Castle Rock season 1, episode 10 recap: Romans

Castle Rock’s finale leaves us with some lingering questions. Will we end up getting the answers in a future season?

Castle Rock doesn’t quite have things all figured out in “Romans,” but that’s okay (for now). We kick off with a scene of Henry in court and he’s finally looking comfortable. This leads into a flashback to Dale Lacy visiting the Kid back in his cage. He points a gun at him, but doesn’t pull the trigger. He also mentions that he never had kids because of him. That’s quite the powerful statement to make.

Back in the present day, we see Ruth standing on the bridge again. Meanwhile, the Kid is talking to Molly and mentions that he’s known her all her life. He explains that the schisma is some sort of door that ties the two dimensions together. Molly calls Henry and some crows cause him to crash his car. However, Molly gets enough of the call to know that she should help go find Ruth.

Ruth is talking as if they’ve been through this all before when Molly asks her to come down from the ledge. Ruth doesn’t expect this response (props to Sissy Spacek for her reaction) when Molly mentions her and Henry leaving Matthew and moving to Sarasota one of those times.

Warden Porter finds a figure on a table in her house. We later see her walk up to Molly’s office since it was a figure the Kid had left. She turns to leave and right after she says that Lacy was right, she’s hit by the prison bus. It’s a brutal way to go and the chaos clearly continues while the Kid is out and about.

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Matthew apparently knew about Ruth and Alan, which isn’t all that surprising. He tells Henry that the two of them will live pure and he cites Romans 6:23. Henry runs away because he doesn’t want to lose Ruth and that’s exactly what Matthew implies will happen.

Henry is relatively fine after the crash and is able to make it home. We see Wendell in the woods after the cops have found Oden, but we already knew he was dead. At the house, Henry is met by Molly and Ruth. Ruth wants to know where the queen is and Molly tells him about the Kid coming to her and telling her his version of events. The Kid is over in Harmony Hill Cemetery.

The cops take Henry in after Wendell tells him about the sound in the woods and he’s questioned about Oden’s death. Molly pay him a visit and tells him where the Kid is. The cops go to arrest him and he’s at the Deaver boy’s grave, which is him in this timeline if you believe his version of events. It’s just that here, he didn’t make it and grow up to become Henry Deaver.

Things are already weird at this point, but the more Henry and the Kid talk, the more believable his story is. Chaos is going to continue in Castle Rock as long as he’s wandering around. If the sound stops, he misses his chance to return to his timeline. The Kid knows about Romans 6:23, too. There are just too many things that he knows for it to be reasonable to say that he figured that all out from his time at the house.

One of the moments that didn’t make a lot of sense to me was when Jackie brought Ruth some tea. As far as I can remember, Jackie mostly interacted with Molly, the Kid, the new homeowners (who didn’t last long) and Henry. It was a brief moment, but it made me wonder if she had another reason for being there.

When Henry and the Kid are in the cell together, things get out of hand as the prisoners cause a ruckus. The cell keys end up at the Kid’s feet and we see everyone in the police station dead. Well, almost anyway. Willie uses his dying breath to tell Henry not to go out there. The two make their way to the woods and the Kid points a gun at him. The Kid says he doesn’t want to hurt Henry, which is exactly what Matthew said to him before. This triggers a flashback to Henry pushing Matthew off the cliff and down to the frozen lake. When Henry grabs the gun from the Kid, his face changes and looks pretty demonic.

After that, we pick up one year later and a lot has changed. Ruth is also dead (her tombstone says she died on February 13, 2019). Molly has a commercial running on TV for her business and it looks like Henry is there to stay. Wendell is with him for the moment, but we don’t get any indication if he’s there full-time.

Shawshank is shut down, but we find out that Henry is keeping the Kid back in his cage again. On Christmas Eve, he brings him and burger and fries. The Kid understandably wants to know how long they’re going to keep this up for and Henry doesn’t have a response for him. The Kid mentions how things turned out for Lacy and there’s a slight concern that comes across Henry’s face as the Kid smirks a bit.

Jackie was a fun, but possibly underutilized, character in this and we see at the end that she plans on writing a book about Castle Rock. She talks about her killing the professor and she wants to basically tell the story of all of the weird happenings in the town. One can’t blame her for wanting to capitalize on that. It makes one interesting story. The episode then ends with her mentioning going out west and we know that her title for the book is Overlooked, which gives a nod to the Overlook Hotel and her uncle Jack.

A lot happens in this episode and some loose ends remain. However, it mostly ties up the story. I found myself wanting to know what happened to Ruth and that’s one of my main gripes with this episode. We jump a year ahead and she’s just gone without much reason. I hope we see at least some of these characters in future seasons though to tie together the stories down the line. Overall, I had fun with Castle Rock and this episode was a fine ending for the season.

What are you hoping to see in the second season?