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.