Alexander Skarsgard to Play Randall Flagg in Stephen King’s the Stand

The CBS All Access Reboot of Stephen King‘s The Stand has been stacking its cast quickly, and snagging some pretty big names along the way. Now the upcoming miniseries has finally cast its biggest, most pivotal role: Randall Flagg, who will be played by Trueblood and Big Little Lies star, Alexander Skarsgard!

Stephen King appeared on The View to announce some new cast members for The Stand, which currently has James Mardsden and Amber Heard starring as Stu Redman and Nadine Cross, respectively. However, Randall Flagg was left out of the list of new characters King mentioned, which led Collider to do some digging, and unearth the scoop that Skarsgard is playing Randall Flagg.

If you don’t know the character, Flagg first appeared in King’s The Stand novel in 1978, but has since becoming a recurring presence in other King stories (The Dark Tower, Hearts of Atlantis), under various aliases. In general, he is an evildoer who has mystical/supernatural abilities like necromancy, prophecy, and sorcery, and seeks to cause conflict and destruction. In The Stand, Flagg is a demonic figure who appears in the dystopian world after the great plague kills most of humanity. Flagg builds a dark society of tyrannous and murderous marauders in Las Vegas, which sets up The Stand‘s primary conflict of good vs. evil, as Flaggs’s tribe goes to war with the community of the benevolent Mother Abagail.

Stephen King’s appearance on The View wasn’t coincidental: it was, in part, a publicity stunt meant to reveal the casting of View host Whoopi Goldberg as Mother Abagail in The Stand. In addition to that big announcement, King also revealed the following additional castings in the miniseries:

1. Jovan Adepo (The Leftovers) as Larry Underwood.
2. Owen Teague (Bloodline) as Harold Lauder.
3. Brad William Henke (Orange is the New Black) as Tom Cullen.
4. Daniel Sunjata (Resue Me) as Cobb.

Odessa Young and Henry Zaga have also been cast as Frannie Goldsmith and Nick Andros, respectively.