Abhiroop Das
Created by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason, ‘Castle Rock‘ reimagines the expansive world of Stephen King‘s stories, with a tale set in the eponymous town he constructed for many of his novels. In the premiere season of this horror thriller series, a child’s 11-day disappearance coincides with the discovery of a seemingly ageless entity, who is kept behind bars for almost the next three decades. In the present, however, a series of inexplicable events forces both these incidents back into life. The child, Henry Deaver, is now a death-row lawyer, and his return to the town opens a Pandora’s Box of untold secrets that are as mystical as they are harrowing. Fittingly, the season ends with questions that remain unanswered, with the gaps between contradictory narratives providing a glimpse into the mysteries the town truly holds. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Castle Rock Season 1 Plot Recap
The inaugural season of ‘Castle Rock’ opens with the eponymous town’s central lake in 1991, where Sheriff Alan Pangborn chances upon Henry Deaver, a child who has been missing for eleven days. When Henry returns home, however, he learns that his adoptive father, Matthew, seemingly died due to an accident during the search. Twenty-seven years later, Dale Lacy, the warden of Shawshank State Penitentiary, takes his own life on the day of his retirement. The new warden, Theresa Porter, hopes to reopen the prison’s abandoned cell blocks to allow more room for inmates, but is shocked to discover an unaccounted-for prisoner locked inside a cage. This person, referred to as simply The Kid, appears to be Lacy’s decades-long secret captive, and is promptly released. Even more surprisingly, The Kid calls for Henry, who is now a full-fledged lawyer. As Henry is whisked back into town, his mysterious hearing issues return, triggering a chain of other mysterious events.
As Henry reunites with his adoptive mother, Ruth, and his childhood friend, Molly, he learns more about Lacy’s mysterious prisoner. He comes to know that it was Molly who killed his father 27 years ago, while he was recovering from his injuries. Elsewhere, in a letter left behind by the former warden, Alan learns that The Kid was discovered in 1991, on the same day that Henry was rescued. Lacy believed that God tasked him to lock away The Kid, whom He considered to be the devil in the form of a human. While this is enough to return The Kid to the prison, the stay is short-lived. One of the guards, Zalewski, has a hallucinatory episode and ends up killing many fellow officers before being shot dead. The Kid is released before the scandal can get any bigger, following which he escapes a psychiatric facility to make his way to Ruth.
There turns out to be a supernatural element to Ruth’s dementia and her ins and outs through realities, and that makes The Kid’s intrusion into her life all the more puzzling. While trying to escape from The Kid, she ends up shooting Alan instead, accidentally killing him. Meanwhile, Henry enters Lacy’s house to seek answers, only to learn that The Kid is truly ageless and likely not human. Just then, he is ambushed by a serial killer couple, Gordon and Lilith, and is ultimately rescued by Jackie Torrance, who is Molly’s colleague and the niece of Jack Torrance, from ‘The Shining.’ Elsewhere, The Kid escapes the scene and is suspected of murder, but ultimately runs into Molly and at last reveals his origin story. The Kid’s real name is seemingly Henry Deaver, and he claims to be from an alternate reality where Ruth and Matthew never lost their first child, and thus never adopted another.
In 1991, the two timelines seemingly converged due to a rupture in spacetime, known as Schisma. As a result, the 11-year-old Henry from this universe wandered into the other reality and was found by a different Matthew. Echoing Lacy’s actions in this universe, the other Matthew held Henry captive for 27 years, until he was discovered and freed in 2018 by this universe’s Henry, AKA The Kid. As the two returned to Castle Lake to restore the timelines, The Kid got stuck in this world and was discovered by Lacy, thus setting things in motion. While the puzzles gradually begin to fall in place, the police arrest both The Kid and Henry due to suspicions regarding the recent string of deaths. Although Henry learns of the seeming truth about The Kid, things take a horrific turn when the latter pulls the entire police station into a state of psychosis, with all detainees and officers killing each other. The Kid, unharmed, walks free with Henry, ushering things to a climax.
