The Man in Black fled across the desert, and The Gunslinger followed…
Answered Prayers opens so close to the closing of Needful Things…
Randall Flagg wakes on a beach…
“The best place to end a story is where it began, I heard that once…”
I’m a Stephen King neophyte. (Thanks for that one night terrors!) but even I’ve noticed the guy’s affinity for the circular ending, and was very happy with it’s reference at the finale of Castle Rock, as well as the tease for season 2. (If season 2 is Jackie Torrance investigating the Overlook, OH BOY!) It wasn’t the ending I’ve wanted, though the fact that the show is going to be an anthology as far as we know, really prevented what I wanted. And now, with it being over, I can reveal what I was hoping for, at least obliquely.
I understand that series clearly takes place on a couple of VERY different levels of the Tower from where Roland and his Ka-tet hang around. We’re not in the version of reality where Co-Op city is in Brooklyn, ya dig? (I’m reading Wolves Of The Calla right now, Eddie is very in my head. I say Thankya, big big.) Which means we’re likely not at a place where God and the Devil used an underground revolutionary (who’s also an immortal wizard) and the oldest living American, (who is also the last American born in bondage.) to fight for humanity’s soul.
But hooo boy, when things started getting apocalyptic…I wanted us to be there.
No, but we’re on the level where four boys found a body and a rabid dog ravaged a town, and an innocent man escaped prison. Or a level where that stuff happened, I guess. Multiverses are complicated.
But what I wanted, and what could still happen, down the line, is for the Man In Black to stroll into Castle Rock, and say something cryptic and pithy, something along the lines of “well, that’s a start I guess.” (I don’t know, I’m the newbie here…)
But I liked the ending we got well enough. The reveal that The Kid was another Henry Deaver, from another world was a good one, and the ambiguity of what that means exactly for the evil at the heart of Castle Rock, Maine, whether he’s lying or not, whether it was captivity that made him what he is, and whether our Henry sold his soul to contain him or is doing the right thing, well, that’s up in the air too. But Castle Rock is safe, for now.
You want to know a place that’s never fucking safe? The Goddamned OVERLOOK HOTEL! And if that’s really what we’re getting next year, I repeat my previous Oh Boy. Not just because The Shining is great, but also because Jane Levy is great.
Anyway, Castle Rock was a wonderful summer obsession, that’s fed into a new fall obsession. (Once I get through The Dark Tower again, my local library will be cleaned out of King’s books. I’m quite excited about it.)
In the meantime, I’m waiting for news of season 2.
The Fangirl's Dilemma 