Mike Flanagan's Carrie became the biggest Stephen King hit of the year, with season 2 confirmed but not arriving soon. While fans wait, The Institute has officially returned for season 2 in 2026 on MGM+.
The Institute, based on King's 2019 novel, shares thematic DNA with Carrie. Both stories center on young people with telekinetic powers and explore how abuse shapes those abilities. Carrie marked King's literary debut and used telekinesis to examine the impact of trauma on a young adult. The Institute, published much later, expands that framework by featuring multiple children with telekinesis, telepathy, and precognition.
The core difference lies in scale and setting. Where Carrie follows a single girl, The Institute depicts several children abducted and subjected to institutional experimentation. Season 1 exhausted the original novel's story, so season 2 now expands the source material's lore. The new season's opening episodes lean into the overlap between the two stories. They show entire systems built to exploit children with superpowers and introduce older test subjects using their abilities for an organization pursuing a perceived greater good.
This expansion suggests humans with telekinetic and telepathic powers have existed far longer than Carrie White herself, potentially tracing their origins back to her.