Gird your cock-a-doodie loins: Annie Wilkes has found herself waylaid in Castle Rock and she has enough syringes to go around. The official trailer for season two of J.J. Abrams and Stephen King’s Hulu series Castle Rock has dropped and it focuses mostly on the sinister nurse from King’s 1987 novel, Misery, here played by Lizzy Caplan.
“We’re searchers, you and me,” Wilkes tells her daughter (Elsie Fisher) at the start of the clip. “But you deserve a chance to make a place in the world. See, I’m a searcher who just wants to settle. Wants it bad. Just can’t seem to find that place that will live up to you, my perfection.”
In this season of Castle Rock — a show that melds myriad King storylines and characters — Wilkes settles in the titular town, which is on the brink of war with the neighboring town of Jerusalem’s Lot, a.k.a. Salem’s Lot. Those who have read King’s 1975 novel by that name will know that the Lot has its share of demons — as in, it’s literally infested with vampires.
The creatures will likely make an appearance in the new season, as the trailer features a shot of the broken down Marsten house, otherwise known as Vampire Ground Zero.
Wilkes seems more than a match for the otherworldly denizens of the Lot, though. On the run from her murderous past (in Misery, she killed more than one patient), she first tangles with Reginald “Pop” Merrill (Tim Robbins), a crime family patriarch pulled from King’s novella, The Sun Dog, who claims that Annie has “brought a host of problems to my town.” Along with Pop, there’s also an array of unseen victims whom Annie takes down with syringes and scissors in a shower of blood.
Creepy parades, pagan rituals and dire warnings that something wicked this way comes, Castle Rock season two looks to be a mélange of some of the best Kingian scares. The show premieres October 23rd, but a teaser will go live on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter Wednesday, October 2nd, at 9 p.m. ET. According to a release, it will feature a 13-minute drive (from the driver’s POV) to Jerusalem’s Lot.
King has had a fruitful year in terms of new projects and adaptations: He just released his newest novel, The Institute, as well as the film IT Chapter Two, while a remake of Pet Sematary hit screens earlier this year.
