‘Castle Rock’ Season 2 Will Feature Annie Wilkes From ‘Misery’

The debut of Castle Rock on Hulu saw an all-new interpretation of Stephen King lore, as the series was set in the author’s fictional Maine town yet explored a new story with new characters. However, a handful of iconic characters from King stories did drop by, adding familiar mythology into the mix. A second season of the series is on the way, which will be a story that doesn’t directly continue the adventures of the first season, with Deadline confirming Lizzy Caplan (Masters of Sex), Tim Robbins (Here and Now), Garrett Hedlund (Mosaic), and Elsie Fisher (Eight Grade) will all be starring in the new season.

The outlet revealed that “In Season Two, a feud between warring clans comes to a boil when budding psychopath Annie Wilkes (Caplan), Stephen King’s nurse from hell, gets waylaid in Castle Rock.” The site also offered up character descriptions of the new cast members.

“Caplan’s Annie Wilkes is a nurse and superfan battling to overcome mental health issues,” Deadline described. “Robbins is Reginald ‘Pop’ Merrill. The Patriarch of Stephen King’s iconic crime family, Pop is dying of cancer and at a reckoning with his family. Hedlund plays John ‘Ace’ Merril. Castle Rock’s legendary bully, Ace is taking over his uncle Pop’s businesses and threatening a fragile peace with nearby Jerusalem’s Lot. Fisher is Joy, Annie’s home-schooled teenage daughter. Joy is starting to have questions about her mother’s sanity.”

The largest narrative connection between the seasons will be the setting of Castle Rock, though co-creator Dustin Thomason previously explained that the goal of each season is to deliver a self-contained story.

“Each season is going to be its own self-contained story: beginning, middle, and end,” Thomason previously shared with The Hollywood Reporter. “But I think that just as the books do, we want to surprise viewers with the ways in which the stories intersect. Just as the places the characters pop up in very unexpected ways throughout the books, that’s the kind of anthology that we would like to tell.”

He continued, “One of the things about the King universe or multiverse is that some very strange things can happen when it comes to the ways that the stories unfold, and hopefully there’ll be surprises along the way in terms of how the anthology works in that way. It’s pretty delicious that Kathy Bates played both Dolores Claiborne and Annie Wilkes when you really think about that question in the movie adaptations. But I think that there’s something for us about being faithful to the way that Steve does it in the books, that almost feels like the anthology format has already been laid out for us.”

Stay tuned for details on Season Two of Castle Rock.

What are you hoping to see in the second season of the series? Let us know in the comments below or hit up @TheWolfman on Twitter to talk all things horror and Star Wars!

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