- They do mention the space between worlds can drive a man mad, so perhaps the Old Ones managed to create some kind of force field to keep them out, kind of like how spaceships can enter the Warp in Warhammer 40k?
- During his and Roland's palaver in The Gunslinger, Walter/Flagg briefly says, "As you resume your quest for the Tower," with Roland rudely interrupting with "Resume? I never left off!", causing Walter to laugh uproariously for a moment before being able to continue. This conversation only takes place in the revised edition, which takes the seventh book's ending into account.
- That does explain why Lois was unable to tell whether the Green Man was good or evil: he was genuinely trying to help Ralph and Lois by giving them the earrings, but his reasons for doing so were rooted in his desire for multiversal domination. Hence his confusing moral aura.
- Jossed by the last book. Insomnia is not a part of the tower universe; it's actually a deception in the same mode that Odd Lane is a glamour and a "wrong direction".
- Still possible. It's Roland who declares Insomnia a dead end.
- Furthermore, it's stated in the very same novel that all writers are prophets of Gan, and that all stories are depictions of real universes and their events. So it's likely that the world of Insomnia is indeed real and part of the greater multiverse, which, by extension, would lend some credibility to the theory of Flagg having shown up there.
- Green is also a color associated with Flagg in The Stand, and what he says to Lois (specifically, the laugh being described as a "titter" and saying "Look at me Lois/Lloyd") further strengthens the argument.
- Jossed by the last book. Insomnia is not a part of the tower universe; it's actually a deception in the same mode that Odd Lane is a glamour and a "wrong direction".
- This means that the comic also happened, in a third loop.
- The only problem with this one is that Allworld and Keystone Earth are the only constant universes. So despite the cyclical nature of Ka (and Roland's constant quest) it seems fairly implausable for it to be otherwise. This troper also thought that Roland's quest only cycled from the point just before he met Brown, meaning that there would be no good reason for him to use 70's slang terms or read magazines.
- Jossed in the Coda of the last book. Roland is always sent back to the point to the Mohaine Desert (The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed), with no memory of what happened before. He is not sent further back in time where he could potentially change the mistakes of the past.
- There is precedent for changes in events prior to Roland's trip across the Mohaine: In the Coda Roland gets sent back to the desert, but this time he has Cuthbert's horn. Roland did not have the horn in the previous loop; it had been lost at a point long before Roland entered the Mohaine.
- That was an intentional concession on the part of the Tower. Roland almost seems surprised to find he has the horn but his past is practically the same.
- Not sure about the re-write, but in the original version of The Gunslinger, Roland asks Brown if he believes in an afterlife. Brown states that he thinks "this is it." This has two meanings, one is that there is no afterlife, and this is the only world they have, or that they are living in the afterlife
- Whilst it's definitely possible that Susannah didn't come from the same world as Eddie or Jake, it's not totally certain that she came from our world. The A train doesn't stop at the Christopher Street station in the real world for one thing. This even gets mentioned in the sixth book.
- Considering how many times the cycle may have happened before, it's possible that the real-world version of Susannah was drawn, had her adventures, and then left for a parallel Earth many iterations ago. That left an opening in the real world for the Susannah in the novels to claim her father's wealth there, even if she's not actually the same Susannah that inherited it there.
- In addition to co-op being in a different borough of New York, Eddies' brother was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1978. That said I don't think that was King intent when he was writing the drawing of the three & wastelands. But later he decide to work those error into the story.
- The "once you travel to a certain point, you can't travel to a point before" rule only applies to the Keystone Earth and Allworld, no?
- Or, for the Downer Ending variant, Browning's poem was written about a previous iteration of Roland's quest, in which he still had the horn because he'd never left it behind. Browning wrote the poem at Roland's urging, because he was a previous iteration's Stephen King, who immortalized the gunslinger's story after Roland saved him from being run over by a speeding carriage. Roland then completed his quest and flashed back to the desert, only that time, the Tower took the horn of Arthur Eld away from him as a sign that the next round might end differently...
- I don't think Arrowhead project was a natural portal. If you think of a natural portal as a door, what project Arrowhead did is like knocking a hole through the wall. On that note if the film version and the novella are separate levels of the Tower, project Arrowhead happened in at least two different universes.
- It's been implied in some places that a beam breaking was the result of Arrowhead.
