The first episode of Castle Rock’s (Hulu, 2018-2019) second season drew together elements from multiple King universes, geographically resituating Castle Rock and Jerusalem’s Lot right next door to one another and adding Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan) to the already volatile mix. The second and third episodes of the season—“New Jerusalem” and “Ties That Bind”—deepen those interconnections, as well as establishing points of resonance with the first season, tangling viewers in a web of King references and allusions.

Any King adaptation that features Tim Robbins is bound to have memories of Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption (1994) fairly close at hand, a reference that is further amplified by Shawshank’s role in Hulu’s Castle Rock. Recognition and resonance with both echo through the second season of Castle Rock, including Chris Merrill’s (Matthew Alan) annoyed warning that “You better be sick or dead, I shit you not” (“New Jerusalem”) when he goes to check on Ace (Paul Sparks), an overt reference to Darabont’s film, both in the words themselves and in viewers’ knowledge that the man being threatened is long gone. When Annie plunges into the cavern beneath the site of the new Somali mall, the play of darkness and light around the subterranean space calls to mind Dennis Zalewski’s (Noel Fisher) discovery of the Kid (Bill Skarsgård) in the basement of Shawshank in the first season of Castle Rock. The opera music that Ace plays as an accompaniment to his orchestrated flight from the cops similarly echoes The Shawshank Redemption, though the freedom symbolized in this resistance is of an entirely different type, as later episodes will show. 

Jerusalem’s Lot and the history of the Marsten House take center stage when Ace meets a realtor (Alison Wright) at the property and the bugs that emerge from the cavern and land on Annie’s car windows back at her cabin are reminiscent of early encounters in The Mist (in Skeleton Crew, 1985). When Chance (Abby Corrigan) asks Joy (Elsie Fisher) “wanna go look for a dead guy?” (“Ties That Bind”), we can’t help but think of Gordie Lachance and the boys from The Body (in Different Seasons, 1982) and the film adaptation Stand By Me (Rob Reiner, 1986), a dynamic of friendship and escapism that is further developed as Joy and her new friends set off through the woods toward Castle Lake, in a more pleasant view of the woods than any we got in Season One. 

These two episodes also further highlight the depth and complexity of both Pop Merrill (Tim Robbins) and Annie Wilkes, with intrafamilial tension at the center of each. Pop is both ruthless and loving, with flashbacks of his kindness intercut with his collection of protection money from his tenants. He is hard with everyone in his life, including Ace and Abdi (Barkhad Abdi); the only person exempt from his prickliness and who he treats with genuine affection is Nadia (Yusra Warsama). 

The tension between Annie and Joy also continues to mount, particularly as Joy begins to assert her independence, both with her new friends and in insisting that she doesn’t want Annie to go with her when Nadia stitches her hand after her fall. In these moments where she is able to access a world that hasn’t been filtered through Annie’s perspective, Joy begins to expand beyond their intimate, two-person universe and wonder what else her mother hasn’t been telling her the truth about. We also see further examples of just how determined Annie is to get what she wants, both in her escape from the cavern under the mall site (whose sewer tunnels offer shades of IT and the 1986 novel’s film adaptations) and the lengths she goes to to free herself when Joy ties her to the bedposts when she believes Annie is having a psychotic break (foreshadowing Paul Sheldon’s ordeal in the 1987 novel Misery). 

One particularly thought-provoking moment of resonance between the first and second seasons of Castle Rock is in the episode “Ties That Bind,” when Annie tells Joy about how she murdered Ace and how he has now come back. She asks Joy “You believe me, don’t you?”, recalling the alternate universe Henry Deaver story the Kid told to Molly (Melanie Lynskey) and his plea to be believed. We can read the Kid’s story in a variety of ways—as truth, subterfuge, or some complicated combination of the two—but arguably, Annie’s story is more objectively verifiable. While there are multiple witnesses that can confirm Ace is back, potentially suggesting that the murder was a hallucination (as Joy fears), Annie has injuries from falling into the cavern below the mall site, where she also lost her necklace, which was found there. And while Ace may be unquestionably back, he’s definitely not the same Ace (for better or worse).  

And the closing scenes of “Ties That Bind” call us back to the narrative complexity and negotiation of Castle Rock, as the tall man from her hallucinations (played by John Hoogenakker) ominously tells Annie “You know how this story ends …” And to some degree, we do. We know who Annie will become, that she won’t be in Castle Rock forever (or die there, whatever dangers she faces), and what she will do to Paul Sheldon when their paths cross in Misery. What we don’t know is how we’re going to get there and what will break her along the way.