Hulu’s new series Castle Rock is chock full of Easter eggs. How many did you catch? Now updated through the season finale. (Warning: Spoilers ahead.)
Dale Lacy (Terry O’Quinn) delivers a monologue about Castle Rock at the beginning of the second episode that references some of the major events that have happened here.
That would, of course, be Cujo.
That's a reference to Frank Dodd, the serial killer thwarted by Johnny Smith in The Dead Zone.
The boy is Ray Brower, whose corpse provides a mission for the kids in The Body.
We get another run-down of notable Castle Rock horrors later in the episode when Henry Deaver (André Holland) looks through newspaper clippings from the town’s past. “Shopkeeper Missing After Oddity Store Fire” is a reference to Needful Things, particularly — spoiler alert — the ending, in which Leland Gaunt flees after his shop burns to the ground.
This first one is hard to make out, but the “Anonymous Tip” in the headline is another reference to The Body. Gordie, Chris, Vern, and Teddy find Ray Brower’s body, but they decide to leave it be and end up anonymously phoning the police and letting them know where to find him.
The “Rabid Dog” is, again, Cujo. The article itself spoils the book, including the death of 4-year-old Tad, who survives in the movie.
The Mellow Tiger, where Henry meets Jackie (Jane Levy), was a major setting in Needful Things, where the bar’s owner Henry Beaufort and town drunk Hugh Priest murdered each other.
Henry asks Jackie about Nan’s Luncheonette, which popped up in The Dark Half and Needful Things.
Alan is forced to dig up a dead dog to prove to Ruth (Sissy Spacek), who is suffering from dementia, that the animal is definitely dead. In Pet Sematary, buried pets come back to life.
Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey) shares a psychic bond with Henry — it’s been there since they were kids. Molly remembers that when Henry felt pain, she felt pain. This recalls the twin phenomenon between Thad Beaumont and his evil alter ego George Stark in The Dark Half, also set in Castle Rock.
Henry goes to the home of Vince Desjardins, where he may have been kept as a child. Like Eyeball Chambers, Vince was a member of Ace's gang in The Body. Vince doesn't pop up here, but Henry does meet Vince's brother, Joseph Desjardins.
Vince has been depicted onscreen before: He was played by Jason Oliver in Stand By Me — second from left in this photo of Ace and his gang.
Before he's released from Shawshank, the Kid watches a video narrated by someone named Lou Hadley. We don't know for sure if there's any relation, but Byron Hadley was the chief of guards at Shawshank in Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption.
You might remember him from the movie, where he was played by Clancy Brown.
Shortly thereafter, the Kid wreaks havoc when he visits a family celebrating the birthday of their son, Gordie. Gordie is the name of the narrator of The Body.
Chances are these Gordies aren't related — that's, uh, not how first names work. But it's still an odd coincidence, in a universe where most coincidences are intentional.
Jackie complains to the Kid about how boring Castle Rock is now, mentioning the time before she was born when there were "serial killers and psychopathic dogs," another reference to Frank Dodd in The Dead Zone and Cujo.
But more importantly, we get confirmation of the link between Jackie Torrance and The Shining's Jack Torrance. Turns out he is her uncle, and she took his name to spite her parents, who won't talk about Jack. Jackie — whose real name is Diane — says that Jack was a writer, and that he went crazy one winter and tried to axe murder his wife and kid at a fancy ski resort.
Here's what's weird about that: In the book, Jack uses a roque mallet (and not an axe) to attack Wendy and Danny. Did Jackie get her facts wrong, or is this the movie Jack Torrance and not the book version? Remember that in the opening credits, we saw the number 217 (the haunted room in the book) crossed out and replaced with 237 (the haunted room in the movie).
The Kid is able to hear a lot of the past darkness in Castle Rock, although it's all jumbled together. Some of what he hears is hard to place — a man and a woman screaming, for example. But some of the references are more overt. The barking dog is Cujo again, and the "wanna see a dead body?" is another reference to The Body. The Kid also hears a baby crying and then the sound of something getting hit by a car, which recalls the fate of Gage Creed in Pet Sematary. That novel takes place in Ludlow, not Castle Rock — but Ludlow is only an hour drive away.
Molly has the ability to hear thoughts, a power known in the Stephen King universe as shining.
Danny Torrance has the shining — that's what gives The Shining its title.
Actor Chosen Jacobs makes his first appearance as Wendell Deaver, Henry's son. Jacobs played Mike Hanlon in It alongside his Castle Rock co-star Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise. At some point, one has to wonder if these casting connections mean something — or if they're just a fun nod to other King adaptations.
Henry takes the Kid to Juniper Hill Psychiatric Hospital, formerly known as Juniper Hill Asylum. If Shawshank is the most frequently mentioned prison in King's work, Juniper Hill is his go-to psychiatric hospital.
Past residents of Juniper Hill include Nettie Cobb (Needful Things), Raymond Joubert (Gerald's Game), and Henry Bowers (It). The psychiatric hospital has also been mentioned or featured in Insomnia, The Tommyknockers, Bag of Bones, The Dark Half, and 11/22/63.
