TV
The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch: Home Sweet Homestead (S7E5)
Welcome back, fellow ranchers! As penance for last episode’s disgustingly long UAP dump, and the fact that I don’t have anything interesting this week, I think we’ll just get right into the meat and potatoes of Season 7 Episode 5 of The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch. And, trust me, it is a doozy from start to finish. From donor schmoozing to someone with fake credentials, Season 7 doesn’t continue to disappoint.
Maybe the secret of Skinwalker Ranch is that you can have whatever occupation you want as long as there’s a chyron supporting it. Seriously, does Mormon millionaire Brandon Fugal/The History Channel think people won’t do a slight ounce of research? Has The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch jumped the shark? Hmm, maybe that was the secret after all.
Let’s just say there are no rockets fired this episode, but it definitely heats up.
Governor Spencer Cox Gets a Crash Course in Skinwalker Ranch
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center – 9:10 AM
Kaleb Bench stands alone outside of the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center as Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox arrives. Governor Cox is brought into the command center by Kaleb, where he is introduced to Mormon millionaire Brandon Fugal, Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, and Thomas Winterton. We’re told that Governor Cox has attended briefings on UAPs in the past, which would indicate his current interest in Skinwalker Ranch. More importantly, Cox has been asked by the public about Skinwalker Ranch.
Governor Cox goes so far as to say the ranch is fascinating and nearly everyone around the area has a story about it. But he finds the previous government experiments on the ranch, under the previous owner, Robert Bigelow and NIDS, to be very concerning. To show the Governor that things continue to remain weird, Brandon Fugal decides to make half of this episode a bottle episode and show him all of the strange happenings on the ranch over the past six seasons.
They start by telling the Governor about the extracted materials of manufactured origin from within the Mesa (the Type A and Type B ‘ceramics’). Brandon Fugal even tells the Governor about the tests run with the scanning electron microscope at Utah Valley University. Dr. Travis Taylor makes sure to add that the materials exhibited characteristics of modern aerospace materials. Erik Bard then shows the Governor a video of the Type A material disintegrating and then rebuilding itself under the microscope. Which, if it were from literally anywhere else, would be extremely compelling.
Homestead Two Returns to the Skinwalker Ranch Investigation
Travis takes over and brings up The Triangle (though he doesn’t really talk about The Bubble or The Blob). He makes sure to mention how The Triangle causes data corruption, disturbance, and anomalies.
But now we bring up the main topic of Season 7 Episode 5, Homestead Two. We haven’t truly been to Homestead Two in The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch in far too long. And, apparently, Homestead Two was one of the main focuses of study during the Bigelow era. Travis reveals to the Governor about the radiation burns he sustained in Season 1 from Homestead Two. And Brandon brings the focus back to himself when he mentions the multiple portals that were captured at Homestead Two.
The portals were a heavy topic at one point in this show’s past. Travis even had Rabbi Ariel Tzadok to host a Hebrew ceremony on the ranch near Homestead Two. While this ceremony was going on, there was a very distinct portal-like cold spot that appeared in Homestead Two. Hoping to cash in on what they’ve seen in the past, Travis says that a Navajo shaman will be coming to the ranch in a day to hopefully replicate the results.
The Mesa Drill Reveals a Mysterious 45 MHz Signal
Mesa Drill Site – Later That Day – 1:13 PM
Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Thomas Winterton, Kaleb Bench, Technologist Pete Kelsey, and Sam Deriso join Triple A (Jed Murray and Bo Camp) and Dr. Jan Francke at the Mesa Drill Site.
So far, the drillers have made it 11 feet into their vertical borehole. While the drilling continues, Dr. Jan Francke will run more GPR scans. Dr. Jan Francke has basically created the modern trajectory of the Skinwalker Ranch team, and it’s always great seeing him join the team. He has scanned a good portion of the Mesa, but now he wants to get a part of the Mesa that has gone long unscanned: the face. Dr. Francke wants to see this oblong-shaped object from all angles.
The drilling starts, and the scanning begins. Dr. Travis Taylor and Kaleb Bench walk the GPR scanner all the way down the mountain. Dr. Jan Francke’s GPR scanner is running at 45 MHz, but that will come into play soon. Travis and Kaleb complete their walk down the Mesa and get a full scan. So they shut the GPR off.
