Henry Deaver starts investigating his past, Molly tries to sell a house and prison guard Dennis finally succumbs to the town’s evil.

The focus is well and truly back on Henry (an excellent Andre Holland) as he is forced to consider what actually happened to him when he disappeared all that time ago. He’s no longer the confident city lawyer and we start to see the frightened kid who was out on the frozen lake. A visit to Vince Desjardins (remember him from Ace’s gang in The Body/Stand by Me?) unnerves him, and then a confrontation with Sheriff Pangborn (a laconic Scott Glenn) throws his world upside down.

When Molly Strand is showing a couple round a home she mentions that her own family hone was previously occupied by a serial strangler (surely The Dead Zone’s Frank Dodd) and the question is then raised as to whether this directly affected her. Like Derry in IT, Castle Rock has an evil undercurrent of malevolence that the locals choose to ignore or at least refuse to acknowledge – do bad things happen as they turn a blind eye?

A coffin also appears in town – the ‘box’ from the title – and we now wait for its secrets to be spilled, but that’s nothing compared to the final few minutes. Spooked by what he has been told, Deaver is now recommending that his client takes the deal just so that he can go home. Unfortunately, a fist bump with the mysterious prisoner is enough for prison guard Dennis Zalewski to succumb to evil and systematically go on a rampage in Shawshank, carrying out on the CCTV camera what was foreshadowed earlier in the series. We didn’t see this coming, and neither did Henry, who no longer has an inside man.

Verdict: Shocking and rug-pulling, Castle Rock refuses to be defined by its format and throws a lot more fuel on the narrative fire. You might think you had it all worked out – you were wrong! 9/10

Nick Joy