Netflix Just Quietly Added The Most Underrated Stephen King Spinoff
Bill Skarsgård is even there!
Stephen King never really goes out of style, but recently, every facet of his work, from the heartfelt (The Life of Chuck) to the terrifying (The Long Walk) and the dystopian (The Running Man), is getting a share of the spotlight. On television, meanwhile, the HBO Max original series It: Welcome to Derry is providing a prequel story for the It movies, and significantly fleshing out King’s universe in doing so.
But years before Welcome to Derry, another series did the “world of Stephen King” anthology show in a far more ambitious format — and you can watch both bone-chilling seasons on Netflix.
In 2018, Hulu released Castle Rock, a horror thriller series with a fascinating premise: most of the cast had previously starred in a different Stephen King adaptation. Real estate agent Molly Strand is played by Melanie Lynskey, who starred in the TV movie adaptation of Rose Red, adoptive mother Ruth Deaver is played by Carrie’s Sissy Spacek, and there are multiple cast members from 2017’s It, including Bill Skarsgård.
The plot is a winding mystery that borrows from several of King’s recurring themes, and even incorporates familiar names like Shawshank. However, this isn’t a prequel like Welcome to Derry; there aren’t any origin stories or nostalgia-bait moments. Instead, this series crafts its own mythology and version of King’s world. Season 1 focuses on Henry Deaver (Andre Holland), a high-powered lawyer who revisits his hometown and faces a mystery both in his past and present. Season 2 shifts its focus to Castle Rock’s version of Misery’s Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan) as she deals with a cult and reflects on her familial issues.
But the true strengths of Castle Rock aren’t in its season-long arcs, but the individual episodes. Season 1 Episode 7, “The Queen,” isn’t just the best episode of Castle Rock — it was lauded as one of the best episodes of TV of 2018. It follows Spacek’s Ruth Deaver on a non-linear, paradox-filled journey through her failing memory, painting a haunting depiction of dementia while folding in on itself in an extremely satisfying way. The series recognizes that TV episodes aren’t just chapters in a book; they’re self-contained works of art.
Castle Rock’s “The Queen” is a revolutionary piece of non-linear storytelling.
Castle Rock was canceled after two seasons, but if 2025 is anything to go by, it was just ahead of its time. Now that it’s streaming on Netflix, a new audience — and a newly-educated wave of Stephen King fans — can discover it all over again.
