‘Castle Rock’ Showrunners Explain That Shocking Finale’s Final Moments — And What’s Next in Season 2

Season 1 of Hulu’s Castle Rock has been nothing short of a narrative rollercoaster. After weeks of slow, tense, dreadful build, the series exploded in a major way with a flurry of shocking episodes. The Castle Rock Season 1 finale — available to stream on Hulu now — wrapped up the story as only Castle Rock could: with uneasy ambiguity and beguiling thunder.

While other puzzle box shows turn TV watching into a sort of test, full of riddles for the audience to get right or wrong, Castle Rock‘s finale is designed to be open-ended in its finality.

*MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR ALL OF CASTLE ROCK SEASON 1 AHEAD*

In the end, Henry Deaver (Andre Holland) pursues an escaped Kid (Bill Skarsgard) to the Castle Rock woods, only to help turn him into the authorities. The final moments of the season reveal that Ruth (Sissy Spacek) has passed away during the winter after the season’s events, Molly Strand (Melanie Lynsky) has decamped to Key West, and Henry has stayed behind in Castle Rock to keep the Kid prisoner in the Shawshank vault. A post-credits stinger reveals that Jackie Torrence (Jane Levy) is putting her experiences to paper and planning a research trip to…the Overlook Hotel.

We caught up with Castle Rock co-creators and co-showrunners Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason and asked them to break down the finale’s most shocking moments. They helped elucidate some of their more bewildering choices, and teased more about how the schisma and Jane Levy’s Shining-infused post-credits scene may (or may not) play into future seasons.

The Castle Rock Season Finale Was Always Going To End In That Creepy, Ambiguous Way

Instead of tying up the first season’s plot in a cathartic way that ruled definitively on The Kid’s identity, or even returned him to his own timeline, Castle Rock ends similar to how it began. The Kid is kept in the vault in Shawshank, but now Henry Deaver is the one bringing him sandwiches in the dark. Castle Rock show runners Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason said this ambiguous ending was the plan from the get-go.

“We always had from the very beginning this idea that we were going to tell a story about a guy who when we first meet him he’s standing up on behalf of his last client and is talking about reasonable doubt and what it takes to kill someone. This is a guy who has obviously spent his career to help people that no one else will help and to defend monsters when no one else will,” Thomason, who co-wrote the final episode, said. “What we were really intrigued by, at a character level, from the beginning, is what kind of journey does it take for a guy like that to become everything he thought he was fighting against.”

Did The Kid Turn Into A Zombie Matthew Deaver For A Split Second?

When the two “Henry Deavers” meet in the woods, Holland’s Henry briefly sees Skarsgard’s Henry turn into the snarling specter of their abusive father, Matthew Deaver. Thomason described it as “clearly a moment of fear on the part of Henry,” but he said it was more complicated than that.

“That moment happens in the point of view of Henry – of Andre [Holland’s] Henry — and it happens in a moment. The questions at the heart of it — and this is true of a lot of King-ian stories — is what did he see, what did he interpret it to mean, and how should the audience interpret it?”

“We have a strong point of view of what the culmination of this season means. The question at the heart of it all is did Henry lock away the devil and put him into a cage to protect the people of Castle Rock in a sort of heroic sacrifice? Or did he tragically imprison his own doppelgänger?” Thomason said, “We feel that the audience should have the room to interpret it as they will.”

Is That Why The Kid’s Final Moment Is That Eerie Smile?

The final shot we get of the Kid is him giving Henry a terrifying grin. Thomason confirmed that like the shot where he morphs into Matthew Deaver or when he moves towards Lacy’s gun, it’s meant to be ambiguous for the audience.

Thomason said, “Does that smile suggest that the devil has finally trapped a man into doing exactly what he swore he would never do? Does it suggest a guy who’s been in solitary more than a year and is starting to lose his mind again? And starting to lose his grasp on who he really is, just as he did when he was trapped beneath the cell with Warden Lacy for all of those years? It sort of allows for people to interpret it as they will.”

Will Any Of Castle Rock Season 1’s Characters Return For Season 2?

When asked about Castle Rock Season 2, Thomason told Decider that they were “going to play a little close to the vest in terms of specifics,” but he did say that in Season 2 they would “take on some everyday horrors, and hopefully infuse them with some amount of Stephen King.”

Thomason also confirmed that we can expect to see some characters return, albeit in unexpected ways. He likened it to King’s own approach to building a mythology in his books. “In a way, each book stands on its own, and yet you get the chance to rediscover and bump up against characters that you’ve met before and understand the connections to new characters that you’re meeting for the first time,” Thomason said. “The fact that you bump into Father Callahan in Salem’s Lot and then you see him again in The Dark Tower… that was something we loved as kids.”

Will Future Seasons Deal With The Scenes We Saw From The Schisma In Episode 9?

Castle Rock might have effectively wrapped up its Season 1 storyline, but Shaw, Thomason, and their writers teased a number of possible plots for future seasons. In particular, we caught glimpses of other worlds in Episode 9. Shaw compared these flashes of horror to scenes from other Stephen King stories, like the woman in the bathtub in The Shining, that are “never explained or contextualized, but they have their own life to them.”

Still, there’s one we might see sooner rather than later (or even never). At one point, young Henry, Molly, and later Skarsgard’s Henry all see a distressed settler woman with a knife.

“There’s kind of a much larger story to tell about that woman whom we just catch a glimpse of in Episode 9. It is absolutely possible that we’ll return to some of those stories and it would be great to do so,” Shaw said.

Will Season 2 Follow Jackie Torrence To The Overlook Hotel?

Castle Rock saved its biggest surprise for its final credits. Mid-way through them, we get a stinger scene — like in a Marvel movie — wherein Jane Levy’s Jackie Torrence is gleefully transcribing a novelized version of her story she’s calling, “Overlooked.” She announces that it also has to do with family history and that she’s going to visit a hotel out west for research.

We asked Shaw and Thomason if this was a teaser for Season 2 and if we should assume that next year will be a riff on The Shining.

“Well, I mean, look, who wouldn’t want to see Jane Levy make her way to the Overlook Hotel? That’s certainly something that you would find no disagreement from either of us about!” Thomason said.

Shaw boisterously added, “Nobody doesn’t want to see that! And if they don’t want to see it — then we don’t want them watching [the show]. That’s just crazy talk!”

“But at the same time, I think part of what we loved about the idea of using that final little piece with her was to give her a chance to interpret and articulate her own story,””Thomason said, noting that one of the primary themes of the season was the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. “It felt right to us, and very King-ian, to let her take us out with that final question of her story and what her story means.”

What Were The Castle Rock Showrunners’ Favorite Fan Theories?

Over the course of Season 1, Castle Rock fans went into overdrive trying to figure out who the Kid was, where Henry Deaver went, and what the show had to do with the larger King universe. Decider asked Castle Rock‘s showrunners if there were any theories that caught their eye.

Thomason said, “The one that always amused me the most was one that was bandied about — jokingly and lovingly — in the writers’ room was the idea that we would reveal on Ruth’s gravestone in the end, it was going to say, ‘Carrie Ruth White Deaver.’ It was all going to have been like the return of Carrie White, and she did not die. Sissy has secretly been playing Carrie all along.”

“I would not rule out the idea that the last shot of the last episode of the last season of Castle Rock…it will be like our own nod to Timmy Westphall, in St. Elsewhere looking at his snow globe. It will be Carrie White looking at the way light reflects off her prom night sash, and somehow this has all been a kind of elaborate act of fantasy on the part of a damaged Carrie White,” Shaw said.

Castle Rock will return for a second season on Hulu.

Watch Castle Rock on Hulu