'Castle Rock' Ending Explained: How do Annie and Joy deal with their problems?

Castle Rock is a psychological horror TV web series. The characters, themes and settings are created by Stephen King in his fictional town of Castle Rock. The show stars Lizzy Caplan, Ruby Cruz, Paul Sparks, Barkhad Abdi, Yusra Warsama, Elsie Fisher, Matthew Alan, and Tim Robbins. The season 2 of the show has a thrilling and scary ending, which leaves the audience with a lot of questions. 

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Castle Rock ending explained

The episode starts with Nadia and Abdi lining the tunnel from the construction site to Marsten House with dynamites. Annie warns them that only after she rescues Joy, they can blow up. This turns to the worse as Joy’s friend Chance is also captured and taken into the house. Annie runs inside it, informing Augustine and his men that the tunnels are lined with bombs and also requests them to take Joy outside.

Pop Merrill takes the policemen inside the tunnel and shoots them before they can attack Naida and Abdi. Pop reaches the house and dies in the blast before Augustine’s men catch him. The ritual is set to happen at dusk and it is expected that Joy will take Amity’s spirit. The blasts lead to all the possessed people getting their sanity back and Joy stabs Augustine. Annie and Joy run from there.

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Leaving such trauma behind them, Annie and Joy resume their road trip and reach Canada. Annie takes up a job as a caretaker of a bed-ridden man, but Joy is not the same. Her moody and weird behaviour makes Annie believe that she is still possessed by Amity’s spirit. This becomes worse when Annie hears Joy discussing plans with a deep-voiced man on the phone.

Annie now starts to consider her daughter as a threat. Annie mixes anti-psychotics inside Joy’s bowl of ice cream, but Joy realises that she is getting drugged. Annie forces the ice cream in Joy’s mouth and they get into a physical fight. Joy successfully frees herself from the clutches of her mother and runs outside to the lake. Annie catches up with her and drowns Joy in the water.

Annie is shocked at her act and returns home, only to find a letter from Joy that explains to her that she needed to live alone for a whole and she was talking to a lawyer to get herself emancipated. Annie rushes to the lake, shocked at how she drowned her innocent daughter. She revives Joy, who starts believing in the narrative that she had fallen in the lake and Annie had saved her.

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After that, Annie and Joy start living a happy and normal life. They start their road trip once again, and Joy is content to live with her mother. Annie and Joy then attend a book-signing of Paul Sheldon, where he reads his book Misery. Annie is infatuated with the books. As the event begins, a person asks Annie if the seat beside her is taken and snaps at him saying, ‘Of course,’ but the seat is empty. It was all Annie’s imagination and she had truly drowned her daughter.

Castle Rock Season 1 ending saw how Henry Denver realised that The Kid is possessed by Satan himself and he is, in fact, the devil. Castle Rock Season 2 has a similarly heart-wrenching ending. Castle Rock ending shows how even the relationship between a mother and daughter can get ruined because of simple misunderstandings. 

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