The second season of the Hulu series Castle Rock introduces a new lead character, but her name will be very familiar to fans of Stephen King. Anne Marie “Annie” Wilkes, played by Lizzy Caplan, is the central figure of the season’s story. For viewers who know her only from the iconic film Misery, this version presents a younger, more complicated woman long before she imprisons her favorite author in a remote cabin.
This season explores her life on the run, her struggle with severe mental illness, and the traumatic past that shaped her. It asks a compelling question: how does a frightened young mother trying to protect her daughter become one of literature’s most terrifying villains?
The Troubled Origin of Annie Wilkes
In Castle Rock, we learn about Annie’s difficult childhood, which set her on a painful path. She grew up in Bakersfield, California, with parents who were in denial about her struggles. She had a learning disability and violent outbursts, one of which led to her expulsion from school after she beat a classmate with a lunchbox. Her parents refused to get her professional help, choosing to homeschool her instead.
Her father, an aspiring writer, was close to Annie and shared with her the idea of “The Laughing Place”โa perfect, safe haven that would later become her lifelong obsession. This fragile family life shattered completely when Annie discovered her father was having an affair with her tutor, Rita Green. In a moment of rage, Annie confronted him and accidentally pushed him down a staircase, killing him. She then kidnapped Rita’s infant daughter, her own half-sister, and raised the child as her own daughter named Joy Wilkes.
A Life on the Run with Joy
By the time Season 2 begins, Annie and Joy have been living a nomadic life for years. Annie works short-term nursing jobs, steals antipsychotic medication from hospital supplies, and they move on before anyone asks too many questions. She is desperately trying to manage her mental health, which includes symptoms of psychosis, and she is fiercely overprotective of Joy, who is the center of her world.
Their journey is a search for the mythical “Laughing Place,” a permanent home where they can finally be safe and settled. This search brings them to Castle Rock, Maine, where a minor car accident forces them to stay temporarily. Here, Annie, using the fake name Anne Ingalls, tries to create a normal life. She takes a job at the local hospital and even gets a legitimate prescription for her medication from a doctor named Nadia.
However, peace is short-lived in Castle Rock. Annie’s past and her unstable present collide when the town’s volatile dynamics pull her in. She becomes entangled in a violent feud between the established Merrill crime family and a newly arrived Somali community. When Ace Merrill, a member of the crime family, threatens Joy, Annie’s instinct to protect her daughter leads her to kill him, setting off a chain of supernatural and violent events.
Connecting to the Annie Wilkes of ‘Misery’
For Stephen King fans, Annie Wilkes is the infamous antagonist from the 1987 novel Misery and the 1990 film adaptation where Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for the role. In that story, she is a former nurse who rescues romance novelist Paul Sheldon from a car crash, holds him captive, and tortures him into writing a novel to revive her favorite literary character.
The Castle Rock version is not a direct, literal prequel but rather an exploration of the character’s potential origins within the show’s own version of the Stephen King universe. The show’s creators present a younger Annie, focusing on her humanity and trauma before she becomes the full-fledged monster fans know.
Lizzy Caplan consciously incorporated elements of Kathy Bates’ iconic performance to create a believable link. “I wanted to have our Annie feasibly be able to become that Annie in the future,” Caplan told Variety. “I wanted to have a few shadesโฆ of her performance in my own”. This includes Annie’s distinctive physicality, her avoidance of profanityโusing silly words like “dirty bird” or “fudge” insteadโand her deeply unsettling mix of charm and menace.
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Mental Health and the Supernatural in Castle Rock
A core part of Annie’s character is her severe, untreated mental illness. She self-medicates with a cocktail of drugs like Risperdal, Haldol, and Lithium to keep her hallucinations and psychosis at bay. When she runs out of medication in Castle Rock, her grasp on reality weakens. She begins seeing visions of a mysterious tall man with a bloody face, making it difficult for her to distinguish between real threats and her own paranoid delusions.
This personal instability mixes with the supernatural evil lurking in Castle Rock and the neighboring town of Jerusalem’s Lot. The show suggests that the town itself has a dark power that preys on people’s fears and trauma. As co-creator Dustin Thomason explained, “What happens when you put someone who is struggling with their own issues in circumstances where the world seems to be telling them that they’re crazy? Itโs a perfect storm for Annie”.
The Cast and Creative Vision
Lizzy Caplan leads the cast as the complex Annie Wilkes. Elsie Fisher plays her daughter, Joy, the one person Annie loves above all else. The season also stars Tim Robbins as Reginald “Pop” Merrill, the patriarch of the crime family, and Barkhad Abdi and Yusra Warsama as siblings Abdi and Nadia Howlwadaag, who lead the Somali community.
The season weaves Annie’s personal story into a larger narrative about immigration, belonging, and conflict. The creators set the story in the modern day to tell a relevant immigration story, even though it shifts the timeline from King’s original Misery setting. They viewed Annie herself as a kind of immigrantโa person without a home, desperately searching for one.
โAt some level Annie, herself, is a person without a home โ a person who had been searching for a home for a long time,โ said co-creator Dustin Thomason.
Castle Rock Season 2, consisting of 10 episodes, premiered on Hulu on October 23, 2019, with the finale airing on December 11, 2019. The series was planned for only two seasons and concluded with this story.
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