As this season is nearing the end, death in Castle Rock is becoming too normal and the story is getting crazier by the minute.
SPOILERS AHEAD! READ WITH CAUTION!
Last episode we saw Ruth dealing with the effects of dementia and trying to survive a night of scariness. With episodes 8 and 9, Castle Rock has kicked the story up into high gear. They are trying to answer questions, all while throwing WHAT THE HELL moments.
Once again the performances are top notch as well as the direction.
In episode 8, we go back to when Molly is showing the Lacy’s house to a couple, a professor Gordon and his wife. We see that they ended up buying the house. They decide to turn it into a bed and breakfast with a murder theme. Recreating murders in the house. They’re weird and seem to have marriage problems because there is a sort of disconnect between them.
As they fix up the place, Professor Gordon’s wife finds the key for the basement and goes downstairs and finds a bunch of Warden Lacy’s paintings of The Kid. They end up putting them up and at one point, Professor Gordon is staring at one of the paintings of The Kid and suddenly changes his expression, almost like he gets possessed. A couple decides to book a night there and when they arrive they look creeped out so they say they’ll leave early in the morning.
Later that night, the couple is getting it on and Professor Gordon is awake and can hear it all. He seems ticked off and gets up to go to the couple. The screaming of pleasure quickly turns into screams of agony. Professor Gordon’s wife wakes up and heads to the room and sees that her husband has killed this couple.
We can piece this together with that moment when Gordon looked at the painting of The Kid. Perhaps he did get possessed? Seems like The Kid can possess someone even via a simple painting that someone made of him.
The next morning, Gordon and his wife are cleaning up the crime, and she even tells him it never happened as support. Jackie Torrance stops by their bed and breakfast to offer her taxi services, but she quickly figures out that they are creepy.
Henry decides to get Wendell on a bus and home after the police arrive because of Alan’s death in the previous episode. A cop reminds Henry that it seems like any time he’s in Castle Rock, death follows. Once Wendell is on the bus, a bird flies into the window and dies, after which Wendell starts experiencing the same noise problem Henry has. Later on, at night, he gets off the bus and is several miles away from Castle Rock, and begins to walk back.
At one point, Henry visits the bed and breakfast where the Gordons live, and breaks in when nobody answers the door. When he makes his way upstairs, he sees paintings of The Kid everywhere. He checks the dates and notices how different each is. This seems to prove the point that The Kid hasn’t aged in 27 years.
Henry gets into a fight with Gordon and his wife. His wife dies after stabbing herself in the fight and Henry also seems to get stabbed. He makes a run for it and his chased by Gordon. Gordon catches him, he once again looks possessed and tries to kill him. Jackie Torrance saves Henry by axing Gordon in the head.
Police arrive and question Jackie while Henry sits in horror from what happened. Henry gets a call from the pastor that his mother came to him and is now out and wandering around. He makes a dash for his car and drives off.
We get an even bigger focus on Molly with this episode. She’s the one who saves Henry from that silent box he was in and later in this episode she heads over to his house. She takes her pills and as she gets there, she spots her old house door being open. She goes inside and sees that The Kid is sitting on the stairwell.
They have an exchange and he says that she can help him. The Kid then reveals a bunch of information about Molly and her life, making him creepier and this story line more complex. The Kid and Molly take a moment to look out the window and The Kid reveals that he was in the woods with her and that’s where she died.
WHAT?
In episode 9, we get answers to what exactly The Kid meant by saying he was out in the woods with Molly. And how she died, but it’s also highly complex and makes you wonder what the heck The Kid is doing. Is he from this universe? Is he another version of himself from 27 years ago? In this season of Castle Rock taking place in another reality? This episode, titled: “Henry Deaver,” kind of answers this.
The Kid is running. He looks like he’s frantically running and there’s police potentially after him. He was timing himself and the police drove right by him. This isn’t The Kid we know right now, this is The Kid 27 years ago and it’s an origin story beginning.
It’s revealed that he’s Henry Deaver. He has a wife, with whom he is trying to start a family, and is working to cure dementia. He has a showcase where he shows people an implant he’s working on that helped a cat named Puck. Later on, he gets a call from Alan Pangborn and he immediately goes to Castle Rock. In this story line/reality, Ruth moved to Florida to be with Alan. Matthew Deaver was not killed by Molly, but rather took his own life. That’s why Henry returns to Castle Rock.
Henry goes downstairs into the basement to fix a fuse and suddenly he finds a kid in a cage. This kid is Henry. The one we think is Henry currently.
Did this Henry travel into the alternate reality where The Kid is actually Henry? Are you keeping up? It’s a tricky episode to recap, because while the alternate reality plot is probably what’s happening, what if it’s not and The Kid is playing mind games? Anyways, when Henry of present-day went missing, perhaps this is how he ended up gone for so many days.
He was in the reality in which The Kid is Henry. At one point in the episode, Molly is questioning little Henry and she touches his hand and sees everything she and he did in the present timeline. This seemingly confirms the alternate reality/dimension idea.
Molly and Henry (The Kid) have drinks together and catch up. The connection that present-day Henry and Molly have seems to be exactly the same connection that this other reality’s Molly and Henry have.
We even get an alternate universe Zalewski. He is tasked with keeping his eye on little Henry, who gets to go home with Henry and Molly. Molly suddenly stops at the woods and little Henry runs out and they follow him. They really want to help him and to understand what is going. They suddenly enter Castle Lake, which is where little Henry was discovered by Alan, and this also further confirms an alternate reality. Zalewski runs after them and in the process ends up shooting Molly and this is where she ends up dying. If we go back to the previous episode we get the answer as to why The Kid says the woods is where she died.
As alternate Henry is holding a dying Molly, she tells him to help little Henry. Suddenly we are taken back to when little Henry was found by Alan Pangborn in the current reality. We are left to believe that the Henry of the other reality has been trapped here, hence being found in that cell that Warden Lacy put him in.
Back in the other reality, little Henry had seemingly caused a fire at Juniper Hall, just like The Kid did in the present reality. Both of them are incredibly similar and hopefully, the season finale answers any other questions we may have. Caleel Harris got his moment to shine even more and he did phenomenal work in this episode.
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