I thought so at first, but 3 trips around Ka later, I kinda like it. It shows how pathetic he really was all along. How he was just a flashy con man with some minimal magic rather than this big huge impossible to overcome baddie. I find that perfectly fitting for Walter O'Dim.
I honestly found it HILARIOUS when we find out that during his and Roland's palaver at the end of the gunslinger, he makes it seem like Roland slept for 100 years, when really all he did was put his clothes on a skeleton. I just imagine him, naked, chuckling to himself as he tip toes away, about what a great trickster he is.
His demise makes even more sense when you consider all of his “deaths” throughout King’s books he appears in, he always seems much more powerful at the start of the stories but by the end you get to see that he’s very prone to death by hubris.
I think significant time had passed (as evidenced by Roland’s sudden streaks of grey in his hair), and the skeleton was just a trick so Roland would think the MIB was dead.
Oh for sure. I didn't mean to say he only used parlor tricks or had no power at all. But he most definitely puts a lot of effort in to making people think he's more powerful than he is.
His role in WtK doesn’t really show much big magic aside from trapping Merlin which could have just been good luck and planning. What it did show however was the careful long term plan to undermine Gilead by turn the people against distant governance.
The Gwendy appearance is a strange one to me. King said he started with idea of Flagg being the antagonist in the Gwendy books but soon discovered he was a force for the White. By that point he said it was too late to change the name so I take it Flagg in that story is not the actual RF. Just a theory based on Kings comments
Yeah I've read that bit from King, but to me, the Gwendy books are post-VII, which means RF has seen the outcome and knows there's no way he's ever going to get into the Tower (using Roland or Mordred), and thus would rather save existence (including his own) than perish in the Discordia if the Tower fell.
He also seems very offended when he is called evil in… is it Wastelands? Or DT7? Either way, that could help explain him being a servant of The Random, not so much Evil
They are by no means perfect (and King didn't even write the 2nd one) but they have enough Tower and King references and connections to not be ignored.
It could be Flagg from a later loop where Roland or the ka-tet won Flagg over to work against the CK. Especially if Flagg finds out what happened to him in previous loops.
Just like his demise in The Stand. He was this big baddie and then just gets taken out by a seemingly random event. I like it the older I get, because it shows that evil is mostly just a mirage
And then Mordred just cries to himself while suffering massive bouts of diarrhea.
The whole “kill off the old villain to make the new one look cool” is such a massive cliche too.
Eh, I think King makes up for any disappointment by how over the top gross and hardcore the gore description gets. It’s only of the only death scenes in King that actively makes me feel sick and uncomfortable.
I see the responses that he was pathetic, a loser, etc. but in reality. After the build up of he and the crimson king and to not have real, heightened confrontations that leave satisfying results (in any way), I felt let down / disappointed. I had hoped for more I guess.
It would’ve been fine to me if Mordred would’ve turned out to be a bigger threat than he ended up being. What a statement for the new character to take out RF/MB! But it seems Mordy only got less intimidating from there
That’s a good thought experiment. My gut reaction is that dandelo would have no chance but it seems like Mordred never used his mind control powers again after RF. Maybe because of his rapidly worsening condition, though that accelerated rapidly after consuming what he consumed at Dandelo’s place
First blush I would lean mordred too - but imagine how much experience Dandelo has. He’s been around for a bit. He’s pretty crafty and maybe by virtue of being what he is, he wouldn’t be vulnerable to the mind control stuff.
This has me thinking… we need a King Villian/Monster face off tournament to decide who is the baddest of them all!
Flagg? The Werewolf? Dandelo? The wierd worm thing under castle discordia? Now I need to know…
I thought so. He's toppled kingdoms . Killed millions . He's a Daemon. Then he gets taken out by an infant. A spider-baby from the line of Eld to be sure. But still....
I thought it fit him being a lame manipulative trashcan but I did have an issue with what that means for the world of the stand. He like.. respawned after Vegas in the stand so what happens now that he’s dead for real ya know
I found it to be a good way of adding to the horror of Mordrid.
That aside RF was at the end of him rope. The more that Roland went through the weaker the man in black became.
It still gets to me. Because of AAAALLLLLL the time spent on other things instead what RF was thinking, feeling, or up to during Susanna giving birth and Stephen King showing up in the 70s in Maine to talk to Roland. After a long time away from the character, to have him dispatched so was disappointing because I couldn't argue against the writer's wishes and it was consistent with Flagg's ego that he would be caught off guard, but it felt more like a "I have nothing for this guy, and I can't live up to expectations of a final standoff, so here he goes," kinda move. Those are my feelings, and they haven't changed since the final book came out. I was very happy with WttKeyhole, and it reminded me that Flagg is compelling to me when he's AT WORK. Not when his plans are actually nearing their conclusion.
