We watched:
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IT’S THE SHOW you’ve been waiting for. The Duffer Brothers are so back. Both of these things may be true, but Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is not prestige TV. If it is, our cultural definition of what constitutes prestige TV is shifting.
We are both pretty convinced that’s what’s happening, and we think that it kinda sucks.
The new Netflix’s new horror series from creator Haley Z. Boston, executive produced by the Duffer Brothers of Stranger Things fame. Eight episodes. One very cursed wedding. More blood than I was emotionally prepared for on a Saturday night.
It’s been at or near the top of the Netflix charts for a while now, which means you’re either already watching it or you’re about to be peer pressured into it by the algorithm. So let’s talk about it.
The Setup
Rachel (Camila Morrone) and Nicky (Adam DiMarco) are engaged. They’re driving to meet his family at their remote cabin compound before the wedding. Everything is fine. Everything is definitely fine.
Except Rachel keeps getting this gut feeling that…wait for it…something very bad is going to happen. And then she finds a note on her wedding invitation that says “Don’t marry him.” And then Nicky’s family turns out to be... a lot.
The Cunninghams are giving “we have secrets and none of them are good.” The mom Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) is skulking around like a Victorian ghost. Jennifer Jason Leigh was born to play women who look like they’re about to deliver terrible news at an inappropriate time. The dad Boris (Ted Levine) is doing taxidermy in the basement. The older brother Jules saw something traumatic as a child and never recovered. The younger sister Portia is... we’ll get to Portia.
The vibe is basically dark Wes Anderson—just more of an Addams Family-type of darker, not the depressing type of darker.
In short, Rachel stays because Rachel always stays. It’s kind of her whole thing.
For the first few episodes, Rachel thinks the family might be planning to sacrifice her in some kind of satanic ritual, and, TBH, that tracked. This is also something that actually hurts the show the more you watch. Our chief criticism of the show is that it did not lean into the curse/supernatural stuff nearly enough—it just doesn’t commit until the last three episodes.
The Curse (Spoilers, Obviously)
Rachel is cursed, and it’s a bad one. Her family has been carrying a curse for 200 years: if you marry someone who isn’t truly your soulmate, you bleed out and die when the sun sets on your wedding day.
Fun premise for a destination wedding at the Cunningham’s ridiculous “cabin”.
Rachel’s mother (played by our queen - Victoria Pedretti from the Haunting of Hill House franchise) died this way. Her father cut baby Rachel out of the womb while repeating “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”—which is why young Jules (Nicky’s older brother, played EXCELLENTLY by Jeff Wilbusch), who witnessed the whole thing while hiding under a bed as a kid, turned it into the “Sorry Man” legend that haunts the family.
So Rachel was born into her mother’s blood on her mother’s wedding day. Super casual stuff.
The Witness
Throughout the series there’s this creepy old man (Zlatko Burić) who keeps showing up. In bar bathrooms. At the edges of the property. Just watching.
Turns out he’s The Witness. He’s been alive for nearly 200 years. His job is to watch every wedding in the cursed bloodline and wait to see who bleeds.
His deal: 200 years ago, he was supposed to marry his soulmate. He got scared and left her at the altar. The curse passed to her family, and Death punished him with immortality, forced to witness every wedding in her bloodline forever. Rachel’s family descended from that woman. Real dick move, honestly.
Now he’s been lurking around Harkin weddings for two centuries, watching brides and grooms hemorrhage, unable to do anything but observe. And truthfully he doesn’t seem phased. He’s almost smug about it.
He also has all the information Rachel needs to survive and chooses to deliver it in cryptic fragments over several days instead of just telling her upfront. People are actively dying and this man is speaking in riddles like he’s auditioning for a fantasy novel. We found him stressful and irritating.
The Characters
Rachel is our leading lady and she’s a mess about it. She’s the kind of person who hates herself but also knows exactly who she is: confident and self-loathing in equal measure, which is a very specific type of exhausting. She’s never enough. Not for her dead mother, not for Nicky’s family, not for herself. But that’s the whole antihero arc. She spends the entire series trying to save everyone while also kind of believing she doesn’t deserve to be saved. It’s a lot to carry and Morrone carries it.
Nicky’s sister Portia should be insufferable but somehow works nearly perfectly. Baby-voiced perfectionist energy. Wedding planner from hell. Gus Birney plays her like she’s one inconvenience away from a full breakdown at all times, and she really is. Enter the scene she gets possessed by Rachels ancestor after a seance. We couldn’t make that sentence up. She also secretly had a Vegas wedding to some guy who definitely wasn’t her soulmate, which becomes relevant later. She is a lot but it works well. Hers is also a character that suffered from the show’s lack of lean-in on the supernatural elements. She’s key to it all in some ways—she literally has a picture book of spells—but it all seems too quick with her on that front.
