Perhaps one of the most audacious adaptations of the works of Stephen King is Haven, a new Showcase Original series about a somewhat haunted female FBI agent and some very strange shenanigans in small-town Maine. The audacity stems from the fact that Haven is loosely based on King’s 2005 crime novella The Colorado Kid—a novella notable for being about an unsolvable mystery that indeed remains unexplained at story’s end. Herewith, a series of blogs examining the hows, wherefores and whys concerning various adaptations of Stephen King’s works. Adaptation is a slippery skill, and those who play with it often change not just the rules but the game itself, as the residents of a small town called Haven, and a dead guy nicknamed ‘Colorado,’ know all too well…

Haven Blog, Part 7:
THE ENDINGS JUSTIFY THE MEANINGS
by Gary Butler

Tonight, Haven ends with a bang—short of the trigger of a pointed gun actually being pulled. As for who’s doing the pointing, at whom, and why: It’s a long and very circuitous path (the episode, after all, is named “Spiral”), and fans who have stuck with the show for its 13-episode run will not be disappointed with the way it all plays out.

Or, doesn’t play out. After all, Haven proved popular enough to earn a second season (the official announcement was made less than a week ago). The challenge for the show’s creators, then: How to end the season without ending the show? Haven has been compared to a number of other programs, notably The X-Files, but “Spiral” sees it lean towards the previously much less likely Twin Peaks, in that just as a number of major plot threads are resolved, a few new doozies crop up to further complicate matters.

Similar to Twin Peaks’s infamous “Who killed Laura Palmer?” plot arc, the biggest of the questions surrounding Haven has always been the identity of a nameless corpse found washed up on the town beach 25 years in the past, dubbed ‘The Colorado Kid.’ From Haven’s very first episode, the inference has been that solving the mystery of the Kid will, in effect, solve every mystery in the tiny Maine town that is sleepy in appearance only.

The sticky point, of course, is the fact that Haven is a very loose adaptation of Stephen King’s 2005 novella, The Colorado Kid, wherein the Kid’s fate is in fact never resolved, by intention. Which, admittedly, would make for infuriating TV. Haven’s adaptation is such a departure that a new character, FBI agent Audrey Parker, was added as its hero, and there have been any number of clues pointing to her being directly tied to the ‘Kid.’ Which all-but begs for resolution, and thus defiance of King’s original story.

Still, any number of adaptations of Stephen King’s works have seen the horror master’s endings endure tampering and alteration, sometimes for the better—at least in filmic terms. Easily the best example of an ending that makes more sense for film is the TV adaptation of ’Salem’s Lot (book 1975, miniseries 1979). Both versions contain a hillside mansion that seems to cast a spell of evil over the titular town below it, and both versions see that mansion become the home of the vampire Barlow. It’s quite the recipe, when you think about it: haunted house + vampire. King’s book sees the Barlow mansion burned to ground with 200 pages left to go; the final confrontation occurs in the basement of a boarding house, the last hidey hole for the outed vampire. It’s a fine ending to an excellent book, but the TV series, directed by Texas Chain-Saw Massacre’s Tobe Hooper, makes the right choice for film: It saves the invasion of the mansion, and the ultimate battle with Barlow, as a one-two punch grand finale.

A much less radical but still distinctive adaptive choice is Carrie (book 1974, film 1976). Though there is some small amount of after-matter, the film’s dénouement essentially occurs at the prom, where the title character is famously doused in pig’s blood, the victim of an almost unfathomably cruel prank. As with ’Salem’s Lot, King’s book visits other destinations before it all ends—again, satisfyingly. The larger departure for the movie is in having its protagonist die without knowing that her one and only friend was not, in fact, involved in the prank. In the film, Carrie is doomed in every sense imaginable—she dies truly alone; King at least offered the poor girl some tiny amount of solace.

The bleak, new ending of The Mist (novella 1980, film 2007) was so well received that even King himself praised screenwriter/director Frank Darabont for essentially upping the dramatic ante. Both stories end with a handful of survivors of the supermarket massacre desperately trying to drive their way out of the mist. Darabont finds an ingenious way to kill them—and have the very last man standing wish he were dead—without having the mist bear direct responsibility, and it’s an absolute gut-wrencher. King, an optimist in wolf’s clothing, leaves the fate of the one-car convoy unresolved. It’s not quite The Colorado Kid—but, just as with that novella, King does not spoon-feed his audience.

Viewers will have to watch season one’s final episode to learn what Haven’s creators decided to do about the source material’s lack of resolution. Suffice to say that the season wraps in a decidedly different manner from the novella—but that has been the case since the get-go, really. Again reminiscent of Twin Peaks (which did tell its viewers who killed Laura Palmer halfway through the series), Haven tonight proves that answers are only as good as their questions. “Spiral” points out that perhaps the question is not and might never have been “Who killed the Colorado Kid?” but, most interestingly, “Who exactly is Audrey Parker?”

See you next season.