The 'Dark Tower' Explained

There are a few consistent certainties in life: death, taxes, oh and Stephen King. The prolific author has produced so much work that it pretty much guarantees someone will always be trying to turn one of his books into a TV Show or movie. Right now, we’re living on the cusp of another Stephen King renaissance with the eagerly awaited IT remake hitting theaters, The Mist returning as a TV series, and the upcoming Castle Rock show serving to create a cohesive interconnected TV show that features connections to all of his other work.

People are scrambling to follow Marvel’s example and establish a shared universe, but Stephen King has beaten everyone to the punch in terms of creating a sprawling epic mythological tapestry stitched together from different pieces of his own work in his own magnum opus, The Dark Tower. He was doing it before it was cool, and he actually finished what he started, unlike another aging author who is currently being beaten to the punch by his own TV series. Not only did King actually managed to finish writing his genre blending dark fantasy masterpiece, he crammed in so many easter eggs into his books, there are published lists of what does and doesn’t connect back to the core series, and for super hardcore King fans, The Dark Tower has been the holy grail of all Stephen King adaptations.

Many have tried to adapt The Dark Tower, but it’s long been seen as impossible. Ron Howard once had a super ambitious plan of adapting the entire series through several movies and a tv show that would retain the same cast. Suffice to say, this plan never quite came to fruition given how ambitious it was, and Game of Thrones hadn’t quite come to rewrite the rules of pop culture yet. With the Dark Tower long since languishing in development hell, long time fans of the series feared that they’d never get to see The Man in Black flee across the desert, and the gunslinger follow in pursuit.

And The Gunslinger Followed

But here we are; after years of being stuck in purgatory, The Dark Tower is finally making it’s way to the big screen complete with acting heavy weights Idris Elba and Matthew Mcconaughey as Roland and The Man in Black respectively. With Nikolaj Arcel directing. The Dark Tower hits theaters on August 4th. But you might be a bit confused. The Dark Tower features a sprawling mythology told over the course of eight books, nine if you count Wind Through the Keyhole. So Idris Elba crossing worlds and using his incredible gunslinging magic as he floats between the wild west with slow mutants and New York City might not make much sense to the uninitiated. That’s why we’re here to give you a crash course on everything Dark Tower. We’re bring you up to speed, so you can be one of the real cool kids, not one of those fake cool kids who’s hyped up for the IT remake because it reminds them of Stranger Things which was heavily homaging just about every one of King’s stories from the ‘80’s. So form up your own personal Ka-tet get ready to travel to Mid-World as we break down and explain everything you need to know about the Dark Tower.

1. Gunslingers

They’re knights. If you drop the swords for guns and the shining armor for blue jeans, gunslingers are the Mid-World version of Arthurian knights. They have their own code of conduct and training drilled into them at an early age. They train with their guns so obsessively that they’re pretty much proficient in the art of gun-fu. So with all of that going for them, what do they do with their obsessive levels of training? They protect New Canaan. What’s New Canaan? It’s the Land of Milk and Honey, The Dark Tower’s equivalent of Arthur’s England or maybe it’s closer to Avalon.

The point is, the gunslingers are pretty much the backbone holding up Roland’s whole kingdom, and more specifically the legendary capital city of Gilead, where the Gunslingers are trained. And man oh man, do they ever train. Earning your guns in The Dark Tower is an ordeal of the highest order. Training begins at childhood and continues until a participant thinks they’re ready to challenge their teacher. And they have to win because if they lose, they’re banished never to return. If they win, they’re presented with their guns, symbols of their class and station in life wielded only by members of their elite order who are so badass that they can go up against an angry mob consisting of the entire population of a small town and still come out on top.

2. The Man In Black

The Man in Black is a pretty simple concept. He’s The Man in Black, the quintessential evil villain. He’s responsible for the undermining New Canaan, seducing Roland’s Mother, and serving the Crimson King, The Dark Tower’s equivalent of Sauron. Oh, and just so you know, The Man in Black isn’t just responsible for terrorizing New Canaan. The Man in Black is Walter Padick who is also Marten Broadcloak who is also Randal Flagg, the villain who is also featured in King’s other epic work, The Stand. That’s right. The Man in Black is a dimension hopping sorcerer leading Roland slowly on towards the Dark Tower and has made his presence known throughout the Stephen King cannon. Suffice to say that Annie Wilkes and Pennywise got nothing on The Man in Black.

