The book closes with them discussing human nature. Stu, Fran, and the baby pack up and leave, heading for Fran’s home state of Maine. It’s unknown if newborns can survive the plague that destroyed most of humanity, and it’s touch and go for a bit before her child pulls through, giving hope for humanity’s survival. Much of the drama of the original ending centers on Fran’s baby. Flagg levitates in front of island tribe members Image: CBS All Access

Stu returns home to his love, Frannie Goldsmith, who has delivered a baby in his absence.

In any other book this moment would come in the final dozen pages or so, but in The Stand, there’s another 100-plus pages beyond that. The Hand explodes a nuclear warhead he planned to drop on Boulder, destroying Flagg and his followers in one swift blow. In King’s final act, the literal Hand of God appears as Flagg crucifies our heroes in front of his followers. This turns out to be lucky for him because the others, sadly, don’t return from Vegas. On the way, one of the main characters, Stu Redman, breaks his leg and is left behind.

In the book, Mother Abigail’s deathbed mandate from God insists that four prominent members of the Boulder Free Zone (aka the community of nice plague survivors) walk all the way from Colorado to Flagg’s stronghold in Las Vegas. The final confrontation with the evil and mysterious Randall Flagg never changes much across these tinkered endings. The differences reflect a writer who’s in an evolving relationship with the world around him. Now he’s done one more pass, writing the final episode of the CBS All Access miniseries, which just wrapped up. King first revised the ending of The Stand in 1990 with an expanded edition that added a few hundred more pages. Somewhat fittingly, the Bible-sized tome with over a dozen central characters, each one detailed enough to be the main character in their own story about the near destruction and possible salvation of the entire human race, has drawn back King’s itchy writing finger to rethink what happens when it’s all over. Since its publication in 1978, author Stephen King has come up with three different endings for The Stand.

Randall flagg the stand