The Stand arrived on Thursday with The Circle Closes , a coda to the iconic story written by King himself. The episode was billed as being a new ending to the saga, a version of the story that King had been wanting to tell for three decades so, even going into things fans expected a unique experience. However, with a few details of the main story left after last week s The Stand , there are still enough elements of the novel to compare to how they re approached in the episode and the overall ending requires a little bit of explanation as well for what it changes and does not change from King s classic. Let s break it down.
Since its publication in 1978, author Stephen King has come up with three different endings for
The Stand. Somewhat fittingly, the Bible-sized tome with over a dozen central characters, each one detailed enough to be the main character in their own story about the near destruction and possible salvation of the entire human race, has drawn back King’s itchy writing finger to rethink what happens when it’s all over.
King first revised the ending of
The Stand in 1990 with an expanded edition that added a few hundred more pages. Now he’s done one more pass, writing the final episode of the CBS All Access miniseries, which just wrapped up. The differences reflect a writer who’s in an evolving relationship with the world around him.
spoilers from the Season 1 of The Stand, including its finale.
If you watched all nine episodes of the CBS All Access remake of The Stand . . . why? Why did you do that to yourself?
This is not a facetious query, I swear. I m asking because I wanted to understand why you willingly subjected yourself to nine hours of a series that established its predictability and mediocrity by the third episode. You experienced the stupidity of this version s Trashcan Man as interpreted by an actor who really should know better, Ezra Miller. Miller took one of the better-known characters from Stephen King s ginormous novel and transformed him into a slavering, blithering idiot, adding one more thing to despise atop a mountain of mediocrity.
Odessa Young as Frannie Goldsmith in The Stand . (CBS)
The episode sees a voiceover explaining how Frannie’s baby, named Abagail after Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) of course, came down with Captain Trips the plague that killed most people on earth shortly after her birth. But she also became the first person ever to overcome it, signifying that there is hope. The episode then sees Stu (James Marsden) and Frannie reunited and he gets to meet his daughter. They then travel across the country to return to Maine.
When Stu goes into a town for supplies, Frannie decides to investigate a pump in the yard. As she leans over an old well to make it work, she hears Randall Flagg’s (Alexander Skarsgård) voice. Flagg says “Hello, b ” into her ear, and she falls back into the well. Suddenly, we see Frannie is in a forest, speaking to Flagg. He shows her visions of her crumpled body in the well and Stu’s burst tire, scaring her to believe that he would never make it in time