In the finale of Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series, Adelaide, played by Kate Siegel, tells Margaret White that many people have “a little bit of shine” without knowing it. That word connects Carrie’s powers to the psychic abilities of Danny Torrance and Dick Hallorann in The Shining.
Flanagan said he was “so excited” to use “shine” in the show. His reasoning: if Stephen King had written Carrie after The Shining, he believes King would’ve used that term for the abilities Carrie and her mother possess. Flanagan’s adaptation gives their powers a shared vocabulary with King’s other psychic characters, even when those gifts manifest differently.
He’d already made a similar connection in Doctor Sleep. When Dick Hallorann tells Dan Torrance, “Ka is a wheel, Doc,” Flanagan brings a concept from King’s Dark Tower books into the sequel to The Shining.
The line was Flanagan’s addition, rather than dialogue from the Doctor Sleep novel.
Linked to the god-like entity Gan, ka represents a force in the Dark Tower books that’s associated with fate, destiny and the will of the universe. Its wheel represents recurring patterns, with no promise of a happy or fair outcome. For Dan, that repetition means confronting supernatural danger again, this time helping Abra as Hallorann once helped him.
Carrie makes the connection through the powers themselves. By using “shine” for Carrie and Margaret, Flanagan places their abilities within the same spectrum of psychic gifts that King explores through the shining, the TK gene and other characters across his stories.
