Castle Rock finally hits its stride in Season 2

The Ringer

"The Hulu anthology series is hard to describe; I’ve found 'Stephen King’s MCU' to be a reliable, if not quite accurate, shorthand," says Miles Surrey. "Castle Rock, in essence, takes inspiration from various characters and settings from the expansive King Shared Universe to craft an entirely new story that’s fully appreciated by viewers who are, themselves, King fanatics." He adds: "Castle Rock’s first installment was Stephen King by way of mystery box storytelling: a popular framework in the era of Peak TV that didn’t quite suit something deferential to the author’s material. Castle Rock was much better at establishing a quintessentially creepy Kingian mood—the dread that comes from a feeling that there are sinister forces interrupting the mundanity of small-town life—than building a compelling mystery. So while the first season wasn’t without some breakout moments—the seventh episode, the Sissy Spacek–led 'The Queen,' was among the best episodes of 2018 across television—Castle Rock was weighed down by unnecessarily weighty ideas. Complexity isn’t the same thing as profundity. But the sour taste Castle Rock left at the end of Season 1 was immediately washed away by a new approach for the second season, to be led by one of King’s most infamous characters: Annie Wilkes."

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• Castle Rock Season 2 contains a bevy of great performances and interesting stories that don't quite merge
• Castle Rock is still effective, affecting, and original — despite appearances
• Why Annie Wilkes' story is set in the present day: “One of the defining characteristics I think of Annie is that she feels like a woman out of her time; she feels sometimes like a very traditional, very proper woman — on the face of it, at least. And the things she loves are antiquated. But if you’re going to have a character like that, why bring them back into another era that is also antiquated?” says co-creator Dustin Thomason.
• Here are all the Easter eggs in Castle Rock Season 2 so far
• Lizzy Caplan breaks down the season premiere's "daunting" ice cream scene