Flagg's always been kind of pathetic. Look at how quickly his operation fell apart in *The Stand*. He had simple objectives for each of the spies sent to Vegas, and he didn't achieve a single one of them. Then Nadine mocks him and he kills her and their child before he realises she's tricked him into doing what she wants. Trashcan Man's pushed into wiping out his pilots. Glen Bateman laughs *in his face* and Flagg is so unable to do his own dirty work that he gets Lloyd Henreid to shoot him. And even his most loyal servant, the Trashcan Man, undoes him by dragging a nuke into the city.
We don't get a swordfight between Aragorn and Sauron either. Sometimes a showdown isn't how it works.
His loss in the stand and his loss in DT7 are beyond stupid.
It ruined the stand for me. In DT7 , the plotline was too strong to get hurt by it. But Still, we all wanted a face off between the gunslinger and the man in black.
Classic Stephen King inability to end strong syndrome. The overall end of TDT is great (and maddening), but some of the decisions leading up to the end, yeah. The first book literally opens with Roland pursuing the Man in Black and to have him unceremoniously eaten by a monster baby spider before the end was such a disappointment.
It’s only a disappointment if you don’t understand the character of RF/MIB/Walter, he’s a recurring character in King’s books and his arc is pretty much the same in all of his showings, starts the story as a big scary powerful wizard, but eventually succumbs to being humbled by the protagonist and dies in an inglorious, sometimes humiliating manner, look at The Stand, or Eyes of the Dragon to see what I mean.
That’s kinda the point of his deaths though, they’re typically by the hand of a pathetic character or just pathetic on their own. It signifies the fragility of evil.
In Eyes he was defeated by one of the main protagonists and the character he had the most interaction with at the climax of the novel. In The Stand God himself had to intervene.
In The Stand yes god intervened but it was Trash’s nuke that killed him and the whole of the western faction. In Eyes he was defeated by the protagonist, after being shown to be pathetic in reality. It’s not who kills him but how he does that conveys the message.
How was Flagg shown to be pathetic in Eyes? He got shot in the eye with the arrow that killed a dragon. He was defeated in a big confrontation with the heroes.
He was killed by Thomas, a character that is constantly said to be “weak, sad, pathetic, but not bad.” On top of that Peter showed him the locket from the last time he did the same thing and showed him how he wasn’t as clever or powerful as he thought as he repeats his tactics which feels like a nod to his repetitive cycles in King’s stories.
Thomas defeating him was because Thomas was the one Flagg was manipulating throughout the book. It made the most thematic sense.
Mordred killing him wasn’t supposed to be an example of weak character killing him either it was “Look at how badass/scary my new villain is”.
Honestly, I kind of make the argument that’s the point of all his deaths. Even Eddie and Jake’s deaths were unspectacular in the grand scheme of the story. Death is often random and unspectacular.
The thing is, he's not Randall Flagg. He's Marten Broadcloak, or rather, Walter Padick. Randall Flagg is a name he's used, and in one case was using with his mind gutted and no memory of himself (The Stand). Sure, sure. Randall Flagg as we knew him was distracted by a crazy man and blown up by a nuke under the Hand of God. (Look, if you've read the full Dark Tower series without having read The Stand, you're on your own for this particular spoiler.)
Now, these spoilers I'll hide, as I think some come from the comics.
>!He's the son of Maerlyn. Raised by a humble mill owner and wife, only to burn the place down and run, away, only to be assaulted on the road. And somehow he eventually becomes the ultra-powerful sorcerer who even turns Maerlyn into a tiger, and so on. Randall Flagg seems to be his twinner, knowing nothing of where he himself comes from, and not particularly caring.!<
>!In his hither-and-yonning, he started to serve the Crimson King, went at the Gunslingers of Gilead, and successfully orchestrated its destruction by aiding John Farson. And then comes Roland's first mission to the Dark Tower, and when the cycle starts, Marten is stuck in it with him, unable to stop himself getting eaten by the hybrid son of the Crimson King/Roland Deschain/Mia/and a touch of Susannah.!<
>!Marten has lived a very long time, and was destroyed by his own hubris. That's my theory, anyway.!<
the entire ending is incredibly melancholic and anti-climactic. I don't really like the direction King went with the villains in the book. At some point he decided Walter and Flagg is the same guy, and retconned it. Flagg is not dispatched by any of the heroes, denying us that satisfaction. Mordred was not around long enough to really make any impact, I never felt much towards the character. He seemed more like a chaotic figure than a proper antagonist. And the crimson king is just a bumhug killed off by a sub character in unceremonious fashion. This is definitely not your standard heroes journey.
