The season (and series) finale of Hulu’s Castle Rock (2018-2019) leaves us with both resolution and unanswered questions, a combination that makes it particularly vexing that this is all we get. 

First, the resolution: Pop Merrill (Tim Robbins) had about as heroic an ending as he could hope for, bringing this complicated character over the finish line with a combination of redemption and heartbreak. The Kid / Amity’s Angel (Bill Skarsgård) is for sure some sort of supernatural being, as evidenced by his appearance on the cliffs near Castle Lake and disappearance when things don’t turn out as Amity’s followers intended. The revelation that Castle Rock is a thin place between universes (a thinny, in King’s Dark Tower series parlance), “a door to other heres, other nows, other dimensions” (“Clean”) explicitly situates Castle Rock within that larger King multiverse, which presents a whole new range of possibilities and interconnections. And of course, we have a turning point in Annie’s (Lizzy Caplan) madness. Her perceptions and hold on herself have been a roller coaster throughout the season, shifting from stalwart to unhinged, but in the series’ final scenes, she loses control completely and has a fundamental break with reality, first killing Joy (Elsie Fisher) and then imaginatively resurrecting her as an idealized version that only Annie can see. 

Then there are the questions, which with the series’ cancellation will never be answered. The first—and most pressing, in my opinion—of these is what’s the real deal with The Kid / Amity’s Angel? We certainly seem to have proof in his appearance and disappearance from the cliffs by Castle Lake that he is some sort of powerful supernatural being, capable of slipping between multiple dimensions. But I’m not entirely convinced that he can “travel between them at will” (“Clean”). If that’s the case, why wouldn’t he simply slip away when he was captured by Warden Lacy (Terry O’Quinn)? Can he only pass between worlds and whens from that one particular spot on the cliffs? And if so, why bother hanging around waiting for Henry Deaver (André Holland) when he had the chance to make his escape in the finale of Season One? What brought him to Castle Rock, not just once but at least twice? What are these other dimensions and which other King narratives do his adventures intersect with or ricochet off of? The possibilities are thought-provoking and endless, particularly in the context of the Dark Tower series. How did he get out of the cage in Shawshank and where’s Henry Deaver now? We catch the briefest glimpse of a missing poster for him, posted at a gas station where Annie and Joy stop after leaving Castle Rock, so his absence is noted and conspicuous, but remains shrouded in mystery. 
Ultimately, the conclusion of Castle Rock carries on in the same tradition as the series as a whole: with some recognizable elements, established connections to King’s wider worlds, and almost infinite possibilities for how those might come together, build upon, or challenge the stories we thought we knew … even if we’ll never really know how some of them end.