I have really loved watching Chapelwaite. It’s atmospheric and there’s tons to dig into when it comes to literary geography, from the coastal Maine setting and the place-based connections between past and present to the domestic geography of the house itself (all of which I’ll be returning to in the near future, I’m certain). I savored the new twist on a familiar story, the chance to see King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” (in Night Shift, 1978) in a new way, and the opportunity to circle back to the story’s Lovecraftian inspiration. I found the characters compelling and their development, coupled with the subversion and negotiation of traditional vampire mythos, kept me guessing and caught me by surprise more than once. I loved the introduction of diverse faces, voices, and perspectives, like those of Rebecca Morgan (Emily Hampshire) and the Boone children (Jennifer Ens, Sirena Gulamgaus, and Ian Ho).

However, I find myself dissatisfied with how the series concluded. (Fair warning: spoilers abound). This week I finished the series, watching the last two episodes: Episode 9, “The Gathering Dark” and Episode 10, “The Keeper.”

I’ve been holding on to hope for Loa (Gulamguas) and that hope was well satisfied. While she had to make some less-than-ideal choices given the situation she was in, she held onto her humanity and her heart. Charles (Adrien Brody) recognized that humanity and the interactions between Loa and Charles in Jerusalem’s Lot are some of my favorites in the series. The pain, trust, and vulnerability on both sides speaks volumes and upends established narratives of vampires’ post-transformation interactions with their loved ones in a range of previous tellings.

While Minister Burroughs’ (Gord Rand) faith had been seriously tested, he came through admirably, which made it feel all the more nihilistic and hopeless when his wife Alice (Jennie Raymond) used traditional religious rhetoric of forgiveness to lure him back to their home and table. The poisoning was pretty clearly foreshadowed by Alice’s facial expressions and body language, but in a character arc that foregrounded faith, betrayal, and (ostensibly) forgiveness, it felt bleak and rather pointless. The same is true of Rebecca’s final interaction in Jerusalem’s Lot with her father (Jeremy Akerman). There’s no redemption or closure to be found there, as Rebecca hoped: he’s just a weak, selfish, horrible man, entirely predictable in his self-serving choices.

Apple Girl (Genevieve DeGraves) has been an unsettling and threatening character throughout the series. For most of Chapelwaite, she is largely reduced to a handmaiden and messenger, doing Jakub’s (Christopher Heyerdahl) bidding, though it has often felt like there’s more going on there beneath the surface, a story waiting to be told or to unfold. In these final two episodes, she finally began to take on some real dimension, in her conversation about rage with Loa and her opportunity to finally seize the power she has coveted when she is transformed along with the others (as one of many, rather than singularly honored, which has to sting a bit, but she’s finally getting what she wants). To see that long simmering feminine rage unleashed within a supernaturally powerful body would have been terrifying (and potentially liberating), but we never actually get to see it. Instead, even once she’s a vampire, she is a peripheral character and pawn in the fight between Charles and Jakub, still serving the needs and whims of powerful men. The possibility of what she could have become and destruction she could have wrought would have been horrifying, I’m sure, but it all fell flat when she was immediately neutralized and destroyed before even having that opportunity to express her vengeance and rage.

Charles’ decision to bring Loa back to Chapelwaite is hopeful and heroic, and if the series had continued, I would have loved to see more of that dynamic among the children: what does this living arrangement look like, practically speaking? While Honor (Ens) and Tane (Ho) may still care for and protect Loa as their sister, will they ever come to truly trust and love her in this new form? We see some potentially hopeful signs in the series’ closing scene, when Honor takes Loa’s hand, but it feels like something she knows she ought to do and does begrudgingly, rather than something motivated by love and affection. What will happen as the others grow old and Loa’s appearance remains the same? Will she become a figure of fear, affection, or reverence for their children and their children’s children? Or will the resentment between them be too much and will Loa run again, as she has before, creating a wholly different future? It is already clear that she hates her new vampiric nature, so will she seek her own destruction? And what would the ripple effects of that ending be for the Boone family?

As for Charles’ decision to become a vampire himself, take the book into his body, and leave his family … I find that one a whole lot less convincing. Loa has proven herself to be a pretty reliable and capable protector of the book. The Boone women have also historically seem to have been less profoundly impacted by the family curse than the men, which seems to suggest that Loa is in many ways ideally suited to take possession of the book and keep it safe. In rejecting her plea to be allowed to do so, Charles infantilizes her, refusing to see her as she now is as he holds to his vision of her as innocent, powerless, and in need of his patriarchal protection. And to some extent, this makes sense: he is a good father and he is doing what he feels he must to protect his child. But Loa isn’t the same child she was and some of this protection might be misplaced.

Similarly, Charles reasons that his family will be safer if he leaves them behind, because presumably their enemies will come looking for the book rather than coming to Chapelwaite. But doesn’t it stand to reason that if their enemies want the book and can’t find it (or Charles), they might threaten, hurt, or kill his family to draw him out of hiding, entice him into a confrontation, or just to hurt him? If that’s the case, Charles is leaving them relatively unprotected. And if the book begins to work its curse upon him again—as it seems to have done with his uncle and cousin before him, even post-vampiric transformation—having it inside his body seems like a pretty bad idea. It will definitely be hard for someone to take it from him, but he also can’t set it aside, even briefly, should he need to, and Charles Boone’s strength has proven to be a bit shaky. While he justifies his actions as freeing his children from the Boone family curse, it feels like his abandonment is just a new kind of generational trauma, one that will haunt and shape them just as surely as the family curse has haunted and shaped Charles himself.

I am also really disappointed that in the final moments of Chapelwaite, it is Rebecca who tells the Boones’ story. Much of the series has engaged with how people claim their identity through the stories they tell: about themselves, about their history, about their families. Rebecca’s attempts to tell the Boones’ story have already proven to be contentious and calamitous, with the Boones hurt and feeling betrayed by the way she tells their story in her writing. Her claiming of their story was a catalyst for Loa returning to Chapelwaite on her own, which led to her being killed and transformed by Stephen (Steven McCarthy). I like Rebecca more than I did in early episodes, though I still don’t love her, but either way, the Boones’ is not her story to tell. Her motivations in this final episode seem purer and she has certainly become part of the story itself, but it still feels like appropriation.

Maybe the story is Honor’s to tell or Tane’s, or even Loa’s. Maybe it’s not a story that can be truly told in that moment of familial separation, but one that gets articulated years later, from the perspective of an adult looking back on their own troubled childhood, in a direct echo of Charles’ nightmarish memory of his father that opened the series. And wouldn’t it be fascinating to see what form Charles will take in their memories as they grow up?

Even though Chapelwaite builds on a story we already know, it also reminds us that stories are never really finished and we’ll never have all the answers we want, or be able to explore all the possibilities they inspire. While I didn’t find what I was looking for in these final episodes, those possibilities continue to carry the story beyond both page and screen, and I’ll follow them there.