It's at this point, having finished Part 3 of The Stand, that I am tempted to look up Stephen King's Wikipedia page or something just to see what denomination he was raised under. Because... Good lord. Pun unintended. I said it before, but seeing this segment of the narrative puts it into perspective. This apocalyptic pandemic horror story has shifted all the way into this grandiose tale of faith, the will of the Lord, and an ultimate battle between good and evil. Maybe that's why people find this their favorite King book; the sheer scope and the mystical binary of it all. As I've said, that kind of shit made me flock to King as a college kid reading the Gunslinger. I'm twice as old now, though, so it's doing a little less for me. Still, we can get crunchy.
What's the titular Betrayal of this portion of The Stand? The show itself has its own definitive answer, but betrayal is all over it. Harold is betrayed when Fran and Stu become an item, and though he seems to take it well and make friendly, he's digging his own nails into his palms. (This specific action is a bit of a King trope in his prose and I nearly laughed when I saw it on screen; I'd be surprised if it wasn't taken verbatim from the novel.) You think gee, maybe he's not going to be such an incel after all, until later in this episode when he steals dynamite and tries to blow everyone up for taking the girl that's supposed to be his. So that's a bit relevant along with the whole global pandemic, sadly. The specifics of his heel turn are that he gets seduced by Nadine from back in Part 2, who's Randall Flagg's dark bride and will bear him the Antichrist or some such gonzo mysticism. It's absolutely some Garden of Eden Eve shit with Flagg as the serpent, and there are FUCKING APPLES on Harold's table in the scene where she cooks him dinner to seduce him, and there's lots of reds in the scene itself. Even a cinematographic dummy like me can get it.
Mother Abigail believes she's portrayed God's will by letting the people coming to Boulder build her up as their savior, and she goes off into the wilderness on a spiritual quest to find humility. Meanwhile, the people in the new Boulder Free Zone are working to clean up all the dead bodies and get society started back up. YET SOCIETY CAUSED THE APOCALYPTIC SUPERFLU! CURIOUS! HMMMMMMMM! This is really weird stuff, and it's again going with THE LORD'S WILL or whatever The Stand is going for. The people of the Boulder Free Zone weren't brought here to turn the power on, or start a committee, or sing the American anthem. No, apparantly all of this is about good vs. evil. About the good folk of Boulder making a stand against the dark forces of Flagg. As such, once Harold's bombs go off, the four remaining members of the Boulder committee go off to face him, walking side by side into the den of decadence, where Flagg's boys are cleaning up Vegas and checking out leftover bombs. Clearly the same hubris as wanting to turn on the power so you have lights after dark. Snark aside, I do know how this sucker ends. Let's see how these boys make their stand.
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