Castle Rock Season 1 Ending: Why is The Kid Smiling? Did he Lie About His Past?
Season 1 of ‘Castle Rock’ ends with Henry holding The Kid prisoner at the now-abandoned Shawshank prison, repeating the cycle started by Dale Lacy 27 years ago. While The Kid initially has the upper hand in the dynamic, wherein he holds Henry at gunpoint and steers him all the way back to the forest, things take a turn when he is distracted by a helicopter overhead. Seizing the opportunity, Henry pounces on the ageless entity, snatching the gun away and preparing to shoot. With the cards stacked against him, The Kid seemingly withers away as his face begins aging rapidly. If Kid really is Matthew and Ruth’s son, as he claims, his real age is likely to be around 50, which does not align with the aged countenance we see. Thus, it is possible that The Kid may be lying about his origins, and perhaps much more. However, the scene cuts before Henry can make his move, and from there, we jump one year ahead, with everything seemingly normal.
The real twist in the show’s ending comes after we go through the vignettes of Henry’s new life in Castle Rock, as the town’s darkest corners, crystallized as Shawshank prison, still hides its own share of secrets. In many ways, the exchange between The Kid and Henry mirrors the opening moments of the finale, which feature what is most likely Lacy’s final conversation with The Kid. Both scenes begin with the Kid being offered a meal, which in Lacy’s case is an apple and a loaf of bread, contrasting with Henry’s burger and fries. Nonetheless, what binds the two instances across time and space is their symbolic undertones. Although Henry is determined to get to the bottom of the truth, his dehumanization of The Kid speaks to the cruelty he is capable of. Despite starting and ending the show as a thriving lawyer, he is now merely a shell of his former self, and even The Kid acknowledges that by suggesting that Henry is in a psychological prison of his own making.
Although season 1 brings a tragic conclusion to The Kid’s arc, his final expression reframes everything we know and believe about this character. When Henry is out of sight, The Kid merely smiles at his predicament, with a tinge of malice in his expression. As the parting shot of the episode, the smile is layered with several potential meanings, and each one repaints the story in its own way. One possible interpretation for the smile is that of resignation, as The Kid is right back where he was at the start of the season, and can’t help but be amused by the Sisyphean nature of his arc. It is also possible that he actively craves revenge on Henry and already has a plan in mind to escape his imprisonment. Still, as the entire narrative about him being a demon is never completely ruled out, the chance of him truly being a supernaturally evil creature in line with Pennywise cannot be ruled out, especially due to their matching 27-year cycles of activity.
Why Does Henry Spare The Kid?
Although Henry seems determined to kill The Kid and put an end to the story, his decision to capture and imprison the man is rooted in uncertainty. Towards the start of the episode, a flashback to a jury trial shows Henry at his professional best. Speaking to the jury about the concept of reasonable doubt, he exclaims that he needs a person to be irrefutably guilty before he can give them the death penalty. To that end, The Kid puts Henry’s moral dilemma into physical form, as, despite everything that has gone wrong, Henry has no way to confirm that his prisoner is evil. Although he is a first-hand witness to the mass slaughter at the police station, none of it can be pinned down on The Kid. It is equally possible that the violent episodes in town are a result of the Schisma, and not any one individual. The same applies to several other incidents that are attributed to The Kid and his abnormal abilities, despite there being no proof of either.
Notably, Henry’s reason for not killing The Kid also spiritually aligns with Lacy’s moral quandaries, as even he has a scene of nearly killing his captive but ultimately spares his life. While both Lacy and Henry are unsure of The Kid’s nature, the very fact that they put him behind bars for years speaks to their abusive nature. Them not pulling the trigger as such has less to do with The Kid’s true identity and more with his two captors not wishing to taint their hands, despite already orchestrating an inhumane system. The Kid’s seeming agelessness also complicates things further, as it likely only added to Lacy’s belief that he was evil. However, for Henry, who now remembers flashes of his time in the alternate reality, The Kid’s supernatural characteristics should be less surprising. In light of this, his refusal to let The Kid out reflects a particularly grim turn in his character arc.
