One of the best Netflix original series made thus far (the third best, according to us) is surely The Haunting of Hill House, and fans are mighty curious to see how the follow-up season The Haunting of Bly Manor differs from that brilliant first season. Released in 2018, Hill House adapted Shirley Jackson’s iconic horror novel of the same name, but also expanded upon it in exciting and emotional ways while bringing in other Shirley Jackson stories to fill out 10 episodes’ worth of story. Doctor Sleep and Oculus filmmaker Mike Flanagan served as showrunner and directed every episode, resulting in a truly brilliant piece of horror storytelling.

It was revealed when Hill House ended that the specific story of the Crain family was over, but Netflix then announced that Flanagan was returning to spearhead a second season with new characters and a new story – this time based on the work of Henry James. The result is The Haunting of Bly Manor, which is primarily based on The Turn of the Screw and follows a young governess (Victoria Pedretti) in the 1980s who is hired by a man (Henry Thomas) to look after his niece and nephew at the massive (and haunting) estate known as Bly Manor.

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Image via Netflix

In a new video released by Netflix (which debuted on EW), Flanagan elaborated on Bly Manor and what makes this season different, dubbing this series “The Haunting anthology”:

The Haunting of Bly Manor is the second installment in The Haunting anthology. We started with Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, and this follow-up season is a standalone adaptation based on the ghost stories of Henry James. Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is one of the most influential ghost stories ever written. What struck me as a really wonderful opportunity for this season was Henry James wrote other ghost stories as well, most of which have never been adaptation. The opportunity to go further into Henry James’ library, to look at some of his other ghost stories, to try to find a way to bring them all together, it was a challenge that we really couldn’t say no to.”

But if The Haunting of Hill House was a family grief drama, The Haunting of Bly Manor is a Gothic romance, Flanagan reveals:

“What sets Bly Manor apart is that at its heart it’s a love story. It’s a Gothic romance story. When you look at the word ‘romance’ it conjures up images in your mind. Gothic romance means something very, very different, steeped in mystery and doom, incredibly passionate emotions that swung into the darkness of human nature.”

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Image via Netflix

The filmmaker – who is currently shooting the Netflix original horror series Midnight Mass – further teased that the ghosts in Bly Manor will be used as conduits to explore human emotion:

“Similar to The Haunting of Hill House, I really wanted to play more with ghosts as an expression of emotional wounds that we do carry around. How the past and present can echo each other, that moments don’t fall like dominoes they fall like confetti. The Haunting of Hill House is about a very tight family and Bly Manor is about strangers. A family that is created. All the people who inhabit Bly Manor come from completely different backgrounds and get to know each other through friendship, tension, conflict, and love.”

The tremendous ensemble cast of Bly Manor also includes Oliver Jackson-Cohen, T’Nia Miller, Rahul Kohli, Amelia Eve, Tahirah Sharif, Amelie Smith, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, and Kate Siegel, with Pedretti taking the lead role this time around.

And if you thought Hill House was emotionally devastating, just wait until you see what Flanagan does with a Gothic romance:

“If there’s one thing that I hope fans take away from this season of Bly Manor, I think it’s that wonderful connection between a great love story and a great ghost story. The two are really the same thing, how each of us when we fall in love is kind of giving birth to a new ghost, something that’s gonna follow us for the rest of our lives. I hope that that intermingling of a ghost story and a love story is really impactful for people, and I think by the end of this season the line between the two is pretty much obliterated entirely.”

Well that sounds heartbreaking. Another key difference  between Hill House and Bly Manor is that Flanagan did not direct every episode of Bly Manor, so we’ll see some variety behind the camera this time around.

Check out the full video below, and hold on to your butts. The Haunting of Bly Manor premieres on Netflix on October 9th.