Spoilers ahead for the Season 1 finale of Castle Rock on Hulu.
The first season of Hulu's Stephen King-inspired Castle Rock has come to an end, and the finale leaves almost more questions than answers as Henry Deaver locked The Kid back up in Shawshank despite The Kid's attempts to lure Henry to the woods and return to his own world. The good news is that the show was renewed for a second season, but we shouldn't count on all our questions being answered in the next batch of episodes. Castle Rock is after all an anthology, and a mid-credits sequence set Jackie Torrance up to star in the next season, rather than Henry or Molly or anybody else. Co-creator Sam Shaw revealed that he'd like to expand the world of the show in the second season, saying this:
Here's where we'll probably be infuriatingly tight-lipped, but what I would say is that we would sure love to see Jackie explore the Overlook Hotel. Part of the fun of season 2 and beyond will be seeing what some of the questions [will be]. The penultimate episode of this season points to the idea that there are other worlds than these, and in this final tag there's this sense that there are worlds of Stephen King's that this show may explore eventually that are more far-flung than the state of Maine.
The mid-credits sequence of the Castle Rock finale saw Jackie reading part of a story she'd written aloud to a friend, and it was a bloody affair that fit with Jackie's personality, choice of name, and family history. Her friend wasn't overflowing with praise, and he even took issue with the name: Overlooked. Jackie explained that the title refers to "ancient history" and "backstory" that can be overlooked. She also revealed that she would be heading out west on a "research trip," all of which points toward Jackie checking out the Overlook Hotel.
Scenes earlier in Castle Rock indicated that The Shining story more or less took place in that universe, so a research trip to the Overlook could yield some interesting results. A lot may depend on whether Castle Rock's version of The Shining ended differently than the book, because the book ending was not exactly the same as the infamous movie ending. Basically, the mid-credits scene set the stage for Season 2 to move the action out of the titular Castle Rock. As Sam Shaw said in his comments to EW, there are a lot of places and presumably thrilling stories going on outside of Maine.
If the goal is indeed to take the action out of Maine, viewers hoping for a Castle Rock take on IT should probably prepare themselves for another Pennywise-less season. Also, given the fact that Castle Rock is evidently an anthology that follows different characters in different stories rather than an anthology a la American Horror Story that uses the same cast to play different characters year after year, we probably don't want to count on Bill Skarsgard ever playing Pennywise on the Hulu series. Still, perhaps the show could find a way to bring The Kid and Henry and Co. back in Season 2. I'm just sad that the deaths of Alan and Ruth means no more Scott Glenn and Sissy Spacek in the present.
All ten episodes of Castle Rock Season 1 are currently available to stream and binge-watch on Hulu, among many options on that streaming service. There's plenty of broadcast network TV shows on the way as well, so there's plenty to look forward to this fall.
