Brand New Cherry Flavor Explained- The Symbolism Of The Kittens, Zelda, The Faceless Woman, And Revenge

From the warped minds of Nick Antosca and Lenore Zion of the brilliant but underappreciated Channel Zero is the most bonkers thing Netflix has ever given us. Streaming is a better fit for her brand of insanity. It allows the freedom to make these kinds of off-the-wall stories that defy traditional horror, reality, and expected standards. Based on the first third of Todd Grimson’s novel of the same name, Netflix’s Brand New Cherry Flavor is a tale of Hollywood exploitation, ’90s excess, witchcraft, vomit kittens, and rib vaginas. It’s wild, wacky, completely unique, and a can’t miss for lovers of the surreal.

The series stars Rosa Salazar as Lisa Nova, a young filmmaker who has come to LA to make her dreams a reality. She meets Lou Burke, played by Eric Lange of Antebellum, and HBO’s Perry Mason, who is one of the Hollywood connected. He is a wealthy, successful movie producer who tricks Lisa into a bad contract and steals her movie. After she is cut out of the process, she resorts to less conventional means of revenge. Finally, Lisa meets Boro and asks for help cursing the toxic male. Catherine Keener plays Boro with such effervescent translucence it is hard to imagine anyone dumb or desperate enough to seek her guidance. By then end, the tale of betrayal, revenge, and witchcraft plays out in an explosion of some of the strangest imagery you will ever see.

The richly textured gross-out is a visceral lovechild of David Lynchian extravagance and David Cronenberg’s moist body horror. Brand New Cherry Flavor is so heavily layered with symbols you can hardly hiccup without running into one. Sometimes subtle and sometimes serving truths with a sledgehammer, these symbols are as smart as they are plentiful. Here’s what you need to know about all the symbols and metaphors in Brand New Cherry Flavor and what it all meant.

Symbols and Metaphors in Brand New Cherry Flavor

The kittens

The kittens Lisa barfs up, and somehow even grosser births symbolize the grief and guilt Lisa has. Boro feeds on the kitten’s blood and then uses the soft fur to make some unfortunate slippers. The kittens that Borro causes Lisa to manifest are living embodiments of her grief over her childhood in Brazil. Her parents either left her or emotionally abandoned her, leaving Lisa damaged, distant, and angry. Some of the kittens come from her grief over her lost childhood and estranged mother who makes an appearance later; some of them come from guilt.

Mary, the actress who starred in her short film that Lou stole, plucked her own eye out in the movie’s final scene. Lisa pushed the actress to the breaking point and exploited the tragedy of her self-mutilation for accolades. It did not help the two were high on Peyote and involved in a steamy affair. Both of them were under the influence, so Lisa is not entirely to blame for the eye, but two days later, when she regained her faculties, she did not search for Mary and instead used the footage to finish her film. Lisa has a lot to tone for, and the massive numbers of kittens prove that.

Early on, when Lisa refuses to give any more kittens to Boro, she finds herself with a rib vagina and a painful kitten birth to contend with. The source of a woman’s greatest power and vulnerability is put on full display as Lisa first gives birth through the rib vagina and then minutes later has sex with Roy through it. The fact that Boro chooses this as an alternative to vomiting is telling. Boro is displaying both his ability to control Lisa’s body and his understanding of the female psyche.

The pirate trap door and faceless woman and the shadow creature

The door in the floor that appears in Lisa’s apartment after Lisa first meets Boro and agrees to the kitten vomit trade in exchange for Lou’s curse is the secret part of Lisa that is straining to get free. The shadow creature that haunts Lisa is the same faceless woman under her bedroom. Boro tells her to ignore both as they are harmless ghosts who can’t cross over into the world of the living. She is lying, however. They are dangerous, just not to Lisa.

The faceless woman and shadow ghost, who, although are visually terrifying, are Lisa’s mother. Lisa’s mother is also the jaguar who is trying to warn Lisa that Boro is dangerous. Lisa’s half jaguar spirit blood makes her very desirable to Boro, who eats the kitten blood to consume her power. Boro agrees to help Lisa because the kittens Lisa vomits make her strong enough to body jump. Lisa is both the source of her strength and the intended vessel to jump into. Boro explains that it takes tremendous power to switch bodies when she “lightly” poisons and performs a memory extraction on her current host’s family. The current host, Jennifer, had been running from something too before meeting Boro in some other form; we just don’t know what that was.

There is a reason Boro is so quick to help Lisa. Not only does she thrive off of Lisa’s trauma kittens, but Boro is into people who are seriously f*@ked up and running from someone or something monstrous. That damage makes them very vulnerable to her machinations. Maybe Jennifer was just a bored housewife running from a life of tedium. More likely, Jennifer had something dark in her past or present that brought her to Boro. In any case, the black magic preyed on her and stole her body. In the process, Jennifer’s true self was suppressed. Lisa’s childhood, nasty temper, and guilt over Mary’s eye removal make her an ideal candidate to replace Jennifer.