- The Dark Tower wiki claims that the Arrowhead Project opened a thinny and monsters from the todash darkness came through.
- If this is true, it's definitely a Sierra game. "I made the game Unwinnable when I dropped the damn trumpet? And now I have to restore my saved game from the desert, seven disks ago? Screw you, Sierra!"
- Confirmed for the Film via the poster that shows the words "Last Time Around" superimposed over the Horn of Eld. The director has also stated that the Dark Tower film will be a sequel to the final book.
- Jossed in the final book. The creature, whose name is revealed to be Dandelo, is encountered and killed by Roland and Susannah.
- Not so Jossed, especially considering that this is WMG. Dandelo is very similar to IT, and has a stuttering robotic servant named after the stuttering hero of It. This, in combination with hints from Dreamcatcher that It is still alive, indicate that Dandelo is It in Allworld.
- Really? Dandelo reminded me of Ardelia Lortz, of The Library Policeman. After all, their true forms are both giant, beetle-like creatures, they feed off of emotions (all strong ones in Dandelo's case, fear only for Ardelia), and, given Dandelo's choice of Patrick, favor children. Of course, it could be argued that Ardelia herself was yet another alternate-universe IT.
- Dandello and Lortz could easily be IT's children. IT was pregnant afterall.
- In the revised version of book one, The Beast is referred to instead as The Crimson King.
- Not so Jossed, especially considering that this is WMG. Dandelo is very similar to IT, and has a stuttering robotic servant named after the stuttering hero of It. This, in combination with hints from Dreamcatcher that It is still alive, indicate that Dandelo is It in Allworld.
- It's more likely that the Beast is Dis, the ultimate embodiment of the Red/Random/evil, in the same way that the Tower is Gan, the ultimate embodiment of the White/Purpose/good. The Beast seems to be part of the Tower, or trapped within it in some way; we know that Dis is imprisoned in the top room, and the Crimson King is merely an aspect of it.
- In It, the driving force behind IT was the deadlights (the red) circling outside the gates of the universe while the other that help the kids after the turtle was the white. Since Pennywise was the physical embodiment of the deadlights, IT was/is the most powerful creature in King's universe. All others that followed were decedents/creations of Pennywise or at least a varintant (like the Crimson King's Spider-god mother).
- This troper recalls reading a theory that Dandelo (and perhaps even the Crimson King) were hatched from IT's eggs.
If Roland continues his quest for the Tower after this point, it marks a failure on his part - he threatens the fate of all things for the sake of his own personal quest, and opens the possibility for the Crimson King to acquire the keys to the Tower. It's even possible that his entry of the Tower weakens it again somehow, which is why he is sent back to the desert, as the Tower attempts to rewrite the damage done. The only way for all worlds to be safe will be for Roland to complete the truly noble aspect of his quest, the preservation of the Tower - perhaps even the destruction of the Crimson King - and having stood at the steps of the Tower, have the strength to turn around and leave the Tower be.
Good luck on that, Roland.
- There's a suggestion, though, that this is how things eventually turn out; in the very last lines of the book, as Roland sets out again across the desert to find the Man in Black, it's suggested that the timeline has been altered — Roland has the horn again, which he didn't have in the previous cycle. So it does indicate Roland's iterative attempts to find the Tower are moving him towards renouncing the Tower.
- Supported given that in the book version of Roland's quest, it is the roses themselves that "blow his horn" and open the tower for him. It's an image tied up with him being compelled to enter the Tower. Possibly when he has the horn and blows it, there is no compulsion from the Tower for him to enter.
- There's a suggestion, though, that this is how things eventually turn out; in the very last lines of the book, as Roland sets out again across the desert to find the Man in Black, it's suggested that the timeline has been altered — Roland has the horn again, which he didn't have in the previous cycle. So it does indicate Roland's iterative attempts to find the Tower are moving him towards renouncing the Tower.
- Patrick Danville (Reality Warper)
- If Pat were a Breaker he'd have had to escape somehow: he spent years before their operation was shut down locked up in Dandelo's cellar.
- John Coffey (Healing Hands)
- Charlie McGee (Pyrokinesis)
- Carrie White (Telekinesis): although note that Dinky Earnshaw actually refers to "being like Carrie at the Prom", which suggests she was, at least in his home universe, a fictional character only.
