Twin Peaks Meets IT: Welcome to Derry in Hulu’s 2-Part Stephen King Series

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While there are a lot of great Stephen King adaptations on the small screen, one Hulu show that blended Twin Peaks with It: Welcome to Derry remains an underrated two-season cult classic. Since Stephen King’s debut novel Carrie became a bestselling hit in 1974, the prolific author has been the first name in American horror fiction. Some of the greatest horror movies of all time, from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining to Brian De Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Carrie, are based on King’s books.

However, before It: Welcome to Derry gave viewers new insight into one of the fictional Maine towns at the center of King’s fictional universe, an earlier Hulu anthology show, Castle Rock, attempted something even more ambitious. Effectively a mashup of the small-town supernatural soap opera drama of Mark Frost and David Lynch’s Twin Peaks and the grittier horror of HBO's later success It: Welcome to Derry, Castle Rock adapted numerous King stories at once by populating the titular town with classic characters like Annie Wilkes and Ace Merrill.

Castle Rock Adapted Dozens of Stephen King Stories Simultaneously

Before Castle Rock debuted on Hulu, the fictional town of its title had shown up as the setting of numerous King novels and short stories. Thus, it was no shock to avid readers of the author when the show revealed that Castle Rock was home to many of King’s iconic creations. With a star-studded cast that included Lizzy Caplan, André Holland, Melanie Lynskey, Sissy Spacek, Tim Robbins, Rory Culkin, and It: Welcome to Derry’s own Bill Skarsgard, Castle Rock was an impressive ensemble piece.

However, the show was more than just a collection of famous faces playing new takes on familiar King characters. In 2013, CBS’s earlier three-season King series Under the Dome attempted to adapt King’s novel of the same name from 2009, but the show fell apart when it came time to bring all its disparate plot threads and mysteries together at the end. Castle Rock learned from this error and instead offered viewers a surprisingly diffuse and ambiguous story where characters intersected, but their plots never felt tidily linked.

Castle Rock’s Ambition Was Also The Stephen King Adaptation’s Undoing

Castle Rock the Kid's aged and deformed face

Of course, like Twin Peaks itself, the show’s most obvious creative inspiration, Castle Rock eventually struggled to keep so many separate plot strands going without a clear main storyline running through them. Castle Rock never quite brought together all its King stories in its two seasons as clearly and satisfyingly as the more direct It: Welcome to Derry did later. Instead, the show felt more like Twin Peaks and its spiritual successor Fringe, constantly hinting at big revelations without necessarily finding the necessary connective tissue between its stories.

Fortunately, the creators of Castle Rock always planned for the show to end after two seasons, meaning this sense of opaque ambiguity wasn’t accidental. Where It: Welcome to Derry promised to finally explain Pennywise, the town’s curse, and all the unsolved mysteries left behind by King’s 1986 doorstopper It, Castle Rock was only ever intended to be a peek into the title town that left viewers as uncertain and unnerved as Twin Peaks had done decades earlier. Thus, Castle Rock's blend of Twin Peaks and It: Welcome to Derry achieved its plan admirably.