2020's The Stand miniseries ends on a rather ambiguous note, and the ending can be explained in a number of complex ways. Stephen King himself wrote the coda episode, and it varies from both endings included in the novel, both the original close and the modified ending he updated in his 1990 unabridged edition. The characters are largely the same, but the ending of the Josh Boone-created miniseries presents a new twist on the classic story, answering some questions but raising others.
The sprawling saga takes place in a post-apocalyptic world that has been ravaged by a superflu, colloquially known as Captain Trips. The few remaining humans are called to by two figures in their dreams: In Boulder, Mother Abigail (Whoopi Goldberg) and in Las Vegas, Randall Flagg, a.k.a. The Dark Man (Alexander Skarsgård), with the God-fearing Abigail representing the side of good and Flagg, the side of evil. As the survivors filter into their respective encampments, it sets up an epic battle of good vs. evil.
In the end, Mother Abigail's warriors make their stand and vanquish the evil stalking the world and manipulating the minds of humans – or so they think. The climax comes in the second-to-last episode of the miniseries, while the finale serves as a coda to the story. The final episode chooses to focus on the two characters the miniseries should have arguably followed all along: Frannie Goldsmith (Odessa Young) and Stu Redman (James Marsden), who decide to leave Boulder after the birth of their baby and head back to Frannie's seaside hometown of Ogunquit, Maine. It's a fitting bit of clarity after the denouement, its message indicating that the world is already quickly returning to normal – for better or for worse. Here are some of the questions the final episode of The Stand raises and its ending explained.
Why Do Frannie And Stu Decide To Leave Boulder?
Frannie went through an emotionally difficult pregnancy, one fraught with anxiety as one might expect of being pregnant in the middle of a pandemic and post-apocalyptic wasteland. The last month of her pregnancy was even more difficult, Stu having gone to Las Vegas with the others making the final stand against the Dark Man. With Mother Abigail having prophesied on her deathbed that one of them would fall, Frannie can do nothing but wait and hope that the man she loves, and the one who was to be the adoptive father of her unborn child, will return safe and sound.
The first few weeks of her baby's birth are even more difficult. Stu is still MIA, and Frannie's baby comes into the world seemingly healthy, but soon contracts Captain Trips. The next few weeks are a life-and-death struggle for the baby as the Boulder community waits to see if the newborn will live or die. By the time Stu makes it back to Boulder, Frannie has been worn down with the stress and anxiety, not just from worrying about her baby, but also from being the only remaining Boulder councilmember and the town's last connection to Mother Abigail. It was a role she stepped into reluctantly and never expected to hold forever.
Frannie and Stu deciding to leave Boulder is symbolic of the world starting to return to normal after such devastation. Boulder essentially served as the cradle for humanity to regroup and rebuild, but, much like children leaving the nest, it was inevitable that some of the town's residents would eventually strike out on their own again. As Stu points out, crime is already starting to escalate in Boulder. At the moment, it's still small misdemeanors like drunk & disorderly conduct or petty theft, but soon, it will escalate to more serious crimes. With Boulder, and thus humanity, back on its feet, Frannie and Stu are now confident that there are people in the town who can take over their leadership positions, allowing them to return to Frannie's hometown to raise their baby in peace.
Who Is The Mysterious Young Girl Who Helps Frannie?
In the final episode, Frannie falls down an old abandoned well on the property of a home they're staying at overnight. Her body is twisted and broken: A leg broken in multiple places, a fractured hip, a blown-out knee, a potentially fractured skull, broken ribs, and blood coming from her mouth indicating one of those broken ribs has potentially punctured her lung. She's in a bad way, but once Stu finally returns home and pulls her out, he's aided by a mysterious girl (Kendall Joy Hall) who miraculously cures Frannie's fatal wounds in seconds. It's an act of God, a type of resurrection, and the cross the girl wears around her neck, the doll Kojak finds being the same as the one seen in Frannie's visions of Mother Abigail, and her authority: the girl is Mother Abigail's spirit reincarnated.
Mother Abigail always had the gift of foresight, a prophet of the Lord who received visions from him. More than that, however, she was chosen as God's conduit for his champions on Earth, and her work clearly hasn't stopped simply because she's dead. When Frannie is lying in the bottom of the well hovering somewhere between life and death, she sees Mother Abigail in what appears to be the afterlife and Abigail comforts her, assuring Frannie she'll live to see her children's children grow up. Still, God has one last job for Abigail to do: heal Frannie to ensure humanity continues. It's left ambiguous as to whether or not the young girl is actually Abigail in her younger form, or simply Abigail's spirit having temporarily taken over the body of a young Black girl to be God's healing conduit. Either way, it's a moment that shows Mother Abigail is still watching over her flock, and thus God through her.