The Kid’s greatest fear throughout the entire season has been that he might not be able to return home before the Schismas run out. As such, with the story jumping ahead an entire year, it is possible that his window might be gone forever. Still, the fact that the plot beat is not brought up again in the final moments, coupled with The Kid’s ominous final expression, indicates the town still has a lot of interdimensional shenanigans left in the tank, and The Kid’s opportunity to escape and achieve his true goals, whatever they may be, is right around the corner.
Why Did Henry Push His Father?
While The Kid draws Henry back to the forest where he got lost nearly three decades ago, flashes of memories begin to come back. While much of it is hazy, the clearest and most game-changing memory that he unearths is that of his father’s involvement on that fateful day. Although he was initially told that his father had an accident while looking for him, the reality turns out to be something else. On the day of his disappearance, Henry was with his father, on one of their excursions chasing the sound of Schisma. Here, Matthew revealed that he knew about Ruth’s affair and was determined to put a stop to it by killing her. Alarmed by the thought, Henry ran from the scene before ultimately encountering a steep cliff. Determined to stop his father from killing his mother, Henry devised a plan on the spot, retracing his steps on the snow to trick his father into thinking that he jumped. Later, when Matthew made it to the cliff, Henry pushed him from behind.
Henry pushing his father off the cliff recontextualizes how he ended up with life-threatening injuries, before ultimately being killed by Molly. Henry, on the other hand, was seemingly transported to The Kid’s alternate reality, where he was spotted by that universe’s Matthew Deaver, captured, and then imprisoned. This adds a tragic turn to the father-son dynamic, as while the former’s search for Schisma does ultimately get the story going, it also shines a light on his toxic and destructive nature across realities. This also comments on how limited and fickle the human understanding of Schismas is, as while in one universe, Matthew considers his son to be chosen by God, in the other, he considers Henry to be a demonic child. It is possible that Henry’s bleeding coffin earlier in the season is the result of a confluence of two timelines, with Henry’s killing intent rippling through the timelines and their associated stories.
Is Ruth Dead? What Happens to Molly and Jackie?
Following the one-year timeskip, we see Henry acclimatize to life in the quaint town of Castle Rock, except for a few major changes. His visit to the cemetery confirms that Ruth died on February 13, 2019, likely due to natural causes. Her grave sits right alongside Alan Pangborn’s, providing a fitting conclusion to their love story. Notably, her death is first anticipated by Henry and Wendell playing a game of chess using the special pieces that Ruth used during her time jumps. The fact that they have the complete set to themselves is one of the subtler ways that the show communicates her passing and how that has affected the family. Although Henry is slowly on his path to emotional and psychological recovery, his literal and figurative dark secrets prove that he is still a participant in the larger cycle that Ruth escaped in the end.
While Henry chooses to settle in Castle Rock, Molly’s arc concludes in the exact opposite direction, with her choosing to leave the town behind and settle in Florida with her grandmother. This comes after Henry’s advice to just keep driving, which is now supplemented by his voice-over, saying that some, like Molly, leave Castle Rock just to forget their trauma. However, this seems easier said than done for her, as it is apparent that she is yet to recover from her psychological wounds. For Jackie, on the other hand, things appear to be headed in a good direction.
In the show’s post-credits scene, we learn that she has finished writing her novel, titled ‘Overlooked.’ While her story is about her experience with the killer couple that took over Lacy’s house, the book’s name ominously references the Overlook Hotel from ‘The Shining,’ where her uncle, Jack Torrance, wreaked havoc long ago. With that, she prepares to do more research into her family, potentially entering the hotel itself. As such, the story is bound to lean into an even deeper set of mysteries in this alternate rendition of writer Stephen King’s universe.
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