When the Castle Rock Season 2 trailer arrived with the ominous words "It all ends here," worried fans of the brilliant adaptation of Stephen King's works were calmed by the showrunners that the "end" doesn't mean that the series has reached its conclusion. But looks like that unknowingly, the second season's tagline was predicting the future as Hulu has cancelled Castle Rocks after its successful run of two seasons. 

Castle Rock is the latest series to join Hulu's cancellation spree which has already claimed another King-focused series 11.22.63 as well as other series like High Fidelity, Runaways, and Harlots. The series distributor, Warner Bros TV, seems to have focused all its attention into recently launched digital platform HBO Max and there are no plans of continuing the series on the new streamer either. Currently, Warner Bros. TV and J.J. Abrams (who served as one of the executive producers for Castle Rock) are working on The Shining's spinoff series Overlook Hotel for HBO Max. 

Given that Castle Rock was based on an amalgamation of Stephen King's stories and there were plenty that could be adapted in the future, it was expected that the series would go on for years. Showrunners Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason had even confirmed that they know which character's from King's stories they would like to explore next. They already had a plan ready, not just for Season 3, but for future seasons that would have brought King's "multiverse" to a full circle. 

"The plan was always to have an interconnected set of stories and, while every season would be its own launching point, there would be this fabric of Stephen's multiverse, if you will, that always bubbled beneath it, and a unity to the stories that existed. And so, I think fans of Season 1 will find things in Season 2, that maybe they're not expecting, along the way. And when we get to Season 3, I hope that there will a continuation of what we've done in this season and an expansion, and the audience will start to feel that there was a plan from the beginning."

The series' final season explored the story of Annie Wilkes (Lizzie Caplan), a psychopath who is pushed off her precocious edge when she and her "daughter" (Elsie Fisher) get stranded in the town of Castle Rock that has it's own horrifying truths. Season 2 was launched around Halloween last year and received generally positive reviews after its 10-episode ended in December 2019.

As of now, no reason behind the cancellation has been provided by Hulu and neither has Warner Bros TV come forward with any comments on the same. While the pandemic has impacted the production and future of many projects, Hulu has also undergone another major change-- it's now being owned by Walt Disney Company instead of Fox. The only silver-lining is the fact that as both series have independent arcs of their own, viewers won't be left hanging with loose threads that would have needed a third seaosn to be resolved. This news comes to us through TV Line.