Jules and his soon-to-be-but-maybe-not-ex-wife Nell (Carla Krome) are somehow the beating heart of the show, and it comes out of nowhere. Jules starts off as the weird black sheep older brother making unsettling jokes and giving off vague murderer energy. But, as the show goes on, you realize he’s just deeply traumatized from watching Rachel’s mom bleed out when he was seven, and he’s actually been trying to protect everyone this whole time. As these shows do best and almost too expectedly, everything is connected all at once. Jeff Wilbusch is also German, and his American accent is charmingly and clearly not American.
The twist is that he and his wife Nell, who fight constantly and seem like they’re about to announce their divorce at any moment, are actually soulmates? Loved it. The messy honest relationships are the real ones. The people who fight and stay are more soulmates than the couples performing perfection. Throughout Rachel’s ordeal, they are the only ones who believe her, believe their own eyes, and guide you through it all. It’s really good, and they are actually the heart of the show.
Nicky is weak. Intentionally so, we assume. He has no spine. No convictions. No personality outside of being Rachel’s fiancé. When it matters, he folds. More on this shortly. The show absolutely turns on him in the final act, and it’s impossible to like him.
The parents made choices we didn’t understand. Victoria is dying of a brain tumor and the family is keeping it secret from Nicky. Fine. But Boris decides to tell Nicky the night before the wedding that their entire marriage was built on lies. That his mom had an affair. That everything Nicky believed about love and commitment was a lie.
The night before. While his fiancée is potentially about to die from a blood curse.
Boris looked at the situation and thought “yes, now is the time for this conversation.” We don’t know what to tell you about Boris but the guy wasn’t helping anyone.
The Blood
There’s a lot of it.
This is a horror series, but it’s tough to ready yourself for the sheer amount of blood. Name an orifice and there’s blood streaming out of it. Eyes. Nose. Mouth. Ears. Multiple people at once. The finale looks like a crime scene in a slaughterhouse.
Haley Z. Boston said in an interview she kept telling the crew “more blood, more blood” and you can tell. It’s effective. This was...wet.
What This Show Wasted
Here’s our chief criticism: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen doesn’t lean into the curse nearly enough. The supernatural elements are genuinely good when they show up. But the show doesn’t commit until the last three episodes. You’ve got a 200-year-old blood curse, an immortal Witness lurking around the property, and characters who are READY to go full weird and the show spends six episodes slow-rolling when it should be going full throttle.
Portia is the clearest example. This woman gets possessed by Rachel’s ancestor post seance. We couldn’t make that sentence up if we tried. She has a literal picture book of spells, basically a coloring book for an unhinged woman who wants to be a shaman. She was tailor-made to be the vehicle for the supernatural elements of this show and they wasted her consistently. And the seance wasn’t enough! Never thought those would be words we'd type on Substack but here we are. Give us more! The supernatural stuff was the most riveting part of the show and they kept it in a box until the final act!
Portia led that seance. She was ready. She "obviously knows how to summon the dead" based on the supernatural book in her room—those are Nell's words, not ours. And then after she channels a dead ancestor and delivers the cryptic potion recipe, the show just... sidelines her? Rachel turns to Jules and Nell for the bone-sawing and ingredient-gathering. Which, fine, we understand, they're great. But Portia was RIGHT THERE, already neck-deep in the supernatural, and the show benched her. Let the unhinged spell-book girl cook!
Now, Jules and Nell are proof that when this show commits, it works. They’re the only ones who believe Rachel. When she needs ingredients for a potion that might turn her into Nicky’s soul mate, including a bone taken from her body, Jules picks up the knife and Nell holds her steady. Horror yes, but belief in Rachel. Just "okay, tooth or toe? Toe? Great." Get you friends who will saw off a body part for you without needing a PowerPoint presentation on why! Or maybe don't... but this scenario called for belief and they were the realest part of the show.
Why didn’t Portia share more scenes with Jules and Nell? Why was everyone so compartmentalized? These are all good characters. Let them interact. Let them be weird together. Let them lean into the curse.
This fricken show…
The Ending
Rachel says her vows. She means them. She put her faith in Nicky.
Nicky says no. At the altar. In front of everyone. Because his dad told him about his mom’s affair the night before and now he’s decided marriage is “poison.”