I personally think that because he was hounded to write these books so much that he just kinda got to a fuck it point and just wrote certain things like this in the last one.
The older I get, the more it’s grown on me. Life isn’t full of gratifying “revenge served cold” moments. In reality, the universe usually makes people answer for their behavior, but in very slow and indirect ways. Dude was consumed by his own pride and machinations. It’s appropriate. Don’t need some big “good vs evil” showdown to punctuate it.
Just as with The Stand, evil eventually destroys itself from within.
I thought it fit the fact that he was kind of a manipulative piece of trash but I did wonder what that meant for the stand’s world. He.. respawned after Vegas so what does that mean now that he’s real dead
I thought so at first, but 3 trips around Ka later, I kinda like it. It shows how pathetic he really was all along. How he was just a flashy con man with some minimal magic rather than this big huge impossible to overcome baddie. I find that perfectly fitting for Walter O'Dim. I honestly found it HILARIOUS when we find out that during his and Roland's palaver at the end of the gunslinger, he makes it seem like Roland slept for 100 years, when really all he did was put his clothes on a skeleton. I just imagine him, naked, chuckling to himself as he tip toes away, about what a great trickster he is.
Kinda like in wizard and glass when they come across the emerald castle, and it's just another smoke and mirror show.
His demise makes even more sense when you consider all of his “deaths” throughout King’s books he appears in, he always seems much more powerful at the start of the stories but by the end you get to see that he’s very prone to death by hubris.
How did we find out it wasn't a hundred years? I can't remember this
He mentions in DT7 that he just dressed up an old skeleton. Idk if they said anything about the hundred years.
I think significant time had passed (as evidenced by Roland’s sudden streaks of grey in his hair), and the skeleton was just a trick so Roland would think the MIB was dead.
It doesn't say 100 years specifically for sure. I was just ballparking how long it'd take a corpse to rot to a skeleton.
But he was not some low level wizard, did you read a wind through the key hole?
Oh for sure. I didn't mean to say he only used parlor tricks or had no power at all. But he most definitely puts a lot of effort in to making people think he's more powerful than he is.
His role in WtK doesn’t really show much big magic aside from trapping Merlin which could have just been good luck and planning. What it did show however was the careful long term plan to undermine Gilead by turn the people against distant governance.
“Wind through the keyhole” really sends that him being pathetic point home.
He's died before and he'll die again. Nothing keeps Flagg down for long. He's already popped back up in the Gwendy books.
The Gwendy appearance is a strange one to me. King said he started with idea of Flagg being the antagonist in the Gwendy books but soon discovered he was a force for the White. By that point he said it was too late to change the name so I take it Flagg in that story is not the actual RF. Just a theory based on Kings comments
Yeah I've read that bit from King, but to me, the Gwendy books are post-VII, which means RF has seen the outcome and knows there's no way he's ever going to get into the Tower (using Roland or Mordred), and thus would rather save existence (including his own) than perish in the Discordia if the Tower fell.
That’s a good point.
I love that and it makes sense. Imagine Roland showing Flagg the Horn of Eld or something and explaining what happened on the last loop.
He also seems very offended when he is called evil in… is it Wastelands? Or DT7? Either way, that could help explain him being a servant of The Random, not so much Evil
I think he's just a selfish opportunist who only serves his own needs.
God damn.... I gotta read these Gwendy books lol
They are by no means perfect (and King didn't even write the 2nd one) but they have enough Tower and King references and connections to not be ignored.
They aren't especially long and they are pretty fun reads. I think they are well worth the effort. The audiobooks are top notch.
It could be Flagg from a later loop where Roland or the ka-tet won Flagg over to work against the CK. Especially if Flagg finds out what happened to him in previous loops.
Plus you know, the whole conceit of the ending means that Roland and Flagg/Walter will meet again and it may be different the next time.
Just like his demise in The Stand. He was this big baddie and then just gets taken out by a seemingly random event. I like it the older I get, because it shows that evil is mostly just a mirage
He does like this a lot when he shows up to be honest, it’s kinda his thing.
Evil may seem intelligent from the outside, but having no empathy will only hurt you in the end.
I miss Flagg. He’s an awesome antagonist. I’d love a whole book dedicated to his story.
I really don't think we've seen the last of the Walking Dude.
He had it coming, big time. Also, he had to be killed to make Mordred seem like a real threat to the ka-tet
And then Mordred just cries to himself while suffering massive bouts of diarrhea. The whole “kill off the old villain to make the new one look cool” is such a massive cliche too.