Later in the episode, Henry meets Odin Branch (CJ Jones) and his interpreter, Willie (Rory Culkin). A lot of what Odin says... doesn't make much sense, unless you have a strong understanding of bioacoustics and psychoacoustics. But at least one of the concepts Odin tries to articulate should sound familiar to King fans. "All possible pasts, all possible presents," he says. "Schisma is the sound of the universe trying to reconcile them." What he's talking about is the idea of multiple universes, running parallel to one another.
In The Gunslinger, the first book of the Dark Tower series, Jake Chambers utters one of King's most famous lines: "Go then, there are other worlds than these." He's about to die, but it doesn't matter — because there's another universe in which Jake lives. It's too soon to say if Castle Rock will fully explore this idea, but remember the 217-237 discrepancy in the opening credits. Perhaps in one universe, the most haunted room at the Overlook is 217, but it's 237 in another. By that same logic, one universe had Jack Torrance attacking his family with a roque mallet — and, in another, an axe.
There are repeated allusions to Carrie in the Ruth-centric episode "The Queen." Sissy Spacek, who plays Ruth, took on the role of Carrie in the 1976 Brian De Palma film, the first adaptation of a Stephen King work. (Carrie was also King's first novel.) A bloody bath at the end of the episode is the most direct link: It's a clear visual homage to the bath Carrie takes at the end of the film.
A side-by-side comparison shows how similar the two scenes are.
But there are thematic links to Carrie as well, namely religious obsession. Matthew Deaver, Ruth's husband and Henry's father, is a dangerous zealot who demands that his wife and son pray, and turns violent in what he believes is the service of god's will. He sounds a lot like Carrie's mother, Margaret White.
New Castle Rock resident Gordon (Mark Harelik) did his PhD on the BTK Killer. King's novella A Good Marriage was inspired by the BTK Killer: The character of Bob Anderson was modeled after the real-life serial killer.
It's probably not a deliberate reference, but given the depth of nerdy King allusions on this series, you never know.
The link between Jackie and her uncle Jack continues. "You know your axes," Gordon tells her, a reference to Jack's notorious weapon of choice. (Again: in the movie version of The Shining, not the book.)
Later in the episode, Jackie goes even more Jack Torrance when she uses an axe to kill Gordon (and save Henry). Now Jack isn't the only axe murderer in the family — although Jackie did have a good reason.
Here's something interesting, though. Shortly thereafter, when she's trying to explain herself, Jackie says, "I wasn't myself anymore." Was she being controlled by the Kid, who seems to inspire people to violence? Or — and this is the more intriguing option — is her uncle inside her head? If that's the case, by the end of the season, will she be more Jack than Jackie?
We see a flashback to when Matthew Deaver's mother (Mamie Gummer) tried to kill him in his crib. Matthew's story already had allusions to Carrie — in Episode 7, he acted a lot like Margaret White — and here's another: Margaret also tried to kill her daughter when Carrie was a baby.
This is almost certainly more of an Easter egg than something significant, but the ice cream shop in Castle Rock is called Claiborne Creamery, a reference to Dolores Claiborne.
Molly tells Henry that the Kid — we know he's also Henry Deaver now, but let's keep calling him "the Kid" to avoid confusion — is looking for the door between his world and theirs. This recalls the Dark Tower series, in which there are sometimes literal doors from one world to the next.
Well, here's a surprise: The Kid AKA Henry Deaver reveals a different face to Henry, and it's terrifying. But what's going on here?
Here's one idea — the Kid is actually Legion, the demon underneath André Linoge in Storm of the Century. There's a definite resemblance, and Legion can also compel people to commit acts of violence, just as the Kid does earlier in the episode. It's not clear how this all relates to the Kid being Henry Deaver — did a demon take possession of his soul when he was moving between worlds?
Legion is, in many ways, the ultimate King villain. The name has been invoked in several King's novels. Randall Flagg is called Legion in The Stand — and that same character appears as the Man in Black and Walter, among other names, in the Dark Tower series. The phrase "our name is Legion" even pops up in It, suggesting a link between the titular monster and the demon.
In the post-credits scene, we see that Jackie is writing just like her uncle Jack. The title of her book? Overlooked, which has a significance she explains but is also a winking nod to the Overlook Hotel, where Jack went on his rampage. Jackie says she's going out west on a research trip, because "the best place to finish a book is where it started."
The obvious assumption is that Jackie will be headed to the Overlook Hotel — perhaps with an axe in tow.
But could this also be a reference to Misery? In the novel, Paul Sheldon finishes all his books in Sidewinder, Colorado, because that's where he wrote his first book — it's where his writing career started. (In the film, it's the real town of Silver Creek, specifically the Silver Creek Lodge, where Paul returns to complete each novel.) If Jackie is retracing her uncle's footsteps, she'll likely be following Paul's as well: Sidewinder is the town nearest to the Overlook Hotel.