That’s when they receive a mysterious 45 MHz signal. And it’s coming from the Mesa. It really seems like the Mesa (or the object within) is just toying with them at this point. Is the Mesa communicating? Is the object communicating? Who knows! I’m sure we will find out in Season 20.
Questions Surround Maddy Farrer’s Neuroscience Credentials
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center – The Next Day – 4:37 PM
Dr. Travis Taylor, Thomas Winterton, Erik Bard, and Kaleb Bench are standing outside of Skinwalker Ranch’s Command Center. A few cars pull up, and out of the driver’s seat comes Jim Morse! I’ve looked through my notes and genuinely can’t figure out the last time we saw him on Skinwalker Ranch, let alone the show proper.
Along with Jim is EEG expert Maddy Farrer, Ret. Navajo Nation Ranger Jonathan Redbird Dover, and Medicine Man (or Shaman as Dr. Travis Taylor constantly refers to him) Art Hardy. Now, here’s where things get tricky. Travis mentions that Maddy is a neuroscientist from UVU. Being as skeptical as I am, my girlfriend and I decided to look into this (she’s smarter than me).
Aside from the issues I have with how she works an EEG the main issue I have with her is she’s possibly lying. If she’s a neuroscientist, that means that she is either a practicing doctor OR working in the field of neuroscience research. The name Maddy Farrer comes up nowhere on UVU’s multiple search engines, nor anywhere on PubMed. 30 minutes of deep internet research reveals NO ONE with that name and description ANYWHERE on UVU’s sites/the internet.
The Homestead Two Ceremony Sets Up a New EEG Experiment
In Season 7 Episode 3 “Setting Boundaries,” Dr. Haleigh Lundgreen is referred to as DOCTOR Haleigh Lundgreen. Dr. Jan Francke is referred to as DOCTOR Jan Francke. This implies that Maddy is in the research field. But with no published research, it’s hard to believe she has literally any credibility in this field whatsoever. Sure, maybe she got married and changed her name, but the fact that I could find zero information on her regarding UVU or neuroscience with her [potentially] married name means that this show could potentially be trying to pull one over on us.
We’ve seen the same thing in Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch.
Where were we? Oh yeah. Art Hardy will run a ceremony near Homestead Two in the hopes of instigating a reaction from something. After the ceremony, they will descend deeper into Homestead Two for more refined instigations. Once they are in the depths of Homestead Two, Maddy will place an EEG cap on Art’s head to measure every aspect of Art’s brain.
The Ceremony Is About to Begin
Homestead Two – 5:43 PM
Dr. Travis Taylor, Thomas Winterton, Sam Deriso, Jim Royston, Technologist Pete Kelsey, Kaleb Bench, Maddy Farrer, Art Hardy, and Jonathan Redbird Dover set up for the ceremony at Homestead Two. Erik Bard is monitoring the events from the Skinwalker Ranch Command Center. David Mason joins back up with the team and hooks up some LiDAR devices and high-speed cameras, all pointed at Homestead Two.
Maddy runs an EEG test on Art for a baseline reading. Thankfully, his brain scans show normal readings. Could you imagine if he found out he had something wrong with his brain from this “doctor?” Now, they wait until dark.
The 1.6 GHz Signal Returns During the Homestead Two Ceremony
Homestead Two – 9:31 PM
As stated earlier, Art Hardy says he wants to provoke or instigate whatever is going on with Skinwalker Ranch. However, this is completely at odds with many of the indigenous people who have previously been on the ranch. Others who have been on the ranch either plainly refuse to step on the ranch, while others say that they must treat the ranch with extreme respect or else. There’s a deep level of fear and respect that indigenous people have for Skinwalker Ranch, and Art’s goal of provoking and instigating the ranch seems…odd.
Art begins the ceremony and requests that many parts of it not be recorded. Thankfully, producers oblige and don’t record most of it. As the ceremony goes on, Dr. Travis Taylor notices the ever-dreaded 1.6 GHz signal. Sam Deriso uses his directional antenna and confirms the signal is coming from Homestead Two!
While the ceremony continues, Travis takes his handheld spectrum analyzer and heads out to Homestead Two. He is joined by Thomas Winterton, Kaleb Bench, and Pete Kelsey (who is rocking his SLAM scanner). They arrive at Homestead Two and head into one of the houses. They are able to isolate the signal, but cannot figure out what its source is. That’s when David Mason’s FLIR shows a hot spot forming over Homestead Two.
