Castle Rock season 2 trailer reveals the first look at everyone’s favorite No. 1 fan: Annie Wilkes

Looking forward to more Stephen King horror? Hulu has released the trailer for Castle Rock season 2 and it will terrify you.

We have known for some time that the second season of Stephen King’s and J.J. Abrams’s Castle Rock would not be featuring any of the characters from the show’s first season. With all the major plot threads tied up by the end of the finale, fans did receive a hint of where the second season might be headed.

Curious fans (myself included), expected season 2 to pick up with the plot thread left dangling in the mid-credit sequence of the finale (“Romans”). In that tease, we saw Jackie Torrance (Jane Levy, Evil Dead) decide to head west to research her family history for a book she was writing.

Since that finale of the first season last September, fans now know that Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House) will be returning to the world of The Shining, with Stephen King’s Doctor Sleep releasing later this year. Did Flanagan’s project derail the intended plans for Castle Rock? We may never know; but hopefully, fans will eventually see where Jackie ends up in her travels.

With no returning characters, and seemingly no connection to season 1, where does that leave season 2? Enter Annie Wilkes (played by the excellent Lizzy Caplan, Cloverfield). The decision to bring a beloved King character to the screen in a prequel style role might be raising a few questions for fans of the Misery novel and film.

More: Castle Rock season 2 receives an official release date. 

In both of those previous versions, Annie is never seen or mentioned as being on the east coast. However, as we learned with season 1, Castle Rock is taking inspiration from King and his characters, but nudging them into different directions than previously read or seen.

Friday the 13th brought the first glimpse of Caplan’s Annie (who is channeling Kathy Bates), and where season 2 of the show might be headed. In the trailer, we see a bit of Annie’s tragic story, her wanted posters and more than a few shots which progressively show her becoming more unhinged.

Also interesting to note, is that we don’t see Castle Rock in the trailer, but eagle-eyed King fans will notice another familiar location: Jerusalem’s Lot. It is unclear how much of season 2 will take place here, or if we are seeing Annie on the run, and taking a tour of King’s favorite haunts.

Fans of the series can expect answers and, in traditional Abrams style, more questions when Castle Rock returns on Oct. 23 on Hulu. Along with the previously mentioned Caplan, season two will also star Tim Robbins, Garrett Hedlund, Elsie Fisher, Yusra Warsama, Barkhad Abdi, Matthew Alan, and will once again be executive produced by J.J Abrams and Stephen King.