Did CASTLE ROCK’s Finale Tease the Season 2 Theme?

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the CASTLE ROCK finale and a well-known Stephen King book. The title of the King book itself is a spoiler, but is named in the post with an additional warning before the plot information starts. It may also contain spoilers for CASTLE ROCK season 2, but it’s speculation at this point.]

“Most of us are trapped here for a reason. Everyone in this town has some sin or regret; some cage of his own making. And of story, a sad one, about how we got this way. ‘It wasn’t me, it was this place,’ that’s what we say. But that’s a story, too. It doesn’t change a thing. Maybe something turned you into a monster. Or maybe you were one all along. It doesn’t matter. You’re here now. This is who you are. This is where you live. This is where you’re from.” – Henry Deaver’s finale voice-over.

CASTLE ROCK’s fantastic first season came full circle, as The Kid/alt-Henry (Bill Skarsgård) wound up back where he started…with a new jailer.

Though The Kid tried to convince Henry Deaver (André Holland) that he was also Henry (from a different universe), it didn’t work. The doubt—and a flash of The Kid’s monstrous face—was apparently enough for Henry to bring The Kid back to the now-abandoned Shawshank and return him to the secret cell. A year later, it was revealed Henry’s now living in Ruth’s home (she passed a few months after Alan’s death), and he made a regular trek to the prison to feed The Kid.

“After a while you forget which side of the bars you’re on,” The Kid said. “That’s what Warden Lacy used to say…Look how things turned out for him.”

It was a tragic ending for Henry, who now seems to be doomed in a vicious cycle of being stuck in town to care for the never-aging The Kid, while simultaneously never being able to have a real life himself. (Molly, frankly, fared the best, as she managed to finally get out of town.) The Kid? Well, he’s trapped, but his episode-ending smirk indicated he might be okay with remaining a prisoner as long as it continued to torture Henry.

But the close of the first year’s story may have included a potential tease about the second installment of the anthology series.

In a mid-credits sequence, Jackie Torrance (Jane Levy) was hard at work on a book. “I don’t get the title: ‘Overlooked,’” her friend said. “Who’s overlooked?”

“Backstory,” Jackie explained. “You know, ancient history. It’s family history. I’m actually headed out west on a research trip next month. The best place to finish a book is where it started. I read that somewhere.”

Of course, the Overlook Hotel has an importance to both Jackie and the overarching King world: Jackie’s uncle was Jack Torrance, the mad caretaker of the Overlook…and a central figure in the 1977 novel “The Shining.”

[Spoilers for “The Shining” below.]

If the show does go that route for its second installment, there are a number of avenues they could take. The hotel had a morbid history long before the Torrance family ever arrived and Jack subsequently tried to kill his wife and son; there are any number of stories they could tell there, whether they were addressed in the book or not. Enough time has also passed that the Overlook could have been rebuilt in the years post-explosion.

The potential (buzzkill) roadblock? There is a movie adaptation of “Doctor Sleep,” a sequel to “The Shining,” in the works. However, it’s possible CASTLE ROCK season 2 will use the Overlook in the same way that the freshman year used Shawshank: a key location, but not the primary focus of the story. (There’s also the fact that the Overlook Hotel is set in the Colorado Rockies, which is very much not the town of Castle Rock…or even in the same general area, like Shawshank was.)

Prior to the finale, I had wondered if the next season would be set in another timeline/universe, with a different central mystery, but perhaps some of the same characters. I would be curious to see if they ever do that, given the differences could be pretty vast and wouldn’t require the entire season 1 cast to return. But if they end up doing an homage to “The Shining”? That would be pretty bonkers.

As of now, Hulu has only officially confirmed the show will return for a second season and not any casting/plot details.

What did you think of the CASTLE ROCK season 1 finale? And do you hope they incorporate “The Shining” into the second season?

CASTLE ROCK, Wednesdays, Hulu

RELATED:

• CASTLE ROCK: Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason on Getting the Tone Right in a Stephen King Adaptation
• CASTLE ROCK: ‘The Queen’ is the Best Hour of the Series So Far
• CASTLE ROCK Renewed by Hulu
• CASTLE ROCK: Melanie Lynskey on Molly’s Secrets
• CASTLE ROCK: Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason on the Draw of Small Town Stories, Stephen King’s Blessing
• CASTLE ROCK: Bill Skarsgård on Diving Back into the Stephen King Universe

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