‘Castle Rock’ Season 2 Casts Lizzy Caplan in Iconic ‘Misery’ Role

Castle Rock Season 2 will tackle a Stephen King classic, with Mean Girls and Masters of Sex star Lizzy Caplan filling some big shoes in an iconic role.

The focus of season two will be on Misery, the 1987 Stephen King book that was later adapted by director Rob Reiner with James Caan as author Paul Sheldon and Kathy Bates as his psychotic fan and nurse Annie Wilkes.

Caplan will play the role of Wilkes in the second season of the Hulu original series, portraying the character before her murderous tendencies from the King novel. According to IndieWire, failed travel plans bring Wilkes to the titular town.

The Mean Girls star joins a large cast for season two of the anthology series, including Elsie Fisher, Barkhad Abdi, Tim Robbins, Garrett Hedlund, Yusra Warsama, and Matthew Alan.

Fisher will play Wilkes’ daughter Joy in season two, her first since breaking out in the Bo Burnham’s Eighth Grade. Hedlund will take on another iconic King character as Ace Merrill — possibly setting the stage for the inclusion of elements from King’s Needful Things in a future season. The description for Hedlund’s character also mentions a “fragile peace with nearby Jerusalem’s Lot,” leading IndieWire to predict that some elements from Salem’s Lot will appear too.

Season 2 of Castle Rock doesn’t have a premiere date just yet, but it has some great company alongside other King projects coming out across the next year. The first season of the series featured references to past Stephen King works like The Shawshank Redemption, Cujo, and Stand By Me. IndieWire adds that Wilkes will be the first original King character to be drawn from his works, as Andre Holland’s character in season 1 was an original to the series.

Fans of Stephen King won’t have to wait long before getting satisfaction. While Castle Rock has no premiere date, fellow King projects like Pet Sematary and It: Chapter Two dropping in 2019.

The remake/re-imagining of Pet Sematary will hit theaters in April and features its fair share of King references on its own. It also has an interesting connection to Castle Rock that caused them a little trouble during production.

“We embraced that but set rules on it. Wherever we could, if something would tie into the world and would be there, we’d do it,” Pet Sematary director Dennis Widmyer told SyFy Wire while discussing the use of a sign for King’s iconic Derry in the film. “In the book, it was Jerusalem’s Lot, but Castle Rock, the TV show, went and did that before we did. We actually built the sign. One of the only CGI things in that whole scene is we had to change Jerusalem’s Lot to Derry because they already did Jerusalem’s Lot. But she would be passing Derry an hour and a half south of Ludlow.”

You can stream Castle Rock season 1 on Hulu. Pet Sematary hits theaters on April 5.