It appears Art’s ceremony is having an effect on Skinwalker Ranch.
The Homestead Two EEG Experiment Produces Strange Results
Now that the ceremony is complete, it’s time for the deeper Homestead Two test. Before that, Maddy puts the EEG cap on Art again. But this test yields more interesting results; Art’s brainwaves are all over the place. It shows a high frequency, which indicates extreme stress. Even though Art is just sitting there, still.
Keeping the EEG headset on, Art heads into the first house on Homestead Two. Once inside the house, the EEG headset loses connection to Maddy’s computer. He comes outside, and it instantly reconnects. Maddy is very confused as she says this has never happened to her before, and the headset has a 30-foot range.
Now that comms have been reconnected between the headset and the computer, Art heads back into the house. But, as expected, it loses connection again. It reconnects when Art sticks his head out of the window. This is enough to make the team lose it and wonder if Homestead Two is hindering the EEG signals. Maddy decides to use a second headset.
The Team’s EEG Experiment Raises More Questions Than Answers
This whole thing feels bunk to me. Of course, the headset lost connection! These tools are meant to be used when a patient is sitting down! Maybe there is a 30-foot range, but that’s when the patient is stationary! This is just another example, like the Kracken, of the team using actual science to force results in their favor.
Now that Art has a second headset, he is joined inside the house by Kaleb Bench and Maddy. If you could have guessed, there are no issues with the connection now. (Maybe that’s because the computer is right next to the damn headset!) When Art, Kaleb, and Maddy entered the second house, Sam Deriso received the 1.6 GHz signal. AND as the signal comes through, Maddy notices an even higher frequency band of Art’s brainwaves.
Reviewing the Homestead Two EEG Data and UAP Anomaly
Skinwalker Ranch Command Center – The Next Day – 11:27 AM
Dr. Travis Taylor, Erik Bard, Kaleb Bench, Thomas Winterton, Sam Deriso, and Pete Kelsey are joined by Maddy Farrer via video call.
Maddy starts off the data review by showing Art Hardy’s brain scans. We see an extreme shift in his brainwaves as he steps inside the first house at Homestead Two, even though Art was very calm. They all discuss how the EEG headset kept losing connectivity. Rather than understanding why it lost connection, they just discuss how whatever anomaly exists on Skinwalker Ranch probably affected the results.
Erik Bard pulls up data from his Meta-Frame. We see, as the ceremony goes on, an odd feature appearing over Homestead Two. This large mass appears hundreds of feet in the sky directly above the Homestead. What’s weird is that it stays there for the entire ceremony and then vanishes. Did the ceremony cause it? And…was it a UAP?
Final Thoughts on The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch Season 7 Episode 5
Look, I’m not stupid. I know The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is, at the end of the day, entertainment. The goal of this show is to entertain viewers and bring them back each week. But there can also be scientific merit within entertainment. This whole Maddy Farrer/EEG thing, though, might be close to a camel-back-breaker for me.
At this point, this show just becomes dishonest. How can we believe a single thing they tell us when a simple Google search won’t bring up information on a supposed neuroscientist? Or when they continually use tools the wrong way? I loved the portal stuff when it was initially mentioned, and I was so glad that we were finally heading back to Homestead Two for more portal experiences. But we could have done without the whole brain scan shit.
It turns out that The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch is money!
The works of Stephen King are back in the spotlight once again, if they ever really left. Mike Flanagan’s Carrie series is set to release on Amazon Prime this October 7th, and the heat is on. This would be the fourth run at the tale of a tortured psychic girl suffering through serious religious trauma and bullying; it’s also the first successful television series adaptation. Famously, the 2002 TV film was supposed to serve as the pilot for an extended Carrie series, but that never got off the ground.
There’s a variety of reactions to the show already; from complaints about getting another Carrie White that doesn’t look like Carrie White, to thoughts about introducing other psychic students into the story. It’s fair to say there’s, at the very least, renewed interest in re-evaluating the many adaptations of Stephen King’s works. Old habits die hard.
