'Castle Rock' Recap: 'Filter'

Written by John Edward Betancourt

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Sometimes, it seems as though you’ve completely and utterly figured out the design and flow of your favorite television series, adding a level of comfort to your mind when you settle in to watch it and other times…well despite your best efforts to predict how things are going to go…the series finds a way to surprise you time and time again, as is the case with Hulu’s Castle Rock. Because in all honesty, I really thought I had this show pegged as an ebb and flow kind of affair. Wherein dark moments would surge for an episode or so before returning us to the safety of a character study in the next tale but this week’s episode, ‘Filter’, made it clear that was not going to be the case at all since it dropped all kinds of surprises into our laps.
 
Which is fascinating because at first, it really did dupe me into thinking, a character study was on the horizon. Because Ruth was coming home, Henry’s son, Wendell was coming up to Castle Rock to see his grandma and Alan was going to be off on some foolhardy mission for The Kid and Henry finally laid his father to rest in a proper cemetery and all of this was the perfect formula to reflect upon the Deaver family past and maybe move forward through some of their issues, but once Henry discovered that The Kid was watching a few tapes of his younger self and his father roaming through the woods looking for something…all hell broke loose and it started with Molly’s unexpected confession to Henry that she killed his father, per his ‘wishes’ of course, and the wild nature of this episode didn’t end there.
 
Because Henry became completely and utterly obsessed with the void in his mind when it comes to his past and he ventured out into the woods to see if by chance he could figure out what the hell happened to him as a boy out there and why his father was so hell bent on finding some…thing and well, while this part of the story wasn’t quite the age old lesson on ‘be careful what you wish for’, it definitely sucked me in with what could be the biggest Stephen King tie in yet. Because there is now a chance that Castle Rock ties into The Dark Tower storyline in a way I never thought possible. I say that, due to the fact that Henry ran into a pair of gents out in the woods, named Odin and Wally and they were full of incredible information.

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​For starters, we learned that Henry’s dad firmly believed that something special happened in these woods, in that, the sound that Henry has been hearing for some time now is more than a mere inconvenience, it’s the sound of God and dear old dad was trying to figure out how to hear it as well. But this strange Odin fellow offered up a different explanation as to what this noise really is, in that, what Henry and others hear is a phenomenon known as The Schisma, a far reaching energy that in essence carries the universe and the multiverse with it and within its dulcet tones all of those wonders could be on display in someone’s mind, and he also revealed that he was working with Henry’s father on a device to amplify and focus this sound and well, everything he described, brings us back to my point about The Dark Tower, because this makes it seem as though Castle Rock is sitting atop a Thinny.
 
Now for those uninitiated to this part of the King-verse, in brief, a Thinny is in essence a part of the world where the fabric between dimensions has grown thin and quite frankly, that would explain so much about this particular tale. Because it is possible Henry stepped through one and into another dimension and it may explain The Kid to a certain extent, in that, he too may be from another world in the multiverse and well, there is a fifty/fifty chance that I’m right when it comes to this little theory of mine and it would be cool if the show confirms said theory because I am a huge fan of The Dark Tower saga, but I am starting to get ahead of myself here. Because whether or not this theory is true, what matters more is that the show finally brought to light the fact that something sinister truly is working behind the scenes of this storied town and who knows where this incredible twist is going to take us in the weeks to come.
 
But, I have a feeling that before we learn everything there is to know about the power/evil surging through this town, next week’s tale will have to focus on Ruth. Because in the closing moments of this story, we came to discover that The Kid returned ‘home’ after using his wiles to escape violently from the iconic Juniper Hill, and it would seem something bad has happened to Ruth and well, when all is said and done, what an episode. This one really took my breath away with its powerful pace and grand reveals and while this doesn’t answer every single question on our minds at the moment, I’ll take what it handed us in this episode because I have to know whether or not Ruth is okay and sadly, I’ll have to wait until next Wednesday to find out. Until then.

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