Shining Vale: The Shining’s Room 237 Explains What Happened To Rosemary
Warning: Contains spoilers for Shining Vale episode 4.
A similarity between Rosemary’s implied death in Shining Vale and The Shining’s room 237 might give away how and why Rosemary died. Even after four episodes and some more extensive conversations between Pat and Rosemary, very little is known about the true history of the house’s previous inhabitant. However, Shining Vale contains a wealth of easter eggs and references to The Shining, both Stephen King’s original 1977 novel, and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 movie adaptation.
In Shining Vale episode 4, “So Much Blood,” Pat Phelps (Courteney Cox) is making more headway on her erotic novel with the help of Rosemary’s ghost (Mira Sorvino)—who Pat still thinks is just her muse. However, during a bathtub scene, Rosemary continually has Pat write gory death scenes, and when Pat insists on writing something different catastrophe strikes. The first time it appears that Rosemary’s straight razor makes an appearance (in a possible homage to Dexter’s Trinity Killer), in the next scene she is merely sucked beneath the water and a wealth of blood appears, and in the final version, Rosemary smashes the mirror.
In both Stephen King’s The Shining and Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation, a woman named Lorraine Massey took her own life in a bathtub. The biggest difference between the two versions is simply the room number with the book using room 217 and Kubrick’s film changing it to room 237 for production reasons. Lorraine Massey had died only two years before the setting of the book, having visited the Overlook Hotel with a young man who she was having an affair with, and she took her life in a manner similar to Rosemary’s first death in Shining Vale after she was abandoned by her lover. This suggests that both Rosemary’s death and her motive were the same and that she was likely jilted by a lover before her death.
All of this is supported by other elements of Rosemary’s portrayal in Shining Vale episode 4. While she seems at peace in the bathtub and filled with acceptance, when Pat denies her her death, she appears to display an intense sadness or depression. Earlier on in the episode, a scene that Rosemary makes Pat write in the novel depicts Rosemary flirting with the young counter boy at the local store before he has to tell her that he’s not allowed to sell her alcohol anymore. The “cutting her off” aspect of this transaction serves as a metaphor for the counter boy ending their relationship, and this explains her extremely angry response.
While it might seem like a leap to assume that a similarity between Shining Vale and Stephen King's The Shining in this aspect means that Rosemary died in the same way, the connection between the stories goes much deeper. Shining Vale has multiple strong references to The Shining in every episode, including reexaminations of similar themes, the pattern from the Overlook Hotel carpet appearing in their curtains, the scene between Pat and Rosemary at the bar, and even the opening scene of Shining Vale episode 4 which is lifted almost verbatim from Kubrick’s movie adaptation of The Shining. Perhaps most telling of the fact that The Shining holds the secret to how Rosemary died is the fact that one of her deaths is followed by a rush of blood pouring from underneath the door and accompanied by an inexplicable “ding.” This noise is clearly a reference to the iconic elevators of blood scene in Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining and cements the connection between the fate of Rosemary in Shining Vale and Lorraine Massey in room 237 in The Shining.
Shining Vale releases new episodes Sunday on Starz.