‘Castle Rock’ Is About To Become Must-Watch TV

Imagine we are friends, and imagine you ask me for my honest opinion on something…let’s say Hulu’s Castle Rock. Well, up until last week, I would have cocked my head to the side, bent my mouth into a bemused expression, and said, “Oh, yeah, Castle Rock is quite good. You know, it’s a little slow moving, but Andre Holland‘s great! And Melanie Lynsky is fantastic per usual. It’s good, but you know, it might not be for you.”

But something has changed. In the last week, Castle Rock made the leap to standard “quite good” streaming fare into something really daring and extraordinary. As Decider’s own Castle Rock recapper Zach Dionne put it: “What. An. Episode.” It was the first episode that showed us true weirdness as opposed to suggesting it. It was also the first episode of the season that took us straight into wacky old school Twin Peaks territory, complete with a deaf wise man in the woods and his creepy interpreter telling our hero, Henry Deaver (Andre Holland), that his father was in pursuit of the “voice of God.”

So Castle Rock got good last week. So what? Well, the next two episodes continue the qualitative climb upwards. Tomorrow’s all-new episode “The Queen” is a breathtaking hour of storytelling that reveals just how meticulously plotted all of Castle Rock has been thus far. Early on, my colleague Joe Reid suggested that you could plow through Castle Rock‘s first episode easy peasy. But after watching “The Queen,” I have to respectfully disagree. It seems that every shot, line of dialogue, and sound mix change in Castle Rock has been so carefully planned that I’m desperate to rewatch the whole season from the beginning (as soon as the show wraps its first story). There have been clues everywhere — EVERYWHERE!

Moreover, Castle Rock, “The Queen” is a spellbinding showcase for Stephen King veteran Sissy Spacek. The whole episode takes us inside the head of Ruth Deaver. We not only get plunged into a world warped by dementia, but discover some hard truths about the Deaver family. It’s as emotionally devastating an episode as it is fiendishly clever. And I’m obsessed. OBSESSED, I TELL YOU!

And it doesn’t stop there. I’m loathe to reveal too much about Castle Rock Episode 8 except that it’s directed by Ana Lily Amirpour (A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night). If, like me, you were a wee bit let down by the low-key dread of Castle Rock‘s first batch of episodes, and if you yearned for a bit more slasher horror, well, Episode 8 is here for you.

All this is to say is that it’s hardly the time to sleep on Hulu’s Castle Rock. (Coincidentally, you can’t sleep on the latest batch of episodes because they’ll give you actual nightmares.) Now is the time to catch up as fast as you can. If you’ve been dithering on binging the last few, or haven’t even started, get to it ASAP. Castle Rock is about to get very, very good and you’re going to want to be along for the ride.

Stream Castle Rock on Hulu