"Filter" - Castle Rock S01E06 Review

First of all, if you haven't heard, Castle Rock has been renewed for a second season. It's an anthology series, so we probably have an American Horror Story-type set-up where each of the stories explores a different aspect of a shared universe. So don't get too attached to Henry (Andre Holland) and Molly and Alan and Ruth (Sissy Spacek), because we'll probably have a different cast next season.

Although hopefully Jane Levy will be part of it. Because it seems like there's an entire story about "Jackie" waiting to be told. There's The Shining and Dr. Sleep to pick up on.

On with the recap of "Filter". The story basically falls into two parts. Henry continues hearing the ringing in the ears. When he finds old video tapes, he backtracks through the forest and comes to the two men from the ceremony and then Matthew's funeral: the deaf Odin Branch and his interpreter, Willie (Rory Culkin). Odin (CJ Jones) goes on and on about the schisma, and how it's the Music of the Spheres and the sound the universe makes when it tries to reconciles all the various past and presents. So the multiverse, or multiple timelines, or whatever.

So Odin and Willie aren't the Low Men in Yellow Coats that I jokingly referred to them in my last review. But they seem to be loosely tied in with King's whole Dark Tower saga, since that also dealt with the multiverse.

Eventually Henry meets up with them, and Odin explains Matthew Deaver created a "Filter" that would screen out all noise except for the schisma. The ringing Henry has been getting in his ears is the low tones of the schisma, and he'll hear it fully once he enters the Filter. For some reason Henry goes inside to look, and Odin locks him in. This results in Henry being overwhelmed by the ringing, and getting flashes of when Matthew had a young Henry lead him through the woods on the trail of the schisma.

In the second story, the Kid (off-screen) tells Alan he needs the Lincoln Dale killed himself in so that he can cure Ruth. Alan tracks it to a junkyard in Syracuse, and when the driver refuses to sell it, Alan draws a gun on him. When Alan returns to the Deaver house, he finds the Kid sitting out front, his hands covered with blood. Alan realizes he's been tricked, runs inside, and discovers Ruth and Henry's son Wendell are gone.

Oh, Wendell (Chosen Jacobs) arrives in Castle Rock to see his grandmother. He's mostly enraptured with his video game, but Ruth offers to tell him a secret. Wendell accepts, and Ruth explains she doesn't have Alzheimer's but is becoming unstuck in time. She uses the chess pieces as "bread crumbs" to leave around the house so she can tell when she is. A chess piece in the ice box means she's in 2018, and so on. One of the pieces is a red/crimson king: make of that what you will.

Also, Molly tells Henry he hated Matthew, and his desire to kill him bled over into her via her Shining. So he more-or-less forced her to kill Matthew. Or as Molly puts it, they killed Matthew together.

Bill Skarsgard walks around a lot, sometimes wearing Matthew's old suit, and is very ominous. Melanie Lynskey has almost nothing to do, and Jane Levy even less. The episode focuses mostly on the Deaver family, Alan (Scott Glenn), and the Kid. At the end, the Kid reveals he wants the Lincoln as a "monument" to everyone that was involved in locking him up.

So we're still left with what the connection is between Henry and the Deavers and the schisma, and the Kid taking revenge on the people who put him in the cage and kept him locked up. It also raises the question of what Dennis had to do with locking the Kid up. Or why he had to die if he didn't have anything to do with it. Heck, he was the only person who treated the Kid with any compassion. So does the Kid just cause madness with his touch and Dennis was an unintentional victim? Or did the Kid mean for Dennis to go on a shooting spree and eventually die?

Also, did the Kid force Dale to kill himself? We do see Dale touch the Kid for the first time shortly before he kills himself. But that suggests the Kid can control whatever power he has. So did he force Dennis to go on the shooting spree and his inevitable death? Or was Dale's death incidental as well.

And at the end, Wendell disappears along with Ruth. Wendell didn't have anything to do with the Kid going into the cage. Heck, Henry--Wendell's father--got the Kid out of the cage. So why did Henry apparently go after Wendell?

The question I'm still wondering is what the two stories have to do with each other, and I wish they'd get around to explaining it. Assuming they will explain it. On the one hand, we have Henry and Molly and the schisma and the Shining and Ruth becoming unstuck in time and multiple realities. On the other hand, we have the Kid seeking revenge on those who wronged him. Which includes Alan, who is connected to Ruth. Which is the only connection I can see between the two stories, that Alan is involved in both. He's Ruth's lover, and one of the Kid's revenge-targets.

We've got four episodes to go, and hopefully they'll explain some of this. Or maybe they won't, and it's intended we get two separate stories. But there's no sign I can tell of where either story is going. The Kid seems unstoppable, and the whole Henry/schisma/multiverse thing doesn't seem to mean anything. So he can hear the schisma, and Matthew was obsessed with it, and it got Matthew killed and somehow led to Henry's disappearance. Which apparently involved a chain link fence, so maybe the Shop (King's Firestarter) was involved somehow?

So even if Castle Rock is an anthology, the story or stories should hopefully go somewhere. American Horror Story had multiple stories in a season, but at least they all got an explanation and ended up touching on each other eventually. So far, I haven't seen that kind of coherence on Castle Rock.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?