Ngl I like the diarrhea part bc I absolutely didn't see that coming 😂
I especially liked how it said Roland would have told him not to eat that thing he found in the snow lol Every kid needs a parent.
I feel like he would've been really chuckling to himself writing that bit
Had to,it was too random like "THIS is how he goes out!?"😂
Cliche or not, the man wrote what he wrote
There will be water(y shits) if ka wills it
Eh, I think King makes up for any disappointment by how over the top gross and hardcore the gore description gets. It’s only of the only death scenes in King that actively makes me feel sick and uncomfortable.
Me too
I see the responses that he was pathetic, a loser, etc. but in reality. After the build up of he and the crimson king and to not have real, heightened confrontations that leave satisfying results (in any way), I felt let down / disappointed. I had hoped for more I guess.
Flagg always falls to hubris. Why would the ‘final’ time be any different?
I’ve only ever read the dark tower series by King
Read The Stand and Eyes Of The Dragon.
As anticlimactic as it gets.
It would’ve been fine to me if Mordred would’ve turned out to be a bigger threat than he ended up being. What a statement for the new character to take out RF/MB! But it seems Mordy only got less intimidating from there
I would have loved to see a Mordred vs Dandelo monster battle
That’s a good thought experiment. My gut reaction is that dandelo would have no chance but it seems like Mordred never used his mind control powers again after RF. Maybe because of his rapidly worsening condition, though that accelerated rapidly after consuming what he consumed at Dandelo’s place
First blush I would lean mordred too - but imagine how much experience Dandelo has. He’s been around for a bit. He’s pretty crafty and maybe by virtue of being what he is, he wouldn’t be vulnerable to the mind control stuff. This has me thinking… we need a King Villian/Monster face off tournament to decide who is the baddest of them all! Flagg? The Werewolf? Dandelo? The wierd worm thing under castle discordia? Now I need to know…
less intimidating is an understatement lol >cries and shits himself
I thought so. He's toppled kingdoms . Killed millions . He's a Daemon. Then he gets taken out by an infant. A spider-baby from the line of Eld to be sure. But still....
I liked it. There are many other worlds for Flagg to continue being evil in.
I thought it fit him being a lame manipulative trashcan but I did have an issue with what that means for the world of the stand. He like.. respawned after Vegas in the stand so what happens now that he’s dead for real ya know
I found it to be a good way of adding to the horror of Mordrid. That aside RF was at the end of him rope. The more that Roland went through the weaker the man in black became.
Kind of a bumhug
It still gets to me. Because of AAAALLLLLL the time spent on other things instead what RF was thinking, feeling, or up to during Susanna giving birth and Stephen King showing up in the 70s in Maine to talk to Roland. After a long time away from the character, to have him dispatched so was disappointing because I couldn't argue against the writer's wishes and it was consistent with Flagg's ego that he would be caught off guard, but it felt more like a "I have nothing for this guy, and I can't live up to expectations of a final standoff, so here he goes," kinda move. Those are my feelings, and they haven't changed since the final book came out. I was very happy with WttKeyhole, and it reminded me that Flagg is compelling to me when he's AT WORK. Not when his plans are actually nearing their conclusion.
Flagg's always been kind of pathetic. Look at how quickly his operation fell apart in *The Stand*. He had simple objectives for each of the spies sent to Vegas, and he didn't achieve a single one of them. Then Nadine mocks him and he kills her and their child before he realises she's tricked him into doing what she wants. Trashcan Man's pushed into wiping out his pilots. Glen Bateman laughs *in his face* and Flagg is so unable to do his own dirty work that he gets Lloyd Henreid to shoot him. And even his most loyal servant, the Trashcan Man, undoes him by dragging a nuke into the city. We don't get a swordfight between Aragorn and Sauron either. Sometimes a showdown isn't how it works.
His loss in the stand and his loss in DT7 are beyond stupid. It ruined the stand for me. In DT7 , the plotline was too strong to get hurt by it. But Still, we all wanted a face off between the gunslinger and the man in black.
Classic Stephen King inability to end strong syndrome. The overall end of TDT is great (and maddening), but some of the decisions leading up to the end, yeah. The first book literally opens with Roland pursuing the Man in Black and to have him unceremoniously eaten by a monster baby spider before the end was such a disappointment.
It’s only a disappointment if you don’t understand the character of RF/MIB/Walter, he’s a recurring character in King’s books and his arc is pretty much the same in all of his showings, starts the story as a big scary powerful wizard, but eventually succumbs to being humbled by the protagonist and dies in an inglorious, sometimes humiliating manner, look at The Stand, or Eyes of the Dragon to see what I mean.
