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

If you are listening to this, please note that this is the second part of a two-part Needful Things review.

What happened was I finished recording the review in its entirety.

I tried to upload it.

It was too long, so I just wound up splitting it in half. So if you're listening to this, make sure that you listen to the first part

before you listen to this. And if you have listened to the first part, keep on listening.

Like I said, King teases the events yet to come in the final pages of Part 1.

When Gaunt acknowledges to himself that business is so good, it's time to take on an assistant.

The reader immediately sits up at that.

Who would an assistant to Leland Gaunt even look like?

Would that assistant be even human?

King gives us the answer to these questions nearly right away. He provides a great introduction, or reintroduction, rather, to an iconic King character, if you count the movies.

Played with the snake-like charm in the classic Stand By Me by Jack Bauer himself, Kiefer Sutherland, the villainous Ace Merrill, has returned.

If it's the last Castle Rock story, then it's necessary to include its bully,

and King acknowledges that he acknowledges the body with the names of the characters from the novella.

Despite the fact that Castle Rock is a town that has existed since the early days of King's career,

there aren't many characters who we've seen bounce from story to story.

Buster, Polly, Norris, Allen, all of these characters are characters that were first introduced or mentioned only two books ago with the dark half.

So there isn't much story with these players. So when Ace strolls into the place, he brings that sense of history.

History within the text as it's referenced by the townsfolk, but history outside of the text for the reader as well.

And at this point in his career, King hasn't created just one Merrill character, but two, with Pop Merrill

from the Sun Dog.

...