3. The Dark Tower

Ohhh boy. What is The Dark Tower? It’s… well… okay. It’s everything. It’s the center of creation, the nexus of the universe, the body of god himself with a form that varies from world to world and dimension to dimension that can be anything from a black house to a simple rose to, of course, the spiraling tower that is it’s only true entrance. It is supported by six magical lay lines or beams, and the Crimson King, the malevolent entity directing the assault on the tower and thus creation itself, has set out to break those lay lines and destroy the multiverse and remake it in his image. The tower is Roland’s final goal, and his sole mission in life it to ascent to the highest room in the tower to see what he finds there.

4. Ka-tet

In the universe of the Dark Tower, everything is controlled by fate which often referred to as Ka.. It can be considered a guide or a destination, and it’s not a force of good or evil, but it does manipulate people on both sides of the equation and operates on a plane higher than anything most mortals can comprehend.

A Ka-tet is another word from Stephen King’s fictional pretend language of high speech and basically translates to “one made from many,” a group of people summoned together by the greater will of Ka or destiny. Roland’s first Ka-tet consists of him and several of his fellow gunslinger friends back when his order was still at it’s height. They all wind up perishing and Roland finds a second Ka-tet from denizens of different time periods in New York City who may potentially be reincarnations of his previous Ka-tet given the similar abilities and personalities as compared to his previous traveling companions. If you think the will of Ka is exclusively limited to just Roland and gunslinger buddies, then oh man you are sorely mistaken. Father Callahan from Salem's Lot stumbles his way into the Dark Tower joining Roland later in the book series. But sadly no one from The Loser’s Club makes an appearance to team up with Roland.

Oh you think the Avengers was cute by combining all of the Marvel heroes together? Maybe you’re excited to see all of the heroes of New York team up in The Defenders or the upcoming Justice League movie. Well Stephen King was doing the whole universe crossing thing before it was cool. Not only is Ka seen in Hearts in Atlantis, Desperation, and Tommy Knockers. King even goes as far as having his main adventuring party in the Dark Tower visit the universe’s of his own books. There’s an extended sequence where Roland and his crew venture through The Stand. One of Roland’s allies is Donald Callahan, a priest introduced in Salem’s Lot who wanders into the Dark Tower series.

Hell even Pennywise has a role in the Dark Tower as a cosmic being who exists in the multiverse who’s arch enemy is the The Turtle which is an even bigger more immense cosmic entity that’s supposedly responsible for creating the universe and holding up the Dark Tower itself. While the upcoming Castle Rock tv series claims to be the ultimate cavalcade of Stephen King wonders by mashing up all of Stephen King’s properties together.

The trailers and behind the scene featurettes have been littered with easter eggs or eagle eyed viewers. For example, Cujo makes a cameo. There’s a photo showcasing the overlook hotel from The Shining, an amusement park where Pennywise used to dwell, the famous poster from the Shawshank Redemption, and even an in-universe Misery novel. Despite the film coming in at a rather paltry ninety five minutes, it’ll be jammed with more easter eggs then the entirety of Batman v. Superman’s entire three hour running time. So even if we don’t get a sprawling series of seven plus films and several seasons of a blockbuster tv series as Ron Howard originally promised, we’ll at least have enough to chew on for a while and given how the movie is playing fast and loose with the series chronology there might even be a chance that it has a better more satisfying conclusion than the final book’s controversial ending.

In Conclusion

So there you have it. While we’ve only scratched the surface of the sprawling mythology of the Dark Tower where cowboys cross dimensional and battle mutants, cyborgs, and rogue A.I., we can attest that the general populous isn’t quite ready to embrace billy-bumblers as well as a universe where Stephen King literally writes himself as a character who is crucial to the series mythology and Crimson King tries to kill him in a car accident just like the one that happened to King in real life. We can only hope that the movie is successful enough to spawn more movies so perhaps we might be able to see Stephen King becoming his own version of Stan Lee, making cameos in his magnum opus. We certainly hope this guide helps let you know what the Dark Tower is all about.