Hulu’s Castle Rock is a veritable who’s-who of the Stephen King universe, so we should have already guessed that we’d be seeing even more of them in the next installment of the show.
One name that might be familiar is Annie Wilkes, who will be played by actress Lizzy Caplan. Annie is the main antagonist of Misery, the story of an obsessed fan who find her favorite author injured in a car accident. However, when she finds out that he as killed off her favorite character, she breaks both of his legs and holds him captive to force him to write her back to life. This version of the character will be younger and will be traveling with her sheltered teen daughter, played by Eighth Grade star Elsie Fisher.
Tim Robbins is coming back to the Stephen King universe, after his iconic turn in The Shawshank Redemption. This time around, he will be playing Reginald ‘Pop’ Merrill, head of a powerful criminal family. The character appears in “The Sun Dog” but he’s better known for his nephew, Ace Merrill. Ace is the bully from Stand by Me but he will be older and played by Garrett Hedlun. According to the character notes, “Ace is taking over his uncle Pop’s businesses and threatening a fragile peace with nearby Jerusalem’s Lot.” Jerusalem’s Lot? Do we have some vampires in the mix?
We’ve also got two new mysterious characters, who will be at the center of a conflict between the Merrill family and the Somali community:
Yusra Warsama is Dr. Nadia Omar. The Harvard-trained Somali medical director of a rural hospital in Jerusalem’s Lot, Dr. Omar’s rational and scientific mind will be put to the test.
Barkhad Abdi will portray Abdi Omar. The tough, older brother of Nadia, Abdi leads the charge to build a Somali community center that will deepen the roots of his people in Maine.
Castle Rock co-creator Sam Shaw told Entertainment Weekly when season 1 ended that the idea was to create a new story every season:
“Part of what we always set out to do from the beginning is tell a new story each season, to see things we haven’t seen before from the point of view of characters we haven’t met before in any season.
“That said, I think there’s something really terrific with the way Steve handles his anthology and his universe — you see Father Callahan in Salem’s Lot and then you bump up against him again in a huge way in The Dark Tower. The pleasure of finding your way back to stories or characters you’ve seen before in unexpected ways is a huge, exciting advantage of this series. I think it’s something that we can do, and allow it to be an anthology but still embrace stories and characters that we love. It just may not happen in the way that one might expect.”
What will these characters bring to the drama? And does this mean we’ll never see The Kid return to his own dimension? And never see Molly and Henry reunited? Bummer.
No word yet as to when Castle Rock Season 2 will premiere on Hulu.
