Castle Rock

Shawshank State Prison hides an unregistered inmate.

“Warden Lacy told me the devil was a boy, and Old Dale caught him and locked him in a box.” Thus retired sheriff Alan Pangborn (Scott Glenn) warns Shawshank’s new warden, who has replaced Lacy (Terry O’Quinn), recently dead by suicide.

Yes, it’s that Shawshank: Hulu’s popular new series Castle Rock (rated TV-MA for occasional foul language and scenes of violence) borrows many of horror-fiction master Stephen King’s settings and characters. Viewers have taken a shining to a complex mystery that, true to King, straddles the psychological-supernatural fence, even if it explores (as of Episode 5) no serious worldview questions. Executive producer J.J. Abrams sustains a good riddle through flashbacks, high-budget visuals, and a top-notch cast.

The story revolves around Henry Deaver (André Holland), an attorney for Texas death-row inmates who returns to his Maine hometown after receiving a cryptic call from someone inside Shawshank prison. Most Castle Rock residents aren’t happy to see Deaver, though, and that’s not because he’s an African-American in the “lily-white” town: They’ve long suspected him in the death of his adoptive father 25 years earlier. As a preteen, Deaver disappeared for 11 days in the dead of winter, but returned without a trace of hypothermia. At the same time, his adoptive father, a local pastor and Shawshank chaplain, suffered a serious injury and died.

Yet it seems everyone in town is hiding something. Each episode floats more information about increasingly puzzling characters. Realtor Molly Strand (Melanie Lynskey) has an unusual psychic connection to Deaver. Deaver’s adoptive mother (Sissy Spacek) is shacking up with Pangborn. And Lacy’s captive, now a young man (Bill Skarsgård), has spent years locked inside a bear cage in an unused wing of the prison.

Castle Rock portrays Christianity—including believers and Scripture—as quaint but apparently no match for evil. If the “boy” is the devil, then, what can be done?