Hulu has officially ordered a second season of Castle Rock, the streamer's horror anthology series based on the various manglings and stranglings of Stephen King. The series' first season—coming up on its sixth episode—has been one heck of a gory good time, telling the story of a devil with an above-average looking butt played by perennial boogeyman Bill Skarsgard who seemingly brings death and despair to the fictional ill-fated town of Castle Rock. (It's a hop, skip, and a jump-scare away from clown demon-infested Derry and vampire playground Jerusalem's Lot.)
According to THR, the series quickly became Hulu's most successful original series on the day it was launched. The streaming network also noted the possibility that series creators Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason would not go the American Horror Story route when it comes to a cast. Ryan Murphy's FX horror anthology is well-known for largely keeping its core cast over eight seasons, opting to throw them into different scenarios and continuously staple increasingly dumb things to Evan Peters' forehead. It's a formula, it works. Castle Rock, however, is eyeing the idea of starting over fresh with an entirely new cast as well as a different story plucked from the Stephen King Extended Universe.
Speaking to THR, Thomason said that, above all else, the creative team wants to keep things surprising (and didn't exactly rule out any season one characters coming back):
"I think that just as the books do, we want to surprise viewers with the ways in which the stories intersect. Just as the places the characters pop up in very unexpected ways throughout the books, that's the kind of anthology that we would like to tell. One of the things about the King universe or multiverse is that some very strange things can happen when it comes to the ways that the stories unfold, and hopefully there'll be surprises along the way in terms of how the anthology works in that way. It's pretty delicious that Kathy Bates played both Dolores Claiborne and Annie Wilkes when you really think about that question in the movie adaptations. But I think that there's something for us about being faithful to the way that Steve does it in the books, that almost feels like the anthology format has already been laid out for us."
A possible premiere for Castle Rock's second season is still anyone's guess, but until then keep up to date with our own Dave Trumbore's on-going Easter Egg hunt throughout season one.
