It’s kind of amusing that it’s taken decades for Stephen King to remedy an issue he’s felt for so long, that being that Frannie was never given a proper hero arc in the third act of The Stand. The CBS All Access miniseries has concluded obviously, and with another hint that the cycle could easily continue if the images are to be believed, but not for many, many years likely. Hey, it takes a while to build to critical mass and as anyone should be able to guess, wiping out everyone all at once would be no fun since it would stop the story cold. But the way the finale ends only reinforces the idea that King, who wrote the final episode, STILL isn’t comfortable writing endings. To be fair it does go a bit beyond the book as it shows Frannie and Stu, and their little daughter Abigail, as they make their way across the ravaged US towards Maine at Frannie’s insistence, and it does give an idea that the flu-ravaged nation is going to slowly creep back into existence as more and more people begin to see to the repopulation of the lands that had at one time been so overrun with people. But as Frannie and Stu both know through their ponderings, more people tend to mean more problems, and more problems tend to mean more difficulty, which is what led to the mess that gave way to Captain Trips. King has a saying in his books, that ka, or fate, is like a wheel, and it just keeps on turning no matter how much anyone tries to stop it. Or another is that ka is like a wind, one that no one can stand against for long. It feels obvious to say that King picked this idea up somewhere and expanded upon it until the saying became his own, but it makes a great deal of sense.
Fate has a strange way of working when things are at their worst, and yet the miniseries has a slightly irritating way of omitting several moments that could have shed far more light on the story and how things have happened from one point to another. For instance, at the end of the last episode, Las Vegas had been destroyed, Flagg had disappeared, and Tom stumbled upon Stu in the aftermath. In the original miniseries Stu was sick, feverish, and half-mad from the pain. This was when Tom was at his most desperate since he had no idea what to do without Stu and didn’t know how to take care of him. This was when Nick came to him in a vision, or a dream, or perhaps as a miracle, and helped Tom with what he needed. Even better, Nick could hear and speak in this portion of the story, and it was a great boon to the gentle giant since Tom, who was yet another character that didn’t get a lot of attention in this series, has been one of the more important characters in the story. In a big way, it feels as though too many characters were set up at once and then knocked down like an afterthought once the story needed to come to a close, or when they were of no more use. Frannie falling down a well was a decent buildup to a confrontation with Flagg, but it still felt as though it was too little, too late at this point. King’s attempt to give her a hero arc came off a bit flat simply because while she did refuse him and even made him bleed, the miracle that was the young girl that healed her body felt a little too contrived, kind of like an extra life in a video game in a way.
It’s hard to say such things since King is one of my favorite authors and The Stand was such a great story, but the truth of it is that while King CAN create a great and worthy ending to his stories, it’s not something he’s able to do each and every time. The Stand didn’t end on a horrible note apart from Flagg now becoming Russell Faraday, one of his many aliases, and forcing the native tribe he’d showed to Frannie to worship him. At least one member of the tribe had the stones to challenge him, even if it wasn’t the best movie since Flagg caused the man’s head to explode only a moment after catching an arrow meant for his heart no doubt. But the point is this: Flagg is still very much around, as he was in the book, and yet the hope is that this is where the story will end since Flagg is quite obviously a force of darkness that is bound to the wheel of ka as much as anyone.
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