Now that the true identity of The Kid has been revealed, Henry Deaver has to face a number of moral choices to make things right again.

There was always the risk that following the previous episode’s rug pull revelation, the writers would find that they’d written themselves into a corner. And so it comes to pass that while the conclusion of this self-contained 10-part story is indeed an ending of sorts, it’s nowhere near as clever as we might have hoped, and there’s an underlying sense of nihilistic ‘what was the point’? There’s no winner, there’s no sense of good beating evil, just a cyclical return to the very beginning of the season.

The acting by André Holland and Bill Skarsgård as Henry and The Kid has been the strongest element of the show, so when they find themselves sharing a cell together you get the sense that sparks will fly as they square up against one another. And yet they don’t, it’s just a cue for the alternate Henry to start another violent altercation. With all the background and explanation of The Kid’s origins last week, we started to feel sympathy for him, suggesting that Henry was the bad man, but things are predictably back to normal again, with The Kid now being the devil substitute again, causing accidents and deaths.

The episode title relates to a quote from the Biblical Letter to the Romans (The wages of sin is death) and is instrumental in explaining what Henry’s adoptive father was using to justify his impending infanticide. In a lovely nod to Kubrick’s The Shining, young Henry uses the same double-backing in the snow that Danny Torrance uses to escape from mad Jack. And talking of the Torrances, in a fascinating post-credit sting we find the woefully-underused Jackie Torrance explaining how she’s heading out on a research trip to that hotel to help her complete her book Overlooked.

Verdict: Never less than fascinating, the first series of Castle Rock has occasionally tied itself in narrative knots just to get the shock or twist moment. Helped by some great acting from the leads and some fun Easter eggs for Stephen King aficionados, I just can’t imagine the Maine man ending one of his own stories in such a way. If Season 2 really is a follow-up to The Shining then that’s a really tasty prospect. 8/10

Nick Joy