‘Castle Rock’ Episode 3 Recap: “Local Color”

Castle Rock Episode 3 belongs to Molly, unveiling her abilities and past, her goals and strengths, and her connection to Henry. When her neighbor went missing in ’91, Molly crept into his house at night, donned his flannel coat—and surely some part of him in the process—and found his parents’ room. She regarded the bandaged reverend, clinging to life with a broken back, then pulled his air tube and watched him die, Henry’s restless mother sleeping across the room. (Did she see?)

All the years Henry’s been haunted by blame, Molly’s been tortured by the actual act. In 2018 she dreams of a snow-filled church where Rev. Deaver is preaching in his gauze to a congregation of other bandaged faces. (Shades of the Night Shift cover.) “Who were you to overrule the will of my lord?” He asks Molly, before turning to Corinthians for some foreshadowing, booming: “Not all will sleep, but all will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised, imperishable, and we will all be changed.” Bring on those horns.

It’s not the first time she’ll be shamed before a crowd. Molly’s presently pill-less dealer—his pal asking how many Minions she killed to make her jacket, highlighting that she’s a walking Low Men in Yellow Coats reference—directs her to some dingy cabins for her fix. There she stumbles into a dimly lit mock trial held by Neverland rejects in crude papier-mâché masks of animals and crumpled, Michael Myers–type faces. They’re having a relatable deliberation about whether a victim was maimed by someone close to them rather than a stranger. (Another Shawshank nod with the “crime of passion” line. And in one prison scene, don’t miss the pic of old Warden Norton on the wall next to Lacy.)

“I’m not guilty, your honor,” a kid says, “but the person who murdered is in this courtroom.” He points at Molly, and the kids whose mommies are out drinking and daddies are in Shawshank (“All of them?”) re-traumatize her with a “guilty” chant. The judge declares she’s “remanded to the death house,” which is just another cabin where he, actually the dealer she’s seeking, will finally hook her up. Or not, since the cops appear and Mollz spends a night in a downtown cell scrapping with “a prostitute who can unhinge her jaw like a python.”

Henry’s at the jail on mystery-prisoner-related business and gets Molly out. She’s thankful but has to get away from him. “I have a medical condition. I feel things.” (Henry, not missing a beat: “People do that.”) “Some people are louder than others,” she explains, confiding that as a kid she couldn’t get him out of her head—literally. She told him as much when they were young and she caught him burning a VHS with his name on it and muttering, “Fuck you, dad.” She said she knew what he did in bed at night. “Touching your thing. Feels like fireworks,” she whispered. “I can’t explain it, but I can hear what you’re thinking and feeling. When you’re brushing your teeth. When you’re out in the woods, it’s like I’m out there with you.”

“Things happen when we’re together,” she tells Henry in 2018, looking like he has no memory of that conversation. “And it can be overwhelming. And sometimes I can lose track of myself, and I cannot afford to do that again.” The last time being…the dad-killing?

They put a pin in that so Henry can rush her to her local TV appearance. She skips her spiel about revitalizing the town to do something about the storm she’s overhearing in Henry’s head. She reveals there’s a man at Shawshank “locked in a tiger cage, no trial, no arrest. And this is just the latest in a pattern of abuses by our local authorities that stretches back decades. So, yes, I think Castle Rock is ready for a little change.”

Suddenly the warden’s acknowledging Mr. Mute’s existence to Henry and offering a $300,000 settlement if he’ll say he was wrongfully convicted—and nothing else. Henry tells his client to keep his name secret, even from him. “If you’ve got no name, you’ve got no charge, no crime, no story.” Mutie only wants to know, “Has it begun?”

Henry breezes past the odd question. “I say we employ the tried and true legal strategy of ‘go fuck yourself.’ Sounds better in Latin.” They’ll hustle him through the courts and file a civil suit, after which he’ll “own the whole damn county. Turn this place into your boat garage.”

Read the room, man! Read the client. Whose response—again, totally natural—is, “How many years old are you?” Henry tells him 39, then starts seeing something in that blank face, a hypnosis that deepens with the next flat query: “Do you hear it now?” And time’s up, the former mute hauled away.

Know who else said that? Henry does, ’cause it was his dad, out in the woods that fateful winter. But we only got a glimpse, through terrified young Molly, breathing a puff of cold forest air in her bed. The next snippet was Henry bolting while pops called his name.

Before the drug-hunting and jail and corruption-exposing, Molly found that vandals had trashed a house she’s trying to sell, one where she’s been stashing Henry’s old flannel and missing poster, still intact. (“Cool murder basement,” mused Jackie Torrance, lending a hand and a steady flow of invective about the suicide-inspiring “hellscape” of Castle Rock. Her name is exactly the lead of The Shining plus an I and an E—is she special, or just a red herring where they actually won’t draw a connection?) Molly returns at the end to hear a bump on the second floor, suddenly becoming the star of a slasher film, grabbing a butcher knife, climbing unfamiliar stairs like she did in ’91. This time it’s not to murder a reverend but to face his gauze-y ghost, which vanishes just before reaching Molly, leaving her to stew in her sin another day.

ONE GREAT CONSTANT READER EASTER EGG

Molly’s dealer is named Dean Merrill, not a canon member of the large Merrill family, but its members tend to leave a mark. Bully Ace Merrill is the antagonist of “The Body” and Leland Gaunt’s whelp in Needful Things; his grandfather Pop is central in “The Sun Dog,” while Haven constable Ruth McCausland, née Merrill, is big in The Tommyknockers, which features a slew of Merrills.

ONE THRILLING THEORY

We’ve seen C.O. Zalewski alone in that room with the wall o’ TVs enough times to bank on them becoming a canvas for something truly terrible. And he’s handsome, planning a better future, expecting a baby, and chatting up Mr. Mute, so…good luck getting through this one, buddy. Every King creep loves to collect/consume/convert a child.

Zach Dionne is a Mainer who recommends last summer’s Gwendy’s Button Box, a slim Castle Rock story King wrote with Richard Chizmar.

Watch Castle Rock Episode 3 ("Local Color") on Hulu