WithCastle Rock, Stephen King is opening up his toy box so others can play with his creations.
Since this is the first episode, its important to lay down those ground rules.
Were not getting a strict Stephen King adaptation here.
Credit: Patrick Harbron/Hulu
What creators Sam Shaw and Dusty Thomason are doing (with help from executive producerJ.J.
Abrams) is crafting a new story that exists within the margins of Kings world.
All right, take my hand.
Were crossing the town line.Castle Rockawaits.
And its better not to go alone.
Its 1991 which may be the first little Stephen King Easter egg.
On the radio, there is talk of a missing boy, Henry Deaver.
The man gets out and walks along a path, plunging a stick into the snowbanks.
Eventually, it sticks in something.
He uncovers the carcass of a deer.
Then he keeps going.
The mans jacket says: Pangborn.
This would be Alan Pangbord, sheriff of Castle Rock and a lead character inNeedful ThingsandThe Dark Half.
Suddenly, in the center of the ice, a young boy appears.
Sheriff Pangborn yells, darting toward him.
Its factories look run down.
Its lawns are brown.
It looks … scarred.
A man is making breakfast for his blind wife.
ItsLoststar Terry OQuinn as Dale Lacey, andSix Feet Underactress Frances Conroy as his missus Martha.
), and Martha says she wishes he had taken that buyout years before.
Last day, Mr. Lacey.
As he drives, we hear the libretto Che Soave Zeffiretto from Mozarts operaThe Marriage of Figaro.
(Its the same song Andy Dufresneplays over the prison loudspeakersinThe Shawshank Redemption.)
Warden Lacey has not gone to the prison.
(Its not a St. Bernard, so I dont think this is aCujoshout-out.)
The warden floors it.
Then we do travel to Shawshank, accompanying the new Warden Porter (Ann Cusack).
A guard offers a bit of trivia.
Shawshank has had four wardens die while still employed by the prison.
(Anyway, in the movie,the bullet went through the window.)
If this were my office, Id kill myself too, Porter says.
We learn that Laceys head was never found.
Expect that to be significant as this story unfolds.
More detainees means more money from the state of Maine.
Right here is where they stacked the bodies, one of the guards says.
The prisoner doesnt speak, and seems timid and unaware of the world.
He doesnt seem to know what a shower is.
Theres no record of who the man is.
He doesnt seem to have any charges against him.
The guards theorize he was some kind of sex slave for the warden.
If he wasnt a psychopath before, he sure is now, one of them says.
Until they figure out who he is, they intend to keep him in the prison.
Finally, the mystery figure says a name, but its not his own: Henry Matthew Deaver.
The woman hes representing, Leanne, is about to be executed for killing her husband, Richard Chambers.
Henry loses the appeal.
As Leanne eats her last meal, she shares her first memory and asks him about his own.
Despite being missing for 11 days, Henry had no frostbite.
You been inside somewhere?
the sheriff asked him.
Henry watches Leannes execution, but as hes leaving the prison theres a panic among the technicians.
Shes still alive, thrashing on the gurney.
He cant save her.
Leanne dies badly, echoing the botched execution in KingsThe Green Mile.
The prison staff even know Deaver is a lawyer in Texas.
But they hesitate to call him.
They found a kid in a cage.
No one else is going to help him.
Intrigued, and seeking an escape, Henry decides to come home again.
When she sees Henry Deaver getting off a bus, she looks stricken, breathing hard.
Theres a white church with a paved lot that upsets him.
He walks inside and lingers on a photo of a white man: Rev.
M. Deaver, who was born in 1952 and died in 1991.
We flash back to young Henrys rescue by Alan Pangborn.
Son, do you know what happened to your father?
The boy is non responsive.
In his hands, he holds a crudely carved white figure.
he asks, and finds Ruth Deaver in the backyard in a state of apparent confusion.
Shes rambling about her white oak trees.
The woman doesnt seem surprised to see her son.
Your mother and I enjoy one anothers companionship, he says.
And my fathers shirts, you enjoy those, too?
I dont think hes going to miss it, the old man says.
Henry wants to know where his father is.
That paved piece of land beside the church was a cemetery.
Pangborn tells him the church had to sell that land and move the bodies to another burial ground.
Nobody thought to pick up the phone and call me?
Did she know what she was signing…?
You signed it for her.
And I deposited the distress settlement for her, too, Pangborn says.
Back at Shawshank, Skarsgards mystery man watches a mouse approach a trap and die.
Henry arrives at the visitors gate, asking about a client whose name he doesnt know.
How did you know I work capital cases?
I didnt say I worked capital.
We dont have the gallows here, but we do have cable news, she says.
I was sorry to hear about your client.
As Henry is leaving, he is spotted by Zalewski, who crosses his arms and says nothing.
The screens begin to flicker, and he notices the mystery man is missing from his cell.
He sees him wandering through the hallway as gates open for him.
Lying throughout the halls are murdered correctional guards, their bodies lying in sprays of blood.
Zalewski sounds the alarm.
Henry returns to his childhood bedroom and finds a newspaper about Warden Laceys suicide.
You know where he did it?
Castle Lake, near the bluff.
Right where I found you.
Its not clear what this means, or why she has to limit her time with these objects.
Henry drives in the dark to the site of the previous wardens suicide.
But its just a vision, his imagination.
Still, he feels an undeniable presence here.
When they find you, ask for Henry Deaver, he says.
From there, the episode ends, and the mysteries ofCastle Rockbegin.