- While Charlie and Carrie would almost certainly have been located, the underlings of the Crimson King doing the recruiting would realize that either one is FAR too dangerous to bring to Algul Siento.
- Danny Torrance (Mind-Reading)
- Dick Hallorann (Clairvoyance)
- Johnny Smith (Clairvoyance, psychometry)
- It just feels to me that if time was reset entirely, that would render the "Susannah in New York" epilogue useless, and the warning in "Found" unnecessary because Roland is now able to start over and perhaps prevent everyone's death by accident. Instead, it makes more sense that only Roland's age and the life of Randall Flagg (because he's Randall Flagg and he's too demonic to really die) get reset. Part of Roland's death-curse, put upon him either by the Tower as punishment or by the Pink Bend o' the Rainbow when it glamoured him into finding the Tower, is that every time he goes to the Tower, he finds a new ka-tet, and they are all killed along the journey. He has probably already killed fifty or so people in his ka-tets by taking them on previous cycles. Susannah is the first one to ever escape, hence she lives happily ever after. That is Roland's true curse.
- It's not a full reset every time he enters the Tower. The last book makes it clear that it's only for Roland that time is reset. He's forced to relive the experience of his last ka-tet endlessly. The only difference is that during this particular experience, for whatever reason, the Tower saw fit to give him back the horn he lost at Jericho Hill, and therefore there's the chance that at the end of the journey this time round he'll blow the horn rather than having the roses blow it for him, and the curse will end as per Robert Browning's poem.
- The Tower is there in the form of his nemesis to warn Roland to turn away from his obsession of reaching the Tower, while Jake is in a sense the anti-thesis of the Tower (Not of Gan, but of what Roland makes out the Tower to be). When Roland will finally choose Jake over the Tower, the cycle will end and Roland will find his peace the same way Susannah did. But every time he chooses the Tower, he has to relive all of that pain and grief he has endured for hundreds of years, while fighting the ghosts of his long dead enemies.
- Jossed in the last book. Randall Flagg identifies himself as the Man in Black and explains how he basically cast a spell on Roland to escape and deceive him into believing he was long dead.
- Nobody in Algul Siento ever mentions the Big Engine which the "party" in Black House destroyed. Therefore it was an effort at breaking one of the other Beams, possibly even the one of Elephant and Fish which collapses in Song of Susannah depending on how heavily it was damaged before the Coppicemen intervened.
- It is mentioned in 'Dark Tower' that the Crimson King's forge (seen in the vision in 'Song of Susannah') has been shut down. This was the big engine, the machine CK used to spread his malice and corruption through every level of creation.
- The cycle we see in the books, that starts at the beginning of The Gunslinger and loops back at the end of The Dark Tower, is a relatively small one. Perhaps it's just a tiny part of an even bigger cycle, going from the beginning of the multiverse to its end? Once Roland has completed his final Dark Tower cycle, the multiverse should continue on as usual (albeit with evil banished, or something). But when the universes of Mid-World and Keystone Earth eventually die (in a Big Crunch or something), the entire multiverse will be rebooted. This explains the difference between the Dark Tower books, comics and upcoming films: they're part of different cycles all right, but the events flashed back to in Wizard and Glass take place outside the Dark Tower cycle, and must therefore be part of a different, larger cycle if the differences in versions are to be accounted for. This also explains how the book, television and comic-book versions of The Stand can all exist, despite the fact that they all have different versions of Randall Flagg in them: it's impossible that there are multiple Flaggs running around the multiverse (there's no way this guy could have twinners), so the different Flaggs must be part of different multiversal cycles.
- Except they aren't multiple Flaggs in the adaptations...a few things got changed, but it's the same Flagg really.
- Related to the above WMG: The larger cycle is about the Prim (Magic and Faith) and Rationality (Science and Machines) replacing and renewing each other. When the Prim was born, the Dark Tower and the beams came into existance. As mentioned in the books, the Great Old Ones replaced the magic of the beams with machines. Why? Either the beams were failing because of the retreat of the Prim OR the Great Old Ones thought they could do better. Doesn't matter. The beams themselves are more then just guy wires or supports holding up the tower, they are literally the axle upon which the Dark Tower (and Ka, the same thing, really) turn. So when the Prim receded the bearings (beams) began to wear out. Granted, since they are magic they could last nearly forever. But then they are replaced with machines, poor substitutes. The old ones believed that they would be around forver, so whats wrong with having to replace a few broken parts now and again?
