The transformation of Olivia Foxworth is complete. Gone is the competent single woman we met in the first episode of Lifetime’s Flowers in the Attic: The Origin. That person became Malcolm Foxworth’s blushing bride and later his abused wife and a conflicted co-conspirator in his crimes. By the end of the Flowers in the Attic prequel’s finale, she’s reached her final form: the stern, cold-hearted woman who locks her grandchildren in the attic of the Foxworth mansion.
Unsurprisingly, the final episode in this chapter of the Foxworth family’s gothic melodrama sets the stage for the horrors to come in Flowers in the Attic, the V.C. Andrews novel previously adapted by Lifetime in 2014. It sheds more light on Olivia’s character and explains why she made the choices she did when her widowed daughter Corrine returned home with her children in tow.
[Warning: Spoilers ahead for Flowers in the Attic: The Origin Episode 4.]
Corrine flees Foxworth Hallin the ‘Flowers in the Attic: The Origin’ finale
The first part of the Flowers in the Attic: The Origin finale deals with the immediate fallout of Corrine’s (Hannah Dodd) affair with her uncle Christopher (Callum Kerr), who is also her half-brother.
Olivia (Jemima Rooper) reveals the truth about the young couple’s blood ties and the ugly circ*mstances surrounding Corrine’s conception. She hopes to convince them to give up their romance. But Corrine and Christopher remain undeterred and plan to run away together. Of course, Malcolm (Max Irons) won’t let his precious daughter go so easily. He first attacks Christopher, then Olivia and Corrine. Finally, he tells his child she’ll be cast out of the Foxworth family forever if she leaves.
As Olivia urges her daughter to stay, Malcolm attempts to buy off Christopher by revealing that Corinne had an illegal abortion. Neither gambit works, and Corrine and Christopher flee. They set up house in Pennsylvania and start a family. It seems they may have managed to break free of the cursed Foxworth family, at least at first.
Olivia gets her final revenge on Malcolm
With all her children now gone, Olivia devotes her energy to getting revenge on her husband. Her housekeeper and friend Nella (T’Shan Williams) has her reasons for hating Malcolm. (He raped her, and she gave birth to his child, whom he never acknowledged.) But when Nella realizes Olivia plans to sabotage his car, she asks her to reconsider. If there’s an accident, the innocent driver will be blamed and likely lynched. She also urges Olivia not to let her demons get the best of her.
Despite Nella’s advice, Olivia continues to plot against Malcolm. One morning, as Olivia sits downstairs reading a collection of Edgar Allen Poe stories, her husband falls from the second-floor landing. Olivia’s emotionless reaction to Malcolm’s plunge makes it clear that she engineered the accident, though we don’t see her sabotaging the railing.
Surprisingly, Malcolm survives his fall. But he’s left paralyzed and unable to speak. Olivia takes full advantage of her husband’s incapacity. She assumes control of his company, cooly putting the company’s stodgy board of directors in their place when they question her decision to step in as president. For Olivia, it’s a rare moment of triumph. As a young woman, she dreamed of a career. Now she finally has one, though it took an act of attempted murder to get there.
After Malcolm’s accident, Nella leaves Foxworth Hall to pursue a career as a jazz singer. (At least someone in this story gets a happy ending.) Olivia is left alone again with an angry Malcolm. He’s not one to let paralysis stand in the way of abusing his wife, and he manages to attack her in a vulnerable moment. A brutal and bloody fight ensues. Again, Olivia emerges victorious. But in the aftermath, she realizes she can no longer tell the difference between right and wrong.
In desperation, Olivia turns to her cousin John Amos (Paul Wesley). He arrives at Foxworth Hall and swiftly insinuates himself into her life. She adopts his strict religious beliefs and eventually comes to see her surviving children as wayward sinners. She even burns many of her home’s luxurious furnishings in an attempt “to remove the stain of sin from Foxworth Hall.”