Is Randall Flagg Really Dead?
Though Flagg appeared to be obliterated in the nuclear bomb blast in Vegas, it was never confirmed that he had died. As he was pummeled with the bolts of lightning, he disappeared just a few seconds before Trashcan Man's (Ezra Miller) bomb detonated. The survivors believed him to be gone, but still, evil has a way of never dying, and it's shown that Randall Flagg is indeed still alive – in some form. As with Mother Abigail, Frannie interacts with Flagg in the in-between dimension. Flagg isn't quite dead – but neither is he as powerful as he once was. He plays the role of the serpent, tempting Frannie by promising to heal her wounds and to keep Stu and the baby safe if only she'll give him a kiss. "And I might want to peek out of your eyes from time to time, just to see how things are going," he adds. It's an ission from him that he's not quite up to full power yet and that he can't just overpower Frannie and possess her like he once might have. Nor does she fear him any longer. His hold over her is broken.
Unfortunately, the ending indicates he found another way to return fully after Frannie's rejection, appearing to a remote tribe and immediately exploding the skull of the first indigenous native to shoot at him. Their wave of fear immediately gives him back some of his power; he rises into the air and demands they worship him. It's not just a moment born out of ego; Randall Flagg literally needs fear and worship to thrive and be restored to his full form. With the tribe looking to worship him as their new dark god, the final scene indicates it's only a matter of time before he'll be fully restored.
Changes Between The Ending Of The 2020 Miniseries And The Book
The ending of the 2020 miniseries was written by Stephen King himself, and in it, he seemed to find the right balance between the book's two endings while adding something new. The original ending of the book closed on a tranquil, ambiguous note. As Frannie and Stu put their kid to bed, Stu asks Frannie whether she believes humankind will be capable of rising above or will it once again descend into mutually assured destruction. "I don't know," Frannie says. Stephen King was famously unhappy with that original ending, as it undermined Frannie's importance and felt unsatisfactory, but was also necessary to avoid giving readers a saccharine platitude to finish.
The second ending came years later in 1990 when King released his unabridged version, adding 400 pages and a new ending. In it, he added a scene with Flagg very close to the one in the miniseries, with Flagg appearing to a remote tribe completely untouched by Captain Trips or the rest of humanity. However, there's a slight difference from the miniseries. In the novel, Flagg tells the indigenous tribe that he's on a mission to civilize them, implying that he'll eventually corrupt them the way he has the rest of humanity.
The ending of The Stand 2020 miniseries is something of a blend of both of those endings, with the new addition of Mother Abigail's soul being resurrected. In the miniseries, too, the underlying implications of Flagg appearing to the tribe have changed, as well. Instead of him gaining power through slowly corrupting the untouched tribe as in the novel, Flagg outright demands their worship in the miniseries, indicating that humanity sustains him in a far more literal sense now; he needs their worship and their fear to exist and regain his strength.
What The Stand 2020's Ending Really Means
The ending is neither happy nor bleak but both simultaneously. It's this balance that is needed to keep the world turning. Just as good was reborn in the form of the young Abigail, so, too, was evil rebirthed into the world in the form of Flagg. There can be no good without evil, no Mother Abigail without Randall Flagg; one is always destined to exist in opposition to the other. Evil, whether it takes the form of Randall Flagg or something else, will always dog the footsteps of humanity. Even as humankind struggles to evolve and become a better version of itself, it will always risk backsliding into the abyss; such is the nature of being human.
But the struggle is not without hope as The Stand's ending shows. Evil may always lurk in the shadows, but humanity always has the chance to stand against its rise. Even history's darkest moments – and there have been many – there have been enough good people, like Frannie and Stu, willing to fight the tide of evil and cruelty in order to keep humanity moving forward. As Mother Abigail tells Frannie in the in-between world, "The wheel turns. The struggle continues. And the command is always the same: Be true. Stand." The ending of The Stand is a microcosm of the eternal struggle of evil forever trying to drag humanity backward into the darkness, but as long as humanity is willing to be true, it will always find its way back to the light.
