We’re going to be skipping around just a bit between episodes here because “The Queen” (Episode 7) is brilliant and deserves a post all its own. For now, we’ll take a look at Episode 6, “Filter” and Episode 8, “Past Perfect,” where we see different pieces begin to fall into place, mysteries deepen, and the overlap between characters grows even more pronounced. 

First, there’s the question of narrative construction. The pre-release video the Kid (Bill Skarsgård) watches at Shawshank instructs soon to be paroled inmates (which of course doesn’t fit the Kid’s situation but is the best they’ve got and some processes apparently must be followed), the narrator says “you can be almost anyone you want to be if you adapt to your new surroundings … Don’t be afraid to reframe your narrative” (Episode 5, “Harvest”). When the Kid walks out of Shawshank, he’s still a pretty blank slate: no one knows his name, where he came from, why he’s there, and it’s unclear how much he remembers about himself and his own life. When he comes home with Henry (Andre Holland) and stays in the shed near the house, he finds piles of Matthew Deaver’s (Adam Rothenberg) sermons and family videos, and as he watches them, he begins to construct a narrative of who Henry is and what their connection may be. As we learn more about Matthew Deaver, narrative construction comes into play there as well, as Henry finds out that his father believed he heard the voice of God in the woods near Castle Rock, with that spiritual experience guiding his actions and creating a story that he played out (much like Dale Lacy would later do when he heard the voice of God telling him to imprison the Kid). 

These moments of narrative construction and meaning-making play out across different mediums: Matthew Deaver’s sermons, the home videos the Kid finds in the shed, and the vast collection of Lacy’s paintings of the Kid, as he artistically constructed who he thought the Kid was and his own feelings (and presumably doubts, based on previous conversations) about what he had done. New B&B owners Gordon (Mark Harelik) and Lilith (Lauren Bowles) take a physical approach to narrative construction as well, decorating their B&B with mannequins recreations of famous (or infamous) Castle Rock murders (though life soon comes to imitate art, in that case). 

The lines between the Kid and Henry also continue to blur even further. While earlier episodes focused on the question of the Kid’s intent and power (which continues to play out in these episodes as well, particularly with the violence at Juniper Hill after Henry drops him off there), these mid-series episodes direct that same question at Henry. The majority of people in Castle Rock assume a cause-and-effect relationship between the Kid’s presence and the bad things that happen, but the same could be said of Henry. As one of the police officers who come to investigate Alan Pangborn’s (Scott Glenn) death comments, Henry’s childhood nickname was “the Black Death,” and she explicitly attributes the new wave of violence to Henry’s presence, saying “here you are, back in town not two weeks and there’s another dead guy in your house” (“Past Perfect”). Add Zalewski and then later, Gordon and Lilith, and there seems to be some credence to the police officer calling Henry “a fucking lightning rod” (“Past Perfect”). 

Henry and the Kid’s stories seem to be playing out (to some degree) on parallel paths: Henry’s blurry memories of a cage echo the Kid’s own imprisonment; bad things happen and people die wherever they go, regardless of their intent; and they both end up stabbed in the side, bearing similar physical traumas. They both have their own mysteries and their own emerging truths.