There’s a ridiculously large swath to choose from, ranging from the obvious classics like The Shining and Pet Sematary, to irregulars like The Langoliers and The Night Flyer. If you’re feeling especially bold, you might try a King original like Storm of the Century or Rose Red (I’m overdue for a watch of Storm anyways). But among all these lies one of the strangest and most forgotten King adaptations. One that was sold as an adaptation of a single novel, but is really a spiritual sibling to the entirety of Stephen King’s canon. That adaptation is the SyFy original series, Haven.
The Silver Age of Supernatural Television Drama
The development of Haven sits smack dab in the middle of what I would call the Silver Age of Supernatural Television Drama. The hypothetical Golden Age that precedes it isn’t pinned to exact years but rather defined by a few masterpieces of evergreen television. These are the shows throughout the ‘90s that really impacted cable TV at large. The obvious cultural touchstones of the genre: The X-Files, Twin Peaks, and most importantly Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which would see monumental success. They were rapidly followed by the likes of shows like American Gothic and Roswell. I would count Smallville too, but again, blurry edges.
The Silver Age then is marked by an explosion of shows, not necessarily being created as knee jerk reactions to that success, but certainly heavily inspired by these network defining hits. Shows that enjoyed the episodic “monster of the week” format while retaining a focus on the interpersonal drama between its characters. They debuted as their progenitors ended or went late in their run, effectively meant to “replace” them.
This time saw the rise of J.J. Abrams renown with the shows Alias, Fringe, and most importantly, the mega-hit Lost. The most successful of all of them, Eric Kripke’s Supernatural, is still reverberating through pop culture today after its 15 year long run. And for my fellow Warehouse 13 enthusiasts, you know that this is the era that the highly underrated show thrived in.
Also, MTV’s Teen Wolf was there too, I guess.
From The Dead Zone to Haven Island
Among these much more successful shows was an odd little Stephen King adaptation: USA Network’s The Dead Zone. It was a very fast and loose interpretation of King’s novel of the same name. You know the one: go into a six-year coma, come back with psychic powers, meet an evil politician, race to stop him from causing the end of the world. Also, Anthony Michael Hall is here too, I guess.
As one might expect, the premise was rife with procedural potential. Despite a solid initial viewer base, The Dead Zone ran for 6 seasons before being cancelled due to waning ratings. But two of its writers, Sam Ernst and Jim Dunn, ended up as showrunners for a similar but even stranger translation of King’s work: a television adaptation of the book The Colorado Kid called Haven.
When The Adaptation Is Unrecognizable
Haven premiered in July of 2010 on SyFy, joining during a great (if not the best) era for the network. There were phenomenal runs going on with Merlin, Warehouse 13, and later the American remake of Being Human. And, unsurprising to anyone who got 20 minutes into the show’s first episode, “Welcome to Haven”, it fit in much more with those shows than it did with its source material. In fact, the premise betrayed all expectations for fans of the novel.
What The Colorado Kid Is About…
For context: the book is about an intern at a newspaper, Stephanie, trying to solve the bizarre death of a nameless drifter with her new bosses, Dave Bowie and Vince Teague. Details are sparse, and what few the trio have just don’t line up. What results is a hard-fought battle to finally crack the case of who, or what, killed the Colorado Kid. More importantly, The Colorado Kid is pretty explicitly a mystery novel about mystery novels; it has a victim, but there’s little information about the killer, and that’s intentional.
The blank space in this case is the focus. King is really more interested in observing how an audience interfaces with a mystery and what makes them so compelling. He spells all this out as much in an afterword, down to explaining why he wanted to write the story and his perspective on “wanting” an answer being better than “knowing” the answer.
…Is Far and Away from Haven’s Premise
The TV show Haven, however, is very, very different. The show follows FBI agent Audrey Parker (Emily Rose), who is drawn to the town to investigate the inexplicable murder of a criminal who escaped federal prison. When it’s revealed he was killed by impossible means, she soon discovers a phenomenon known as “The Troubles”: the sudden and often subconscious manifestation of dangerous supernatural abilities in the townspeople of Haven. As Audrey realizes her past is intertwined with The Troubles, she attempts to solve the mystery of what’s causing them and who she really is as she becomes entrenched in the lives of Haven’s locals.
Different versions of newspaper owners Dave and Vince, as well as The Colorado Kid himself in season 2, do show up in Haven. But fundamentally, the show is an entirely different beast tonally. It is far and away from the novel, and strangely enough, that was at Stephen King’s request. He initially told Ernst and Dunn when the show was being pitched to ABC to spice it up with more supernatural elements.
