The Fall of the House of Usher is about corruption, greed, and the price of power. That “fall” in the title signifies the Ushers’ fall from power, yes, but it’s also about the individual family members falling apart before our eyes. At the beginning of Episode 6, “Goldbug,” after Victorine’s (T’Nia Miller) death, the Ushers are near collapse. The end is near. In the present day, Roderick (Bruce Greenwood) tells a completely bewildered Dupin (Carl Lumbly) his story — a story that’s being told to Roderick by his dead children. His hallucinations — or, perhaps, ghostly visitations — are becoming more vivid and more violent by the minute. Meanwhile, in the direct aftermath of Vic’s death, Tamerlane (Samantha Sloyan) is having her own hallucinations, thanks to her insomnia and a little help from Verna (Carla Gugino), and they are driving her to the brink of insanity. Sounds fun, right? Here’s what else goes down in Episode 6 of The Fall of the House of Usher.

What does Arthur Pym discover about Verna?

Upon finding Verna’s patient file among Victorine’s things, Pym (Mark Hamill) follows the address on the file, which leads him all the way to Roderick and Madeline’s (Mary McDonnell) childhood home. Yes, the same one where Roderick is telling his family’s story to Dupin. Now Pym and Madeline are positive that Verna is targeting the Usher family, and, adding an extra layer of uneasiness, she wants to be found. 

While Pym can’t find anything about a bartender or even a bar near Fortunato, into which Roderick and Madeline might have ducked that New Year’s Eve in 1979, he finds something even more curious: After running Verna’s picture through an image search online, he finds photos of her with some of the most powerful people in the world stretching all the way back to 1901. The Koch brothers, Donald Trump, Prescott Bush, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts… the list goes on. In every picture, there she is. It seems impossible and Roderick is in denial, but Madeline is not. “Remember what happened that night. Remember what she said,” she begs her brother.

Later, Madeline finds Roderick down in the basement of the Fortunato building, once again sitting in front of a brick wall. He tells her he hears bells, and she slaps him across the face. “Shut your mouth, get your s**t together,” she says. Whatever happened that night in 1979, whatever those bells mean to the Usher twins, it’s unmoored both of them.

What is Pym’s backstory?

When Pym was 25 years old, he wormed his way onto the Transglobe Expedition of ’79, an exploratory mission that circumnavigated the globe. As Roderick tells it, Pym saw the world, the good and the bad. He’s willing to talk about his adventures, but stops once he gets to the North Pole. Roderick thinks maybe he killed someone or ate someone… or both! He used to tell the Usher kids about it — he’d say Pym discovered that the Earth was hollow and up at the North Pole was an island called Ultima Thule, “the realm of beings who lived beneath us out of time and out of space.” Sounds a lot like a little troublemaker whose name begins with a V, doesn’t it? 

What gift does Roderick buy for Madeline?

Admittedly, Roderick is in the throes of a physical and mental breakdown, but the guy still seems pretty pumped about the birthday gift he’s able to procure for his sister, who, as we know, is obsessed with immortality. He uses his “pocketbook and patience” to pay off a whole bunch of people in order to have the sapphire eyes of the Pharaoh Twosret removed from their mummy and sent to his office. “I reached through time and ripped the eyes out of a goddess…” Yeah, he’s not having a mental breakdown at all.

What happens at the Goldbug launch?

It’s surely an event to remember. Tamerlane’s hallucinations and bouts of insanity are becoming more frequent — she’s still not sleeping. At the launch, which in her mind should be her big hero moment (although she’s just selling high-priced beauty subscription boxes), she starts seeing Verna dressed as her. Verna is there onstage giving Tamerlane’s welcome address, she’s out in the crowd sitting behind Tamerlane’s stepmother Juno (Ruth Codd), she’s in the photos where Tamerlane is supposed to be in the slideshow, and she’s in the sex tape Tammy sees playing on the screens. As Tamerlane reacts to all these things that no one else sees, she looks like a maniac. Poor Juno, sitting in the front row, thinks her stepdaughter is screaming at her. Tammy takes the mic stand and smashes the screens behind her and then hurls it at Verna in the crowd — it hits Juno right in the head, knocking her unconscious. 

Madeline is in attendance for the entire thing, and she knows exactly who’s responsible. She searches the crowd for Verna. In the chaos of the mic stand drama, she sees the familiar bartender across the room, waiting for her. Madeline runs toward her, and when she reaches out to grab her — poof! Verna goes up in smoke. 

How does Tamerlane Usher die?

Somehow, Tamerlane makes it home from the Goldbug launch in one piece, but Verna’s there, too. She taunts Tammy, as the second eldest Usher child swings a fire poker wherever she thinks she sees Verna. She slams the fire poker into the mirrors on the wall (why are there so many mirrors in this place?!), shattering them and sending glass everywhere, including into her own feet, hands, and face. “You’re only hurting yourself,” Verna tells her. It almost seems like Tamerlane knows this and maybe believes she deserves it. The bedroom is basically a hall of mirrors. She smashes all of the mirrors along the walls, but then sees Verna in the mirror on the ceiling. She jumps up to smash that, landing on a huge shard on the bed, while another from the ceiling lands right in her neck.

What is Frederick doing to his wife?

Nothing good, that’s what. Lenore (Kyliegh Curran) is beside herself with joy when Morella (Crystal Balint) starts speaking. When Lenore tells her dad Frederick (Henry Thomas), however, he seems oddly calm about the whole thing. He’s in no rush to call a doctor or have the specialists he promised he’d hire come in. He bowls. He bowls some more. Later, we see him alone in Morrie’s room and discover he’s been drugging her to keep her from talking. But even more horrific: He’s using a drug, courtesy of Fortunato Pharmaceuticals of course, that keeps her quiet and unable to move — all while she can still hear and see everything around her. He’s torturing her because he believes she is a liar and a cheater. She’s his hostage and no one realizes it. Yet.