“No, coronavirus is NOT like
The Stand,” the author wrote of his 1978 novel about a superflu that wipes out most of humanity and the moral stand the survivors make afterward. “It’s not anywhere near as serious. It’s eminently survivable. Keep calm and take all reasonable precautions.”
I’ve often wondered since whether King has thought differently about that statement, through a year when most Americans have been confined to their homes, watching the death toll from COVID-19 rise around the globe into the millions.
I wondered this again while watching
The Stand, the CBS All Access limited-run series based on King’s novel that ended this week. This new version started filming in September 2019 and wrapped in early March 2020, just as the pandemic became truly wide-spread and scary for Americans, upon becoming local news. If
The Stand arrived on Thursday with The Circle Closes , a coda to the iconic story written by King himself. The episode was billed as being a new ending to the saga, a version of the story that King had been wanting to tell for three decades so, even going into things fans expected a unique experience. However, with a few details of the main story left after last week s The Stand , there are still enough elements of the novel to compare to how they re approached in the episode and the overall ending requires a little bit of explanation as well for what it changes and does not change from King s classic. Let s break it down.
By the time you read this, I will be dead. No wait, I mean, CBS All Access will have released the final episode of
The Stand, their new miniseries based on Stephen King s epic pot-apocalyptic novel of good versus evil. And to mangle T.S. Eliot, rather than with a bang, this regrettable adaptation has gone out like a wet fart.
Expectations were high for a more King-friendly product after the 1994 miniseries was forced to pull punches for network TV. CBS and series developers Josh Boone and Ben Cavell promised a more faithful (read: R-rated) treatment for the material. Good news for everyone who felt all that was missing from the 94 show was f-bombs and simulated intercourse