- But now, there is a prolbem. The Prim is due to rise again. It can't replace the machines with them still holding up and spinning the Dark Tower on its hyper-dimensional axis. So then the Crimson King comes along and works to BREAK them. And where do they fail? At their weakest point, the machines. The last magic beam or failsafe (Stephen King and the Rose) hold up everything while the last of the artificial beams are destroyed. Roland and his Ka-tet are the Prim, crashing in like waves on a beach. In DT 7 its mentioned that with the breakers gone, the last remaining beam will re-knit the others. Roland's entry into the tower and climb are literally the tide coming in. Sadly, in the cycle we see Roland missed the horn and either needs it for a full return of the prim OR he needs to be able to set aside his desire to enter the tower, as others have mentioned. Because every tide that comes in must go back out. However if the tide (Prim or faith and magic) never crests its peak, it may be able to hold at a lower point and hence hold the beams and tower up all by itself.
- Dying is one way for a person to travel from one world to another (eg Jake). When Susan Delgado was being burnt in Hambry, perhaps the embryo she was carrying was transferred to the womb of another woman in another world: Sonia Danville. The supernatural forces surrounding the ancient evil of the charyou tree may have caused the dimensional rift. Sonia bore the child – the biological son of Roland and Susan – thinking that it was hers. When Ralph Roberts is reading Sonia's mind in Insomnia, he finds out 'Patrick, that's his name. She calls him Pat. He's named after his grandfather.' Patrick Delgado was the father of Susan Delgado, meaning that any child of Roland and Susan would have been the grandchild of Patrick – who is often referred to as Pat. It seems that Sonia is aware of her child's origins on some subconscious level. And of course, Patrick Danville's Mid-World heritage would go a long way towards explaining his supernatural abilities and cosmic significance. Besides, it's too damn depressing to think that Susan and her baby just died.
- Alternately, Sonia Danville is Susan Delgado's Twinner (see Black House for more info, though if you're here I imagine you already are familiar at least in passing), and Susan's unborn child would have been Patrick's (Twinner, that is, not child).
- This theory operates via the same mechanism as the one above. When Nadine Cross manages to goad Randall Flagg into throwing her out a window in The Stand, she and the child she was carrying apparently die. But if it's possible for unborn children to be transferred from one world to another upon death in the same way Jake was transferred, perhaps the offspring of Nadine and Flagg ended up in the body of a Mid-World woman – and since time is irrelevant when travelling between universes, it's entirely possible that the child ended up in the body of a woman in the distant past. This woman, whose surname was Eld, gave birth to the child and named him Arthur. The boy was enormously talented, and rose through the ranks to ultimately become the King of All-World. He led his people to victory against the wizard Maerlyn – who is, in fact, his grandfather, as the comics reveal that Flagg was Maerlyn's bastard offspring.Arthur has two children during his life: one was a son by a mortal woman whose surname was Deschain – this child was the ancestor of Roland through twenty-nine generations. The other child was by the demonic Crimson Queen, whom Arthur was tricked into sleeping with by Maerlyn's manipulation. Therefore: Maerlyn fathered Randall Flagg, who fathered Arthur Eld, who fathered the Crimson King and also sired the line which begat Roland Deschain. The Crimson King and Roland Deschain then co-fathered Mordred Deschain, in whom was reunited the two lines of Eld. Mordred capped the whole thing off by eating his ancestor. And if we combine this theory with the above one, Patrick Danville is also a descendant of Maerlyn, Flagg and Arthur, as well as being the half-brother of Mordred.
- At that point in the cycle the breakers would still be active, so the tower would fall. It would break the cycle but not in the right way.
- Morded ponders what it would be like to be accepted, but comes to the conclusion that even if he was he would never yield to having Roland as his Dihn/king, so even if they did accept him he would want to be in charge of everyone.
- creepy...
- And "himself" is, quite literally, what he finds inside the tower. (Apparently, it's what everyone who goes into the Tower finds; the Crimson King also saw the beginning of its own life before it ended up getting trapped.)
Yes, I know I'm ignoring the comics.
- Confirmed for the Film via the poster that shows the words "Last Time Around" superimposed over the Horn of Eld. The director has also stated that the Dark Tower film will be a sequel to the final book.