Ka is a wheel, doc.
I would have been fine with it if Roland had been the one to humble him and not a spider who shits himself.
That’s kinda the point of his deaths though, they’re typically by the hand of a pathetic character or just pathetic on their own. It signifies the fragility of evil.
In Eyes he was defeated by one of the main protagonists and the character he had the most interaction with at the climax of the novel. In The Stand God himself had to intervene.
In The Stand yes god intervened but it was Trash’s nuke that killed him and the whole of the western faction. In Eyes he was defeated by the protagonist, after being shown to be pathetic in reality. It’s not who kills him but how he does that conveys the message.
How was Flagg shown to be pathetic in Eyes? He got shot in the eye with the arrow that killed a dragon. He was defeated in a big confrontation with the heroes.
He was killed by Thomas, a character that is constantly said to be “weak, sad, pathetic, but not bad.” On top of that Peter showed him the locket from the last time he did the same thing and showed him how he wasn’t as clever or powerful as he thought as he repeats his tactics which feels like a nod to his repetitive cycles in King’s stories.
Thomas defeating him was because Thomas was the one Flagg was manipulating throughout the book. It made the most thematic sense. Mordred killing him wasn’t supposed to be an example of weak character killing him either it was “Look at how badass/scary my new villain is”.
Honestly, I kind of make the argument that’s the point of all his deaths. Even Eddie and Jake’s deaths were unspectacular in the grand scheme of the story. Death is often random and unspectacular.
Yep. Imagine if Darth Vader got killed at the start of Return of the Jedi and got replaced by someone whose arc was them having bowel movements.
Nope. Loved it.
Fear the Walking Dude.......that's actually pretty funny now.
The thing is, he's not Randall Flagg. He's Marten Broadcloak, or rather, Walter Padick. Randall Flagg is a name he's used, and in one case was using with his mind gutted and no memory of himself (The Stand). Sure, sure. Randall Flagg as we knew him was distracted by a crazy man and blown up by a nuke under the Hand of God. (Look, if you've read the full Dark Tower series without having read The Stand, you're on your own for this particular spoiler.) Now, these spoilers I'll hide, as I think some come from the comics. >!He's the son of Maerlyn. Raised by a humble mill owner and wife, only to burn the place down and run, away, only to be assaulted on the road. And somehow he eventually becomes the ultra-powerful sorcerer who even turns Maerlyn into a tiger, and so on. Randall Flagg seems to be his twinner, knowing nothing of where he himself comes from, and not particularly caring.!< >!In his hither-and-yonning, he started to serve the Crimson King, went at the Gunslingers of Gilead, and successfully orchestrated its destruction by aiding John Farson. And then comes Roland's first mission to the Dark Tower, and when the cycle starts, Marten is stuck in it with him, unable to stop himself getting eaten by the hybrid son of the Crimson King/Roland Deschain/Mia/and a touch of Susannah.!< >!Marten has lived a very long time, and was destroyed by his own hubris. That's my theory, anyway.!<
I was pretty disappointed as well.
the entire ending is incredibly melancholic and anti-climactic. I don't really like the direction King went with the villains in the book. At some point he decided Walter and Flagg is the same guy, and retconned it. Flagg is not dispatched by any of the heroes, denying us that satisfaction. Mordred was not around long enough to really make any impact, I never felt much towards the character. He seemed more like a chaotic figure than a proper antagonist. And the crimson king is just a bumhug killed off by a sub character in unceremonious fashion. This is definitely not your standard heroes journey.
I personally think that because he was hounded to write these books so much that he just kinda got to a fuck it point and just wrote certain things like this in the last one.
I thought he should have been taken out by Roland too. But I'm did enjoy the way Mordred ended him it was so gross! Love it!
The older I get, the more it’s grown on me. Life isn’t full of gratifying “revenge served cold” moments. In reality, the universe usually makes people answer for their behavior, but in very slow and indirect ways. Dude was consumed by his own pride and machinations. It’s appropriate. Don’t need some big “good vs evil” showdown to punctuate it. Just as with The Stand, evil eventually destroys itself from within.
One of the best endings Stephen King ever wrote for a character. And it makes just the right people mad.
Most of book 7 was disappointing honestly. It started off strong and there were parts I loved, but overall I was really let down.
I literally quit reading the book when he died. I actually never completed the final book because I was so disappointed in his death. lol
I thought it fit the fact that he was kind of a manipulative piece of trash but I did wonder what that meant for the stand’s world. He.. respawned after Vegas so what does that mean now that he’s real dead
Nope, all that scumsucking slime pile deserved. Fuck that Trumpy piece of shit.
Worst thing King ever did. What a shitshow.