WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Castle Rock Season 2, Episode 9, "Caveat Emptor," now streaming on Hulu.
Horror legend Stephen King has taken more than his fair share of strolls through apocalyptic landscapes over the course of his long, illustrious career. From the searing epic The Stand, in which a virus eradicates much of humanity, to the white-knuckle zombie terror of Cell, King has explored global catastrophes through both wide and narrow narrative lenses. The casts of characters in these stories vary in size, but the scope of destruction mostly remains the same. However, when that scope narrows to one specific community instead of the world, King’s builds some of his most memorable stories. And Hulu’s Castle Rock has reproduced that affinity for communal Armageddon in the episode “Caveat Emptor.”
The fictitious New England town of Castle Rock is no stranger to terrible occurrences. The ostensibly bucolic setting has been terrorized by a notorious serial killer, a rabid Saint Bernard (which may or may not relate to the aforementioned murderer), and an antiquities dealer who pushed the town to the precipice of total destruction. “Caveat Emptor” continues this trend. With Ace Merrill and countless residents of the titular town, as well as the neighboring community of Jerusalem’s Lot, closing in on Pop and a handful of survivors, Castle Rock has turned into a localized apocalyptic nightmare. The tone has gone from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Night of the Living Dead over the course of a single episode.
“Caveat Emptor” opens up with a shot of an eerily empty road, establishing that things in town are “far too quiet.” Of course, it becomes apparent this is just the calm before the storm when a high-speed car chase, and subsequent shoot-out, unfold immediately afterward. Survivors who have not been influenced by the ancient evil possessing Ace & Co. have barricaded themselves inside the Emporium Galorium to fend off the turned townsfolk with extreme prejudice. The gang brought together by serendipitous moments widens as Annie and another small group make their way into Pop’s store, only to find themselves being grilled by what’s left of the Merrill clan. The entire episode unfolds like an hour-long zombie film, even ending in the eventual breach of the survivors’ safe haven.
“Caveat Emptor” play out like the climax of a Stephen King novel that was never written, but it is far from being unfamiliar. Other towns have undergone similar calamities. In the 2009 novel Under the Dome, the town of Chester’s Mill is subjected to the most insane circumstances (it’s in the title, for those curious) while the rest of the world watches. And while there isn’t a direct group of possessed body-snatching monsters the victims of the titular dome have to contend with, there are folks within the narrative who exploit the small town's vulnerable state. After all, Big Jim, the novel’s main antagonist, is just as big of a monster as Ace, but at least the Merrill boy has an external excuse.
One could also draw parallels between Castle Rock and the 1996 novel Desperation in terms of the potentially larger apocalyptic ramifications that could occur if the possessed villain were to gain the upper hand. In Desperation, a deputy possessed by an ancient evil is quickly deteriorating as the entity starts to “outgrow” its host (and yes, it’s as gross as you’d imagine). Now, the ancient entity possessing Ace seems snug as a bug in his host, but if the turned townsfolk of Castle Rock were to see things through, there could be horrible implications for the rest of the world.
The biggest small-town apocalypse story Castle Rock is drawing from is 'Salem’s Lot, which makes sense, seeing as how so many landmarks from King’s sophomore vampire-horror novel appear in Castle Rock. In fact, a massive portion of the show centers on or takes place within Jerusalem’s Lot. In the second half of the novel, the villainous blood-sucker Kurt Barlow and his cronies have turned an alarming number of residents into vampires, leaving our heroes vastly outnumbered and out-fanged. Eventually this leads to those left alive attempting to burn down the town, specifically the old Marsten House, a source of evil in both Castle Rock and ‘Salem’s Lot.
Castle Rock borrows heavily from the themes and horror tropes Stephen King helped popularize in modern horror fiction, giving the show a very strange relationship to the source material it frequently apes. The opening credits of each episode proclaims the show is based by characters and settings by Stephen King, but the connection goes much deeper. And while the town has yet to go up in flames (despite Ace having the upper hand), there are enough "heroes" still standing to stop the madness from spreading ... or not.
Streaming now on Hulu, Castle Rock Season 2 stars Lizzy Caplan, Tim Robbins, Elsie Fisher, Paul Sparks, Barkhad Abdi, Yusra Warsama and Matthew Alan.