Hello everyone and welcome to the Stephen King cast, One Man's Musings on the Works of Stephen King.

Once I reviewed each of his works in the chronological order of publication, but Ka is a wheel, it all goes round again, and here I am once more to examine each of the endings of the works of Stephen King to determine whether or not King deserves his reputation for having an inability

to successfully land his endings.

The focus of the podcast is going to be to examine the climax following action and resolution

of the endings of each of his novels and break it down by character, themes, conflict, and

plot.

To determine whether or not it meets the criteria of being an objectively good ending,

I will also weigh in on whether or not I like the ending.

So today what we are going to be discussing is the conclusion to the last Castle Rock story, Needful Things. And I was excited to get back into Needful Things, because as I've said over the last couple episodes,

we have hit a point in King's publishing career in which he is dipping into very big ideas and more overt displays of magic and supernaturalism.

He still keeps his worlds grounded in a recognizable reality through the character interactions

and the setting in this case of Castle Rock.

But we're seeing the scope of the stories start to expand and have it filled with like I said more supernaturalism

and characters who are in this case of Leland Gaunt incredibly outwardly villainous

and characters using literal magic.

And this, for some people, is a turnoff who want more, quote-unquote, grounded stories from King.

And that's understandable.

So I went into this wondering what Castle Rock was going to look like once I just analyzed the ending itself. Before I get any further, I'm going to read the Wikipedia summary so that we have a basis to talk about the ending.

A new shop named Needful Things opens in the town of

Castle Rock, Maine, sparking the curiosity of its citizens. The proprietor, Leland Gahn, is a charming

elderly gentleman who always seems to have an item in stock that is perfectly suited to any

customer who comes through his door. The prices are surprisingly low, considering the merchandise,

...