“Bates Motel” Flips Iconic Movie Shower Scene; Will We See More Rihanna In Season 5 Finale?

Episode 6 of A&E’s TV adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” showed fans how the showrunners have treated perhaps the film’s most iconic scene. In the movie version, Janet Leigh as Marion Crane was murdered during a shower. Monday’s episode showed a very different Marion Crane, which was portrayed by multiple Grammy winner Rihanna.

Vanity Fair shared the details:

“In A&E’s extended riff on the famous Hitchcock film, however, things went down a little differently: instead of killing Marion, the drama series’s Norman (Freddie Highmore) kills her lover, Sam Loomis (Austin Nichols)—who, in the show, is married, unbeknownst to Marion. But don’t you worry, “Psycho” fans: Marion does still take a suspenseful shower, shown via shots and editing that evoke the original shower scene. It’s just that instead of getting murdered, she gives up on the shower itself, stepping out and growling, “Screw this shit.” (This is, after all, Rihanna.)”

Director Phil Abraham, the Emmy-winning cinematographer who is known for his epic one-shot “Daredevil” hallway fight, and several “Mad Men” episodes, explained how they played out their own version of the eponymous shower scene to The Hollywood Reporter. The episode ended with Norman bloodily ending Sam’s life in the shower, and murmuring “Oh, mother. What have I done?”

He said, “In the Hitchcock movie, you're led down the road of believing that the murderer is Norman's mother. We can't do that. Or, in a sense, we could have done that, but I think it was an important thing for the show and for the story that it's Norman-as-Norman murdering, which is a very big moment in the show, for the show. It was really the first time that he had done that. He had always done it in his blackouts as "Norma" and this time there was no blackout.”

There are four more episodes to go to officially end the series, and although we saw Rihanna’s Marion fleeing into the night with a load of money, time will tell if the showrunners decide to introduce her one more time in the show. But if there’s one person the showrunners want to focus is Norman’s relationship with his mother (Vera Farmiga) following Sam’s murder.

Showrunner Kerry Ehrin said at Comic Con over the summer, “The episodes that she’s in were very much designed to be like a collision between “Psycho” and “Bates Motel,” and, really, it’s the first and only time we’ve ever truly stepped into “Psycho.” (But) We’re gonna get to spend more time with her (Norma)  now.”