The thing is, he never actually believed in the curse. He thought Rachel was being dramatic. This man watched her spiral for days, heard her explain a 200-year-old blood curse, saw the immortal Witness lurking around, and still thought she was exaggerating.
Weak. Pathetic. Impressionable to extreme faults. He never understood her. He never believed her.
The curse spreads. People start bleeding. Victoria dies. Portia dies. The family drags Rachel back to the altar. Nicky finally says “I do”—but only because his family is dying around him, not because he chose her. Because he was scared.
Rachel bleeds out in the snow. Wakes up the next morning as the new immortal Witness. Tells Nicky’s seven-year-old nephew Jude to “choose wisely” when he gets married someday.
That kid is never getting married. Honestly, reasonable response.
Rachel puts on the OG Witness’s suit (why??????) and peaces out.
Tara’s Take
I found Haley Z. Boston’s take on soulmates beautiful and deeply flawed.
The show isn’t really about some otherworldly mystical connection: two souls destined to find each other across time and space, written in the stars. It’s simpler and harder than that.
It’s about certainty.
Do you believe, with complete sureness, that the person you’re with was meant for you?
That's what saves Jules and Nell. They fight constantly. They scream at each other. They were literally about to announce their divorce at this wedding. But when it mattered, Jules believed. He says he's loved her since he was young. And that belief kept him alive.
But here’s where I land, and maybe where the show’s thesis gets complicated for me:
I think the bigger act of love is knowing the person isn’t your soulmate and choosing them anyway.
We’re given choice in this world for a reason. The idea that love is something that happens to you, that destiny drops the right person in your lap and you don’t have to do anything, feels like a cop-out. Real love is a decision. It’s waking up every day and choosing the same person even when it’s hard. Even when you’re not sure. Even when the cosmic math doesn’t add up.
That feels more like love than any curse ever could.
Rachel and Nicky didn’t work because Nicky never chose her. Not really. He wanted the story of her. The meet-cute. The idea of being in love. But when things got hard, when belief actually mattered, he didn’t show up. He didn’t believe in her and when his fragmented idea of a perfect marriage was fractured, he didn’t believe in them.
That’s not love.
The show had the bones to say something real about this. Jules and Nell were right there, doing the work, showing what it looks like to fight for someone. Portia had the tools and the willingness to go full supernatural. But the show kept everyone in their separate corners until it was almost too late. When it finally committed, it was good, it just took too long to get there.
Zach’s Take
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is pretty much a good show. It strings you along, is creepy and weird, has enviable production value, and the acting is genuinely good throughout by every main character.
As with any blood-soaked supernatural Duffer Brothers production, I watched this with my 11-year-old-daughter. She’s got a good eye, and she liked the show too. But we both had the nagging feeling that the slow rolling first…six episodes…was too much of a slow roll. I get it, you’re building tension, but the supernatural stuff in the show was good.
When Rachel and Nell do their little breaking-and-entering family tree investigation, it totally centers the story. But the show gives this bit like 8 minutes or so, and it’s pretty much the most important thing anyone does.
The bigger thing, though, is what Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen signifies about the shifting standards of what we’re calling prestige TV. I would totally watch a second season of the show following Rachel’s life as The Witness—this is a cool plotline! But, I doubt we’ll get it. If we do, it will be Glass Onion-ed and done as a new story with new people.
As a standalone one-off, I just don’t think Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen makes the cut as prestige TV in the biblical sense. This isn’t even Mare of Easttown, let alone The Sopranos. Relatively speaking, however, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen probably is prestige TV, and that’s kind of a bummer for all of us.
Here’s the official explanation of the ending
The Verdict
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is artsy. It’s atmospheric. It’s got that slow-burn Mike Flanagan DNA even though the Duffer Brothers have their names on it. The performances are strong, especially Morrone, who carries the whole thing on her increasingly blood-soaked shoulders.
It’s a solid binge. The episodes fly by. And underneath all the horror and hemorrhaging, there’s something real being said about what it means to love someone. To choose them, to fight for them.
Just maybe don’t watch it right before your own wedding. Or with someone you’re already having doubts about. The creator said multiple people broke up with their partners after reading the finale script.
Fair warning.
Here’s how it’s fairing on Rotten Tomatoes:
Title: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen
Where to Watch: Netflix
Episodes: 8
Vibe: The Haunting of Hill House meets couples therapy gone wrong
Rating: 8/10 hemorrhaging family members 🩸
Tara Ruff is an Emmy-winning journalist, founder of Purpose Public Relations. She writes stories for a living — and about them for fun. Zach Peterson is Sree’s long-time newsletter partner.
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