The opposite of Joy...
Tropes
- Bait-and-Switch: Several clues are dropped that Joy may actually be Amity or one or the other cultists: her indifference to her mother, watching French television, and the mysterious phone call she lied about. Sadly its only proven she’s herself after Annie has already killed her. (All these "clues" are actually signs of a) lingering trauma, or b) her decision to seek legal emancipation.)
- Bittersweet Ending: The cultists have been stopped and with it the end of the world, but it can at the cost of most of the cast being killed in the war. Annie’s fate is the worst: after mistakingly killing Joy believing her to be one of the cultists, she gone over the edge and the ending implies the events of her book are about to commence.
- Hope Spot: At first it seems that Annie managed to save Joy after drowning her when the Time Skip sees them together and happy. Its really just a vivid hallucination and Joy really is dead.
- Imagine Spot: At first you think that Annie, who is a trained nurse, managed to save Joy…then you remember that much of Annie’s nurse background is fabricated and at best she knows how to treat via first aid.note Her reviving Joy is a hallucination as well, as are all their interactions afterwards.
- Protagonist Journey to Villain: Annie's personal storyline has basically been building to this. The episode and season ends with meeting her new favorite author, stating how she's "his number one fan" and implying the events and fate of her literary counterpart are about to begin.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: The main interpretation of the final scene when attending the book signing, it seems that without Joy, Annie has now fully embraced her madness.
- Uncertain Doom: We never get a definitive body-count of the cultists that are killed between the last episode and this one. While there's a limited number of them (38 apparently) it's not shown how many were killed during the raid and how many were in the house when it blew. "Ace" was definitely outside the house, but between his stab wound and possibly caught in the blastwave its unclear if he survived.
- Amity's status after her coffin is destroyed along with The Angel statue; whether she was forcibly moved on to whatever counted as the afterlife, her spirit is now free without a vessel, or if she's still sleeping and waiting for her lover to awaken her.
- The aftermath is not shown regarding the town of Castle Rock and Jerusalem's Lot: how many people were killed by the cultists, how many may have been near the house when it explodednote , and what exactly do they remember, if anything, about what happened.
- Henry Deaver as of this episode is almost certainly dead thanks to a missing person's poster of him seen at a gas station. However the poster says that he was last seen at Castle Lake, which has been established in this episode to be a doorway to "other times, other nows" which raises questions about his final fate...
- Wham Shot: While looking through a collection of books to read, Annie finds one she likes: the first of the Misery books by Paul Sheldon.
- At first we’re led to believe that Annie saved Joy and they reconciled when they attend the book signing. Then Annie looks around the crowd and sees her mother and then her father. It's when a man asks if the seat Joy's in is taken do you realize the truth...
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Annie notices a shift in Joy’s personality due to a combination of recent trauma, learning about the truth about her past, and an increasing desire for a life of her own away from her mother/sister. Unfortunately, the events of the season leads Annie to believe that Joy’s change is due to possession and kills her, only learning the truth after its too late.
