Warning: Contains spoilers for Shining Vale episode 3.
In Shining Vale episode 3, Rosemary is properly introduced, and this introduction gives just enough clues to identify when she died, if not how. Shining Vale follows the writer Pat Phelps and her family as they try to make a fresh start in Connecticut. However, whether the house is haunted, or Pat is hallucinating because of the drugs she is taking, life is not set to be simple.
Rosemary (Mira Sorvino) is first seen in Shining Vale episode 1, where she appears at the window in one of Shining Vale’s jump scares, before later appearing to Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) inside the house and asking her what she is doing in “my house.” In Shining Vale episode 2, Rosemary appears again, both times in the hall closet, first in Pat’s dream, and then later when Pat goes into the closet in the waking world. In Shining Vale episode 3, Rosemary gets to have a more complete conversation with Pat after Pat breaks down a wall in the closet and discovers a basement Tiki bar where Rosemary serves her a drink.
While there are a lot of hints about who Rosemary is hidden in the show, very little is solidly known about the Shining Vale character, including when she died. Robyn Court (Sherilyn Fenn) sells the Phelps the house and says it has been empty for two years, but it is clear that Rosemary died much longer ago than that. The fashion choices made by Rosemary are linked to the late 1950s or the 1960s. Similarly, the clothes and hairstyle of the child ghost (presumably Daisy) is reminiscent of the 1960s, echoing some stylistic choices made for Wednesday Addams in the 1960s The Addams Family TV series. Most importantly, Rosemary seems at home in the Tiki Bar in the basement, implying that it was hers. Tiki aesthetic and bars, particularly in someone’s home were at their peak in the 1960s, and while they are still seen today, they are much less common. All of this together heavily suggests that Shining Vale’s Rosemary died in the 1960s.
The fact that Rosemary has been dead for 60 years does raise some questions. The house has been inhabited since then, but it is not clear why those people left. The way that the Shining Vale Ladies Auxiliary Club react to hearing that Pat bought the house suggests something terrible happened there. However, there is no evidence that there has been deaths after the originals. This does open the possibility that Rosemary and Daisy might have died much more recently, but have been tied to older traditions and aesthetics, potentially as part of the same Ladies Club. One member of the group refers to herself by her husband’s name (Mrs. Stephen Graham), an extremely outdated choice, more fitting to an old literary novel. This leaves a window for Rosemary and others to have fetishized the idea of the 1960s and certain roles for women. However, this might be a stretch, and Rosemary dying in the 1960s seems more likely.
The question of how Rosemary died is likely to remain a mystery for most of Shining Vale; however, the allusions to other works can help form a solid guess. Rosemary uses the letter tiles to tell Pat that “Daisy was the last to die” before Pat fully opens up to communication with her. This suggests a larger spree of killings in which Rosemary was involved. Owing to the large number of references and easter eggs to both Stephen King’s original The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation, the story of Rosemary’s death likely reflects that of Delbert Grady who killed his family and then took his own life. So, it is likely in Shining Vale that Rosemary died by her own hand in the 1960s after killing her family.
Shining Vale releases new episodes Sunday on Starz.