Hence, how it ended up as a monster of the week show on Syfy. Double hence, how it became an unrecognizable adaptation of a hardly supernatural book. If I had to compare it to any of the Golden Age shows, it’s most obviously inspired by The X-Files. That being said, it’s hard not to draw comparisons to Fringe. Especially given how, like Fringe, Haven becomes really, really serialized rather than episodic.
A Flat, Kind of Cheesy First Season That Grows on You
The initial monster of the week format set up in Season 1 does carry into the following four seasons, but it becomes very clear that there is a main mythology that will take precedence by early Season 2. While the supernatural mysteries that make up the bulk of the episodes are solid (see episodes 1, 4, 6, 8, and 10 through 13 for the best of the first season), they’re mostly establishing the groundwork for Audrey’s personal narrative arc.
The mysteries are also the backdrop for Audrey’s budding love triangle with local handsome cop Nathan Wournos (Lucas Bryant) and local handsome rogue Duke Crocker (Eric Balfour). The romance is kind of terrible, and unfortunately very frequent since they’re often cooperating to solve the mysteries together.
So, that’s all I’m going to say about it in an effort to be kind.
Haven Season 2 Deepens Audrey Parker’s Mystery
Haven’s first season is mostly tame, erring on slightly underwhelming, with some very cheesy dialogue and drama. The characters aren’t nailed down as anything but loose pastiches until the last several episodes. By then, they’ve built some weight and dimension to them. Where Season 1 leaves off is a pretty solid cliffhanger that will have you at least curious enough to venture into Season 2 if you’ve watched this far. It serves as the first big bite into the intrigue of the question “Who Is Audrey Parker?”, which is the central pillar of the show.
Season 2 is much more engaging, and the episodic mysteries feel much more significant and dangerous. Eventually, the mythology around Audrey and the Troubles sprawls out into a maze of even more questions involving secret societies, split personalities, time travel, and tears in the fabric of reality. That last bit might stand out to fans of The Dark Tower series, and that’s because I’m talking about exactly what you think I’m talking about (no spoilers!).
A Stephen King Adaptation About Stephen King Stories
The show is only somewhat effective at establishing its mythos around Audrey and The Troubles. But I have to appreciate it for what it manages to do in the process, especially throughout the second season as it gives us one good solid villain to follow in the malicious Reverend Driscoll. He is a classic King-style villain, and an embodiment of what Haven really excels at. The same way that The Colorado Kid is a mystery novel about mystery novels, Haven is a Stephen King adaptation about Stephen King Stories.
This goes beyond the fact that they’re effectively trying to find a new person with the shine every week and stopping them before they have their own personal “Black Prom” level meltdown. The show is chockful of references, small and large (the vast majority are sight gags referring directly to Stephen King stories) to his writing. There’s an abundance of episodes whose plots are overtly reinterpretations of King’s works, especially in season two with various homages to It, Maximum Overdrive, and The Dark Half.
And even when the show doesn’t have a one-to-one analog with a King story, it excels at stocking Haven Island with a variety of secondary characters that genuinely feel like the cast of a Stephen King book. The dialog might be corny and the residents strange, but it does feel like a lived in setting, a hallmark of the author’s many fictional small towns in Maine (which get namedropped a decent amount in the show, obviously, they’re all neighbors). Also, when we get the answer of who exactly Audrey is, it actually does end up connecting to the greater Stephen King mythos in a way that is surprising and kind of fun, even if the ending is a little underwhelming and gives Buffy finale flashbacks.
Haven Isn’t Half Bad
At the end of the day, I can’t confidently say Haven is a great show. Especially with how it drags in a lot of places (that double-wide trailer of a fifth season is particularly egregious). It can be exceptionally hit or miss. But it’s so uniquely dedicated to recapturing the vibes of a Stephen King story, that I have to admire it when it does succeed, when some might find that a futile task. Paradoxically, the further it gets away from the source material it was barely riffing off of, the more King it feels.
It is at the very least an incredibly unique show in the Silver Age of Supernatural TV, and if you can tolerate the melodrama of your Supernatural’s and Warehouse 13’s, you’re likely to find some amusement in it even if you’re tuning in and out while watching it. More than ten years out now from Haven’s 2015 finale, it’s safe to say the series won’t click with everybody, but for fans that enjoy homages to the prolific horror author’s extensive repertoire, you’ll be hard pressed to find a show that shows more love to King than this.
