New Stephen King Horror Remake Ruined Its Best Connection To Mike Flanagan’s Upcoming TV Show Adaptation

This article contains mention of suicide.

Warning: This article contains spoilers from Salem’s Lot and The Dark Tower series.

The 2024 adaptation of Salem’s Lot makes a significant change that ruins its most compelling connection to Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower series. When it was published in 1975, Stephen King’s novel about vampires in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot was meant to be a standalone story. While Salem’s Lot still largely works as its own story, it is also connected to King’s The Dark Tower series, which sees many familiar characters, locations, and references from King’s works appearing across the multiverse. Indeed, Salem’s Lot 2024 has plenty of Stephen King Easter eggs sprinkled throughout.

The Dark Tower was adapted into a 2017 movie starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey as Roland Deschain and the Man in Black, the latter of whom is also known as Randall Flagg, the main antagonist in King’s novel The Stand. Flanagan, who has adapted King’s novels Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep, is in the process of developing a television series adaptation of The Dark Tower series. With Father Donald Callahan later becoming a major Dark Tower character after first being a main Salem’s Lot character, he could have appeared in Flanagan’s adaptation, but the 2024 Salem’s Lot somewhat ruins this connection.

Salem’s Lot Killing Off Father Callahan Ruins His Connection To Mike Flanagan’s The Dark Tower Adaptation

It Fundamentally Changes Callahan’s Story

The 2024 Salem’s Lot adaptation sees Father Callahan dying at the hands of the vampire Kurt Barlow, as Callahan’s faith is unable to protect him. In the source material, Father Callahan survives, but not before Barlow forces the priest to drink his blood. This desecration prevents Father Callahan from getting inside his church and his shameful failure leads him to leave Jerusalem’s Lot, making him the only survivor other than Ben Mears and Mark Petrie. Callahan’s story continues in King’s 2003 Dark Tower novel The Wolves of the Calla, when he crosses paths with Roland and his ka-tet.

In
The Dark Tower
, ka-tet means
“one made from many,”
and is a group brought together by fate.

Callahan is a prominent character in The Wolves of the Calla and its sequels, Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower, with his story getting the closure he did not receive by the end of Salem’s Lot. The newest Salem’s Lot adaptation undermines this connection by unceremoniously killing off Father Callahan. It is a premature ending to the priest’s story that robs him of the full arc he undergoes in The Dark Tower series, along with taking away the possibility of having John Benjamin Hickey potentially reprise the role in Flanagan’s upcoming adaptation.

Why Salem’s Lot 2024 Changes Father Callahan’s Stephen King Book Ending

It Was A Product Of The Adaptation Process

Salem’s Lot director and writer Gary Dauberman revealed in an interview with CinemaBlend that he considered keeping Father Callahan’s fate the same as in the books. He explained that “If Callahan just goes away, I don’t know how that feels to an audience. I didn’t know how to complete that story without [the audience] knowing about the Dark Tower.” He emphasized that while this story worked in the books, it would not have translated as well to the Salem’s Lot movie as it relied too heavily on a story he would not be able to tell.

Nevertheless, Dauberman remained interested in Father Callahan’s story and even “pitched the Callahan TV show and they weren’t interested. So that kind of shot that [down]. I was like, ‘This could be a really cool show.’ He arrives to New York. It’s, you know, the AIDS crisis happening in New York, he’s working in the soup kitchen, like all that stuff.”In the 2024 version of the story, Father Callahan is still defeated by Barlow due to his lack of faith, but it ends with losing his life instead of a shameful retreat that ultimately leads to his redemption.

What Happens To Father Callahan In The Dark Tower Books

He Has A Moving Redemption Story

As indicated by Dauberman, Father Callahan ends up in New York City after fleeing Jerusalem’s Lot. He learns to recognize the three types of vampires that exist, and after one of them infects and thereby kills someone Callahan loves, he becomes a vampire hunter. He is hunted because of this and ends up in the town of Calla Bryn Sturgis in Mid-World. Callahan enlists the help of Roland and his ka-tet in defeating the Wolves that threaten Calla Bryn Sturgis. He later joins the ka-tet in their quest to reach the Dark Tower.

Callahan is able to wield his faith against them and without a cross or other artifacts, as he realizes that true faith is within himself and not beholden to such objects.

In the final book, The Dark Tower, Callahan confronts vampires and other minions of the evil Crimson King and dispatches as many as he can, which enables Jake Chambers to save the captive Susannah Dean. Callahan is able to wield his faith against them and without a cross or other artifacts, as he realizes that true faith is within himself and not beholden to such objects. He then takes his own life before the vampires can, and dies a hero who saved his friends and as a man who found his faith again long after Salem’s Lot.

Source: CinemaBlend