The 'Castle Rock' second season comes to a bittersweet ending in this final episode of the series. It's prefaced with the often-invisible spirit of Chrysilda Wilkes (Robin Weigert) exhorting Annie Wilkes (Lizzy Caplan) to 'clean' her daughter Joy (Elsie Fisher), a euphemism calling for Joy's departure from this world. The detonation of the Marsten House brought a sudden end to the drama involving Pop Merrill (Tim Robbins) and the denizens of the four-hundred-year-old cult founded by Amity Lambert. In a way, that was just a bit too abrupt, as it assumed that all of the vessel bodies were finally destroyed, but how would anyone know without further exposition. Presumably, The Kid (Bill Skarsgård), shown turning his back on the events at Castle Rock and New Jerusalem, has survived for another day (or millennia) to use the dimensional portal in Castle Lake. If you didn't blink, the 'Missing' poster of adult Henry Deaver at the Backwater gas station was a nice touch, along with Annie's taking up with the Paul Sheldon 'Misery' novel, a harbinger of Annie's character appearing again in a Stephen King novel and subsequent movie, of which this was a long awaited prequel. The very ending of this episode would have been perfect for a Stephen King cameo at the book reading, but since King wasn't directly involved in the writing of this series, it's probably why he didn't appear on screen.
Review of Clean