Let’s look back at a time none of us really want to…December of 2020. Trump is in the final few months of his first term as President. The nation is still in the midst of the COVID pandemic. With dictatorship, political and social unrest, and a pandemic sweeping the nation, it felt like either the best or the worst time for something like The Stand to return to American pop culture.
The Stand’s miniseries remake came out in 2020. Generally, the consensus is pretty negative. The original Mick Garris series from the 1990s is also very flawed and received an extremely mixed reception, but it has also garnered a bit of a cult status. None of this is too surprising, seeing as the novel is a grandiose epic that is a daunting task to adapt perfectly. Regardless of iteration, though, it unfortunately seems like a fairly relevant text for troubled times, and seems to continuously return to the zeitgeist in times of recession or despair. So…why exactly does it keep coming back?
The Stand in the 1990s
The Stand was originally published in 1978, and was a smash hit. For those unfamiliar, the novel is a post-apocalyptic, fantasy-horror epic concerning the outbreak of a deadly disease called Captain Trips’. Groups of pure-of-heart Survivors are brought together by premonitions of a psychic woman named Mother Abigail. She is a symbol of everything good in the world. Meanwhile, a demonic drifter named Randall Flagg begins to collect vagrants to build a fascist regime out of a gutted Las Vegas. Commercially and critically, the novel struck a chord with audiences everywhere. King was well-known already for Salem’s Lot, Carrie, and The Shining, so a horror-adventure epic felt like the next step for him. In the 1990s, a complete and unabridged edition was published, clocking in at over 1100 pages. This edition is where the novel’s political analysis can really start.
One notable detail changed from the 1970s edition to the 1990s uncut version is the inclusion of contemporary details. The timeline was changed to cement the book with a sense of timelessness. One haunting detail in particular is the comparison of the disease to the AIDS epidemic, which was devastating the country in the 1980s and 90s.
While the comparison is not a major detail of this changed text, it feels very purposeful in its playing into the politics. With the fictional Captain Trips’ connection to the U.S government’s failure to help/control the disease, one can feel the frustration with the Reagan cabinet’s handling of the pandemic during the 1980s. The miniseries premiered in the 1990s as well, so it makes sense that some of these same frustrations might be the catalyst for the book’s first major adaptation.
The Stand in 2020 and 2026
This was touched upon in the intro, but like the 1990s, 2020’s decision to adapt might have lined up perfectly with the world’s current affairs. COVID and Trump are clear, commonly stated comparisons to Captain Trips, as well as Randall Flagg. With Trump back in power in 2026, the CDC is gutted, giving way to poop lettuce and a rise in Measles. One can begin dog-earring the old mass market paperback of The Stand and pull their collars in nervousness.
Randall Flagg’s attention to Las Vegas coincides with Trump’s love of all things gold and grand. The faux-royal look, with redecorations to the White House and a hideous ballroom, might remind constant readers of Randall Flagg’s move to Las Vegas. All of the garishness is but a fake distraction, decorations so his followers do not see that the promises are all fake. At the end of the day, it is all designed to serve Flagg and Flagg only. It might be time for another adaptation soon…
Apocalypse fiction, and Hope rooted in Horror
The Stand is a testament to the power of horror and genre fiction. The reason horror has maintained its cultural relevance more than any other genre is its relevance to cultural fears and worries. All the way back to Night of the Living Dead, the genre had recognized the world around it and found ways to tell stories to allow a sense of escapism, and an outlet for anxiety. The Stand is possibly the greatest example of this.
The Stand will always be relevant, unfortunately, because there will always be Randall Flaggs. There will always be Captain Trips’. This incarnate evil will always exist in some capacity in society, in one way or another. However, there will also be Mother Abigails. There will always be Tom Cullens. The Stand exists for catharsis, yes, escapism, yes, but also as hope.
As we see at the end of the novel’s extended edition, Randall Flagg does not die-he just is reborn in a different time period. On the other hand, after Mother Abigail’s death, she continues to speak to the survivors as well. There will always be evil, but there will also always be good. The Stand is a testament to the cultural catharsis of horror, but also the necessary hope rooted in the darkest stories we tell.