What is Boro in Brand New Cherry Flavor?

Boro is a 900-year-old man who Boro calls, James Dean. He mated with a magical white jaguar. That mating gave him powers which he used to possess his first new body. James Dean was supposed to provide a sacrifice every so often in exchange for his abilities. He complies for a time, but when invaders come, he makes another deal with the jaguar. In exchange for his wife, the jaguar will grant him the ability to kill all his enemies. James/Boro is successful, but he tricks the jaguar, and she kills his wife and nearly kills Boro. Before he died, he managed to jump into the body of a young girl, and he has been jumping ever since. The spiritual animal is now actively hunting Boro.

Boro is a very powerful witch that saves Lisa many times. After Lisa is nearly beat to death by James at Lou’s request, she puts Lisa in a milky bath that heals all of her wounds. She also helps her navigate a tricky poisonous toad ingestion and a bullet wound in the lung. A nifty side effect of the process is a stronger, more vicious ability to kill would-be attackers. When James returned to finish off Lisa, she decapitates and eats part of him. That event sets off a string of other things, which eventually result in the deaths of Code, Roy, and Christine. Boro heals Lisa because she needs her body. When Lisa refuses to cooperate with Boro, Mary becomes the next host.

When Mary let Boro possess her body in exchange for revenge on Lisa, Jennifer woke up with no memory of the last ten years. Boro now lives in Mary, and Mary’s personality is effectively asleep until Boro leaves her. Mary made this decision because she also chose revenge over resolution. She blames Lisa for leaving her behind after the film shoot went disastrously wrong. She has exchanged her body for a chance to get even with Lisa.

Mary willingly chose to take Peyote on the last day of shooting to make her performance more authentic. Lisa’s initially tried to dissuade her. However, when she completely went off the rails, removed her eye, and popped it into her mouth, Lisa did not stop her and instead chose to film it and display it to become famous. Lisa was also under the influence, so she could not make sound decisions then, but after she sobered up, she could have. While it makes her a pretty repugnant person, Mary had a part in her own demise. However, she can’t see that as she is both the injured party and a woman scorned.

Revenge, Lisa, and Roger Chillingsworth

Revenge always comes at a price. The entirety of Season 1 of Brand New Cherry Flavor explores trauma, betrayal, and revenge. Similar to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, vengeance diminishes everyone who tries to get it. Hester’s husband, who came back to town after a lengthy absence, finds his wife had an affair with the local clergyman. He pretends to be Chillingworth and embarks on a lengthy and bizarre revenge plot to drive the two mad. Although he does succeed to some extent, he becomes a twisted shell of the person he once was. The hatred he feels consumes him until nothing but a monster is left. Lisa runs the risk of the same thing happening to her.

By asking Boro to curse Lou, she takes a step further down the path she has already started. Lisa thinks she is entitled to good things because her childhood sucked. It is why she is so acutely focused on her film. Someone with even the loosest moral code would understand exploiting others’ pain demands a karmic price. Mary, the jaguar, and Lou all turn towards revenge, and it ruins each of them in their own way.

Zelda

One of the more subtle symbols in Brand New Cherry Flavor is Zelda, the bandaged woman. The woman first introduced to Lisa as a plastic surgery patient who went under the knife to look like Darryl Hannah is a stand-in for every person who changes themselves in fame and acceptance. Whoever they were before LA, the series and novel argue they become something else. Zelda is every hopeless soul looking for an edge. She is so frantic to be famous she changes her entire face to become what she thinks someone wants.

Redemption may set you free in Brand New Cherry Flavor

Finally after everything Lisa saw and did she realizes that Boro is no better than Lou. The faceless woman helps her understand that Boro is a user. She chooses to choke back the kitten vomit and denies Boro her sustenance. She also begins making better choices. Instead of letting Lou suffer and die she helps him remove the parasite she tricked him into snorting earlier in the series. The extraction leaves him blind but alive.

Lastly, instead of becoming the director of her full-length movie with a new producer attached, she leaves for Brazil. At least for now she realizes Hollywood is full of people like Lou and the new producer is no better. She also begins to understand that her movie wasn’t the only thing important in her life which is what she initially tells Code who was caught up in the revenge plot and died as a result. Mary/Boro is after Lisa, so she is not safe, but hopefully, her choices and newfound wisdom can keep her two steps away from Boro.

All eight episodes of season one of Brand New Cherry Flavor are on Netflix right now. Hopefully, Netflix will greenlight season two of the sublime one-of-a-kind series.