Though Olivia disapproves of Corrine’s choices, she continues to keep tabs on her daughter, Christopher, and their four “perfect children.” Eventually, she learns that Christopher has died in an accident, and Corrine is now destitute. Olivia wants to reach out, and Nella, who has returned for a visit, urges her to extend the olive branch. But Amos (a racist who treats Nella with contempt) convinces her to wait until Corrine asks for help, as that will prove she’s repented of her wicked ways. That leads to a permanent break with Nella. (Frankly, Nella should have cut ties much earlier, as Olivia has never been a good friend to her.)
Meanwhile, Olivia’s relationship with Amos deepens. One night in the chapel, he attempts to kiss his cousin. She angrily rejects him, accusing him of wanting to commit the same sin he has so loudly condemned in others. She demands he leave Foxworth Hall. But Amos feels he’s earned both a place in Olivia’s home and the right to her body. He sneaks into her bedroom and attacks her. She stabs him in the neck, then buries his corpse in the yard. After helping Malcolm cover up two murders and attempting to kill her husband, Olivia finally becomes a murderer herself.
Corrine seeks shelter in the ‘Flowers in the Attic: The Origin’ finale
With John Amos dead and buried, Olivia prepares for her daughter’s return. She knows Foxworth Hall breeds evil. Yet she still invites new blood into the house, believing she can purge it of sin.
“Little did I know then that my efforts would give rise to the greatest evils Foxworth Hall had yet to see,” she says in a voiceover.
The episode’s final moments echo the beginning of Flowers in the Attic. Corrine and her children return to her childhood home in the middle of the night. Olivia leads the children into the attic, setting down some strict ground rules (no physical contact between boys and girls, absolute quiet, and regular Bible study). Corrine promises the children that they’ll only need to stay in the attic until she reconciles with her father. She says goodbye and leaves. Olivia locks the door, leaving the four Dollanganger children trapped in the attic that will be their home for the next three years.
Ultimately, Olivia listened to Amos, and Corrine did eventually come back. She returned, however, to a fundamentally changed mother. One hardened by yet more heartbreak due to Amos' advances toward her that turned violent when she rejected him. She killed him during their struggle, and his death marked her just as Mrs.
Olivia Foxworth is the strictly religious wife of Malcolm Foxworth and mother of Malcolm Jr., Joel, and Corrine Foxworth and the cruel and wicked grandmother of the Dollanganger children.
She reveals her identity to Bart and their affair to Corrine simultaneously at the Foxworth Hall Christmas party, Bart believes Cathy, and Corrine confesses. Corrine then goes insane and sets the whole place on fire, burning Foxworth Hall to the ground and killing Bart and her mother inside. Carrie commits suicide.
This book, though a prequel, actually changes the entire scandalous nature of the series. As well as being half-uncle and niece, it is revealed Chris and Corinne are half-brother and sister.
The grandmother forces Corinne to reveal to her children that the reason for her disinheritance was that Christopher was Malcolm's younger half-brother, and thus Corinne's half-uncle, and that the children are the products of incest.
In the last months of imprisonment in the attic, Cory becomes seriously ill with arsenic poisoning (sprinkled onto powdered donuts). Corrine and the Grandmother take him away and he later dies, leaving the older children devastated (especially Carrie).
Christopher Foxworth was the son of Garland and Alicia Foxworth and younger half-brother of Malcolm Neal Foxworth as well as the uncle of Corrine Foxworth whom he later married. He came to live at Foxworth Hall at 17 and sent to medical school funded by Malcolm, but was cut off after eloping with Corrine.
Tired of trying to push her feelings away, Corrine had confronted Christopher and told him that she's in love with him. He reciprocated and then the two proceeded to sleep together in Malcolm's mother's bed, the same place he raped both Olivia and Alicia. The very bed in which Corrine was conceived.
While John knows that Corinne is not Olivia's daughter and thus isn't related to him at all, Corinne doesn't know this. In Garden of Shadows, Christopher is named Christopher Garland Foxworth. In Flowers in the Attic, his name is Garland Christopher Foxworth the Fourth.
