WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the Castle Rock Season 1, Episode 6 "Filter," now streaming on Hulu.


One of the more prominent reoccurring themes in the works of Stephen King is the notion that the past will eventually catch up to all of us. Sometimes characters spend their lives trying doing the right thing, spreading love when it was needed most, and being the best person they could have been with the resources they were given. Other times, the pasts of those characters are littered with malicious intent, horrific transgressions and dark secrets they thought were buried for good (which we all know it never really is in horror fiction). The real kicker is tha,  good or bad, righteous or rebellious, there is always some nugget of heartache or horror that will comes back around for the majority of King’s characters.

Castle Rock continues in that tradition masterfully in the episode “Filter.” Now that we have more miles behind us than ahead this season, the skeletons in closets are beginning to lumber out, and the implications of their bones are as terrifying as a toddler revenant. In fact, the real horror may lie within what we have yet to discover in this sleepy New England town. The splintered mind of Ruth Deaver and her unique coping mechanisms, the inexplicable connection (a Shining, perhaps?) between Henry Deaver and Molly Strand, and the real motivations of “The Kid” are all coming into focus, and that focus is aimed to the past.

Revelations Fit for a King

The uncovered truths in this episode operate on both personal and larger, potentially world-changing levels. When it comes to the former, we learn why Molly euthanized Henry’s injured father. The murder of Matthew Deaver may have been at Molly’s hands, but it was at Henry’s will. Andre Holland gives a fantastic performance in the scene as a man who suddenly recalls a dark element from his own childhood he had long suppressed or else completely forgotten.

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Another personal moment of the past causing a character to do rather unorthodox things involves former-sheriff Alan Pangborn, who's so deeply troubled by his past that his head might as well be a haunted house. After allowing the currently headless former warden of Shawshank State Prison, Dale Lacy, drive off with “The Kid" in the trunk, Alan Pangborn is trying his best to atone. And that involves acquiring the car in which Warden Lacy committed suicide so he can save the only person he seems to love, Ruth Deaver. It’s a noble endeavor, but it also feels like he might be making a deal with the devil … even though Pangborn asked “The Kid” if he was, in fact, the devil and he said no. That lily shark-eyed creep seems pretty trustworthy. Right?

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That’s what this episode seems to be leading toward in a big way. In classic King fashion, characters like Pangborn and Molly Strand appear to be on a collision course with something terrible (perhaps each other) because of the things they’ve done. Even Henry is facing his own absenteeism as a father when his son Wendell (played by It’s Chosen Jacobs) comes to visit. If these characters are making a deal with the devil, then the devil is in the details of their pasts.

The Darkness Beyond

Castle Rock - Filter

The macro version of this whole thing comes in an almost Blair Witch-like moment. Henry has discovered he remembers less than he originally thought after viewing videos recorded by Matthew Deaver of father-and-son forest explorations. King loves the notion of an inherent evil, something that lives beyond our realm of understanding.

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Sometimes that comes in the form of an interdimensional, shape-shifting, cannibalistic clown, and sometimes it’s a world of the dead populated by Lovecraftian monsters that can only be seen through channeling lighting through the human brain. Yet, on Castle Rock, what exists beyond the town, deep within the woods, right behind the Deaver residence, may very well be malevolent. Evil is often measured by the pain of man; a shark isn't necessarily evil to a seal, but that's difficult to rationalize when man becomes the prey.

It would seem that not only the sins of the past haunt those who commit them; the sins of the father still haunt the son. Henry learns that all too quickly after doing some investigative work in the hopes of learning why his dad was dragging him out to the woods at all hours of the night. The answer comes from one of the men who knew Matthew, an elderly man named Odin Branch (played by deaf actor C.J. Jones, who you probably remember from Baby Driver), and that answer is: “The voice of God.” Now, this answer was probably not what Henry had hoped for, but it’s the one he got. The only unanswered question now is, “which god?”