This Stephen King TV Series Doesn’t Get Enough Love From Fans

We’ve had such a wealth of great Stephen King adaptations in recent years that some fans don’t even realize they’ve missed out on a great TV series inspired by the horror maestro called Castle Rock. The Hulu original series premiered in 2018 with a second season in August of 2019; it ended there, leaving a lot of great material on the table. It wasn’t a straightforward adaptation of a novel or short story by King — instead, it remixed many of King’s characters, concepts, and stories that exist in similar literary settings. Read on for a bit about Castle Rock and why you should give it a watch — or a re-watch.

Why Castle Rock Is One of the Best Stephen King Adaptations

Castle Rock takes place in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Maine, that King used as a setting for some of his stories. It was an anthology-style show with different cast members taking the focus in Season 2. So many Easter eggs from King’s writing are sprinkled throughout, but some of the biggest inspirations for Season 1 include “Rita Hayworth and The Shawshank Redemption,” Neeful Things, IT, and The Shining. Season 2 adds in nods to Misery and Salem’s Lot, among others.

[RELATED: Stephen King Wishes Castle Rock Got a Season 3]

King himself was onboard for this project, which was produced by J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot It was created by Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason and featured an all-star cast — Bill Skarsgård played a mysterious figure fresh off his success as Pennywise in IT, while in Season 2 Lizzy Caplan gave a mesmerizing performance as a young Annie Wilkes.

Connecting the Dots

Castle Rock does a great job of finding the themes that various King stories have in common and weaving them together into something new. It’s not a matter of making a collage of all the re-used tropes — it’s a way of celebrating and enriching all the ideas in King’s work that unify them.

A central theme for this show is ‘being haunted,’ which is appropriate, as the setting of Castle Rock has a lot of baggage for a lot of characters. We see some people drawn back to the town reluctantly, and others bitter that they never managed to move away. All of this dovetails into the real supernatural plots about spirits, psychic echoes, and monster infestations. It somehow manages to bring all the weight of a King story into one place without making his universe feel smaller.

Characters

Some of the side characters in this story include remixes of King staples like Alan Pangborn and an aspiring young writer named “Jackie” Torrance. Of course, it wouldn’t be a King story if it wasn’t character-driven, and Castle Rock has some unforgettable heroes and villains. Season 1 centers around Henry Matthew Deaver (André Holland), an attorney who grew up in Castle Rock and avoided visiting home until a call from a mysterious prisoner finally compelled him to make the trip. Once there, he is confronted with his own repressed memories, and supernatural phenomenon that he has avoided his whole life.

Season 2 mainly focuses on Annie Wilkes (Caplan) and her teenage daughter Joy, who live on the road so that Annie can take contract jobs as a nurse. Arriving in Castle Rock, they find themselves caught in the middle of a subtle conflict between local landlords and business owners, which goes much deeper than they thought at first.

Reception

Castle Rock was not a flop by any means — at the time of this writing, it is certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 87% positive score. Still, it never seemed to generate as much conversation as it deserved, and there was no viewership data to show whether it performed well commercially. The show was canceled in November of 2020 — over a year after Season 2 had aired and well into the COVID-19 pandemic, so it’s hard to say why exactly it was dropped.

Fortunately, Castle Rock is still available to stream today on Hulu, so fans can still find it at their own pace. It also got a DVD and Blu-ray release, so even if it is removed from the streaming catalog, we’re unlikely to lose it entirely. This is good news, as Castle Rock will probably keep finding its target audience for years to come.

Castle Rock is streaming on Hulu, along with other Stephen King adaptations.