the returning Hill House cast members.
A particular standout is Alex Essoe as Charlotte. Not just the plummy English accent that never sounds convincing; at only her mid-twenties, she seems far too young to play such a character. Charlotte's motherly attitude towards Hannah and the other characters' attitudes about her act as if she's at least a decade older. Her on screen husband is a good twenty years older than her!
Romantic Plot Tumor: The focus on Henry and Charlotte's affair bloats the episode that focuses on it and is full of repetitive scenes that don't tell the viewer anything new. Tellingly, The Reveal that Henry is Flora's father comes in a scene that the former isn't even in. The lack of chemistry between them doesn't help.
Slow-Paced Beginning: A common complaint about this series is that it's not until around the halfway point that the story begins to really pick up.
One of the most recurring criticisms of this series is the emphasis on romantic drama over horror (it's even stated in-universe that it's more a love story than a ghost story). While Hill House had a family drama at its center, it still had plenty of focus on suspense and terror; several fans of the first series were subsequently disappointed that the horror had been toned-down this time around.
The Turn of the Screw became especially popular for its Ambiguous Situation, where it can be read as either a conventional ghost story or the delusions of an Unreliable Narrator who's going dangerously insane. The show seems to tease this ambiguous reading in the first episode by making it unclear whether Dani's traumatic visions are ghosts or hallucinations brought on by trauma. They remain ambiguous through to the end, but the rest of the story becomes objectively a ghost story.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Lady in the Lake, a ghost from the 17th century who's been unknowingly killing people and turning them into ghosts simply because they get in her way, and is the source of the series' conflict. She gets one episode detailing her backstory, hinting that she's going to factor into the climax in some way. But as noted above, she's a complete Anti-Climax Boss who offers very little in the way of a satisfying resolution.
Tough Act to Follow: Fans have noted that not only did The Haunting of Hill House (2018) set the bar so high, but that series' source material's most recent notable adaptation, The Haunting (1999) was seen as lacklustre - whereas The Innocents is still the most remembered adaptation of The Turn of the Screw and is a near Sacred Cow to fans (it's even Mike Flanagan's favourite adaptation). So, this series had to both follow a beloved first season and a beloved adaptation. (Though the generally atrocious reception to another Screw adaptation, The Turning, earlier in the year did give Bly Manor an easy favorable comparison point, much as the 1999 Haunting somewhat insulated Hill House from comparisons to The Haunting (1963).)
Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Peter Quint is set up as an antagonist and he does do some legitimately awful things in the story - he's given a backstory that makes him seem far more sympathetic than intended. He was molested as a child by his own father and is estranged from his mother for allowing it to happen, and it's revealed that the money he stole from Henry was blackmail from his abusers. His Freudian Excuse of the British class system making career progression that more difficult is also quite valid. He was also killed by Viola's ghost purely by accident, so he didn't leave Rebecca. In fact, while their relationship had plenty of problems, when Rebecca called out his jealousy and said to never speak to her like that again, he seemed to actually respond and make an effort to be better. As this dynamic isn't explored further and the two are Out of Focus in the last two episodes, it's unclear whether he's supposed to be seen as an Anti-Villain or not. By contrast, Viola killed more people than him and caused centuries of suffering, and the narrative treats her as a Tragic Monster.
Dani. When she was young her father died and her mother "wasn't there anymore", implying neglect. She got engaged to her Childhood Friend Edmund but she eventually confessed to him she's attracted to women and couldn't initially tell him because she does love him as a friend/brother. She then watched Edmund be struck down by a truck and is consumed with guilt, constantly seeing his ghost in mirrors. After her terrifying ordeal at Bly Manor, she breaks the curse by allowing the Lady in the Lake to possess her and finds happiness with Jamie, but after several years together she realizes the ghost is starting to take her over and after a nightmare where she kills Jamie, she apparently takes her own life before the curse consumes her to protect her loved ones.
Jamie. She had a rough start in life, being raised by a teenage mother while father spent most of his time working in the coal mines. Her mother began having affairs, which everyone in town knew about and Jamie was bullied for having a "whore" for a mother. Her mother eventually ran off and Jamie was left to care for her younger siblings; on one occasion she accidentally let a pot boil over which apparently burned her and her brother, resulting in them being taken into foster care. Jamie was separated from her siblings, shuffled from one unloving foster home to the next and did time in juvenile hall. All of this led to her giving up on being close to people because they would only hurt and disappoint her. She eventually does find love with Dani, but after several happy years together, Dani leaves to protect her from the curse that's slowly consuming her. Although Jamie came to terms with it, it's revealed that decades later she still hopes for a glimpse of Dani in every reflection.
Hannah Grose. Her husband cheated and left her for another woman. Her employers, who treated her more like a friend than just a servant, died. She started to fall in love with Owen, but her life was cut short when Quint, possessing Miles, shoved her into a dry well to her death. Her ghost remains on the grounds, in denial over her death and carrying on as she always has save for her occasionally getting lost in her memories. She's also well aware that Miles and Flora, whom she loves like her own children, are in danger but she doesn't know how to help them.
Rebecca Jessel. Her father always made her feel lesser for being a girl, she struggled to fulfill her dream of being a barrister, she was in an abusive relationship with Peter but was in denial, then he abandoned her after implicating her in his thefts, leading her to drown herself. Then it's revealed that Rebecca didn't commit suicide; Peter tricked her into letting him possess her and drowned her so she'd never leave him. When she finally remembers this, she refuses to go ahead with Peter's plan to possess Flora, even though she knows she'll eventually lose all her memories and become a shell of herself, trapped forever at Bly Manor.
Perdita always lived in the shadow of her beautiful and popular older sister, at first not caring and being happy to love Viola like anyone else. She even raised her niece and nursed her sister in tuberculosis, fully expecting her to die any day. Her thanks is to be accused of trying to steal Viola's husband, repeatedly slapped and taunted for years! Sure she smothers her sister and eventually admits to herself it was straight-up revenge, but then she only gets married as a Replacement Goldfish to Arthur. It's also said that Isabel refuses to see her as a mother, despite the years Perdita spent taking care of her. She must also see her beloved home fall into disrepair because of Arthur's mismanagement, and he won't even use Viola's finery to save them because of his promise to her - further underlining that her being able to eat or live still comes second to Viola's wishes. Then when she decides to take matters into her own hands, her sister's ghost kills her.