She is the mother of three children: Julian "Jory" Janus Marquet (by her marriage to Julian), Bart Scott Winslow Sheffield-Foxworth (by her stepfather Bart Winslow), and Cynthia "Cindy" Sheffield (adopted), and had one miscarriage (by Chris).
“There was nothing unholy about it,” the mother cheerfully tells her children about her marriage to her own half-uncle, which meant that the kids' own father was also their great-uncle.
After losing all of her children to tragedy and tension, Olivia develops a desire to wreak vengeance on those around her, soon becoming the most notorious and terrifying version of herself.
At some point, probably his early adult life, Garland married a beautiful woman name, Corrine. They had a son, Malcolm. At some point, Corrine fell in love with someone else and abandoned Garland and young Malcolm to run off with her lover.
Corrine (nee Foxworth) Dollanganger Winslow Jackson, is the daughter of Alicia and Malcolm Foxworth, Sr.. She is the wife of Chris Sr. and mother of Chris Jr., Cathy, and twins Cory and Carrie. She is also the second wife of Bart Winslow and third wife of John Amos Jackson.
Believing their grandmother has been poisoning them, the siblings decide to escape. Chris sneaks out to steal money before they flee, and learns their mother will marry Winslow at the mansion the next morning. Chris suggests they sneak out during the wedding in fancy clothes from the attic.
Corrine says she stashed the body in a ravine, but Cathy accuses her of hiding Cory's body in a small room off the attic that gave off a telltale odor. Chris bursts into the library, and Corrine perceives him as the ghost of his father, her first husband. She suffers a mental breakdown and sets fire to Foxworth Hall.
Corrine Dollanganger is the main antagonist of the 1987 novel, Flowers in The Attic and its film adaptation. She is a greedy, narcissistic woman who imprisons her children in her mother's attic and kills her own son and daughter so she will be the sole beneficiary of her wealthy father's estate.
The vivacious young woman remained unaware at the end of the episode that she and her brothers share only one biological parent, Malcolm. Olivia is the mother who raised Corrine, but Alicia was the woman who gave birth to her after the horror she endured from Malcolm.
Corrine Dollanganger as she imprisons her children in the attic. Corrine Dollanganger is one of the main characters of the Dollanganger series and the main antagonist of the novel Flowers in The Attic, as well as its 1987 film. She is also the main antagonist of the sequel book Petals On The Wind.
YOU CAN BLAME YOUR FAMILY FOR YOUR PROBLEMS. Cathy and Christopher struggle through much of the movie as they grow into adults with sexual desires whilst locked in an attic with no one but each other. Eventually they give in to those desires and sleep together.
He loves his mother as he loves a woman and he hates his father. As in Sophocles' play about Oedipus the king, he wants to be with his mother and he loves her more than anything. Oedipus married his mother, and killed his father which is almost what Malcolm does later on in the book as well.
He is also mentioned frequently in the Diaries series though he never appears. . At age five, Corinne Dixon abandoned him and Garland, as a result, Malcolm became extremely distrustful of beautiful women, and obsessed with their degradation.
Julie Houlerman. Julie was Malcolm's first love interest in the series. He was in love with her back in elementary school. The two of them were good friends and Julie really liked Malcolm back, only it was unknown if she liked him back romantically or just as a friend.
Summary: After losing all her children due to tragedy and tension, Olivia's newfound religious beliefs instilled in her by her cousin, and her desire to wreck vengeance on those around her, drives her to become the most notorious and terrifying version of herself.
Flowers in the Attic: The Origin has finished its run on Lifetime. The four part limited series, which followed Olivia Winfield Foxworth's life, was a roller-coaster of a ride that was filled to the brim with trauma for all of its characters.
The vivacious young woman remained unaware at the end of the episode that she and her brothers share only one biological parent, Malcolm. Olivia is the mother who raised Corrine, but Alicia was the woman who gave birth to her after the horror she endured from Malcolm.
Cathy's mother Corrine, unable to provide for her family, decides to move back in with her rich parents; however, Corrine's father long ago cut ties with her after she married her half-uncle. Corrine tells her children they must secretly live in the mansion's attic or the family won't inherit a dime.
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