So yeah, spoilers. I'm going to be talking spoilers from the end of the final book (which, you know, twelve years old, so I could make a statute of limitations argument here) and also a recent tweet by Stephen King that probably won't mean anything unless you've read that book, but also could give us details about the upcoming movie, details you'd still not really understand unless you knew how the final book ends.
We good?
Spoilers:
At the end of Roland's massive journey, he rather easily defeats the Crimson King, having Patrick Danville draw and then erase him from existence, leaving only his glowing red eyes floating in midair on the balcony of the Tower.
Roland steps into the Tower, and then King warns us that we might not like the true ending of the story, and perhaps it'd be best if we call it a series and go on with our lives. But like Roland, the reader has to know what's in the Tower. What Roland sees there are actually scenes from his own life, and when he gets to the top, or at least to the highest reachable room, he finds the Unfound Door, which opens out onto the Mohaime Desert - exactly where the story began. Indeed, the final words of the book are "The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the Gunslinger followed."
But this time, things are different. When he reaches the Dark Tower, he is supposed to blow the Horn of Eld - an artifact that presumably would have performed some magical task that was necessary. Its purpose was hazy, of course, and I've actually considered a darker interpretation where the Horn is meant to herald the end of the world - that Roland's endless cycles have been what has been keeping the Tower standing.
Probably not, though, because it's the Crimson King who wanted it destroyed, and when Roland steps through the Unfound Door, he now carries the Horn, which in the previous cycle he had lost, along with his best friend Cuthbert, at the Battle of Jericho Hill. Why would the Tower allow him to have the horn if it meant an end to a beneficial cycle? So perhaps this is really just the Tower (which basically is God, or Gan) taking pity on Roland and deciding that he's gone through enough.
We know that Roland has gone through this cycle many, many times. But we don't know the details. For example, while Jake, Eddie, and Oy die in the final book, Susannah manages to escape into an alternate version of New York in which she finds versions of her Ka-Tet (minus Roland) who remember who she is - meaning that perhaps after death, these heroes were allowed to live an afterlife in a better version of their familiar city. Jake and Eddie are now biologically brothers and Oy is a dog (given that there aren't too many billy-bumblers in our universe or similar ones.)
This seems like a good reward for these very likable and heroic people. Does Roland's cycle mean that this is all undone, and they're back to their depressing lives from before? Or have these people even been part of Roland's Ka-Tet on each cycle?
We really don't know what the other cycles were like - Roland's memories are reset, so you'd expect him to behave in the same way each time, but only if circumstances were the same. Given that he has the Horn this time, perhaps there have been other changes in each cycle. Maybe there were different people behind the Ghostwood Doors on the beach or perhaps there weren't even doors like that in the first place?
Anyway, King tweeted this about the movie:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Dark Tower is close, now. The Crimson King awaits. Soon Roland will raise the Horn of Eld. And blow. <a href="https://t.co/rqGSKM3dWL">pic.twitter.com/rqGSKM3dWL</a></p>— Stephen King (@StephenKing) <a href="https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/733244613000069120">May 19, 2016</a></blockquote>
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This heavily implies that the Dark Tower movie is not, in fact, the same cycle we covered in the books. It's the next cycle, the "Last Time Around," where Roland has the horn. This actually gives the filmmakers a whole lot of flexibility in the adaptation, because technically anything new that happens in this version is justifiable in that it's a different cycle of Roland's journey.
Excitement rising.
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