The Stand: How The Superflu Started In Each Version (Miniseries & Book)

WARNING: Spoilers for The Stand episode 1, “The End”, ahead

Stephen King’s The Stand on CBS All Access is off to a great start, but like ABC’s miniseries adaptation from the ’90s, the 2020 limited series changes how the Superflu is started. While the differences are subtle, each version of The Stand approaches the Captain Tripps pandemic from a different angle. The question is: why?

When Stephen King wrote The Stand in the late ’70s, the idea of a deadly pandemic sweeping across the United States was a novel one. While there have certainly been pandemics before (like the Spanish Flu), that wasn’t the sort of thing people worried about in the ’70s and ’80s. Still, disease has always been a potential threat and the concept is a believable one that King was able to explore as a means to create a world with a level playing field for a penultimate conflict between good and evil. Of course, today the world faces a real-life pandemic in the form of COVID-19, which makes the concept that much more frightening. King’s Captain Tripps is even based on influenza and shares traits similar to Coronavirus.

In Stephen King’s novel, events take place linearly, starting with the lives of the main characters before everyone begins to get sick. Then, as Captain Tripps spreads across the country, there are several chapters where people are wandering around trying to figure out what to do before the dreams begin to call them either to Mother Abigail or to Randall Flagg. Flagg himself doesn’t appear in the novel until Chapter 23, a good way into the narrative. Because of this, the horrors of the Superflu pandemic are mostly separated from the horrors surrounding Randall Flagg. Nevertheless, in both the miniseries from ’94 and the latest adaptation for CBS All Access, the writers chose to introduce Flagg sooner.

The Stand: How The Superflu Started In Stephen King’s Book

In King’s novel, the story begins with Charlie Campion, a security worker at a top-secret government facility in California. He’s playing solitaire when he looks up and sees that all of the lights have turned red and the workers inside the facility are dead. When the lights turn red, the automated doors are supposed to close, quarantining everyone inside. However, for whatever reason, the doors remain open and Charlie is able to escape, but not before becoming infected with the deadly virus that was being studied at the facility for possible military use.

Charlie runs home, gathers his family, piles them into their 15-year-old Chevy sedan, and drives out of the government facility before anyone else knows something’s wrong. He drives east across Nevada until he reaches Arnette, Texas, where Stu Redman is hanging out with some of his friends at a gas station. Charlie nearly crashes his car into one of the gasoline pumps. His wife and baby are already dead in the backseat and Charlie dies before Stu and the others can get him to the hospital. However, at that point, they’ve all been exposed; only Stu is going to survive because he has immunity.

The Stand: How The Superflu Started In The 1994 Miniseries

In the miniseries adaptation of The Stand that premiered on ABC in 1994, it begins similarly to King’s novel. Charlie Campion is working at a government laboratory in California where a weaponized version of influenza is being studied called Project Blue. When the virus is accidentally released, Charlie escapes and travels across the country, unknowingly spreading the virus, until he ends up in Arnette, Texas.

Charlie crashes his car into Bill Hapscomb’s gas station, where Stu Redman and others rush out to help. While events play out similarly to the book, as Charlie Campion dies in Stu’s arms, he warns him that he’s been pursued by a “Dark Man”. This is an important detail because it introduces Randall Flagg into the narrative much sooner, and implies that he has something to do with the spread of the virus.

The Stand: How The Superflu Started In The 2020 Miniseries

CBS takes a different approach by beginning the series with the Boulder Free Zone already established. From there, characters are introduced and their experiences with Captain Tripps and the end of the world are shown in flashbacks, which is a good strategy. In this way, the story can unfold more smoothly within the standard episodic structure.

At the end of episode 1, “The End”, Charlie Campion is working at the military base in California when he gets a call from someone asking him what’s going on. He then sees a worker in a hazmat suit stumble and die on the other side of a protective pane of glass. Interestingly, he then does the right thing and presses the lockdown button. The lights turn red and the automatic doors shut and lock, except for one that becomes stuck. Charlie then glances at his phone where he sees a picture of his wife and baby daughter, then over at the jammed door, and makes a break for it. The shot pans left to reveal someone was holding their foot in the way so that the door wouldn’t close. From there, Charlie runs, gathers his family, and ends up spreading the virus across the country before he dies in Texas in Stu Redman’s (James Marsden) arms.

Why CBS Made This Significant Change To The Stand

In the final moments of the first episode of CBS’s The Stand, Charlie Campion is driving his family away from the military research facility and sees Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard) hitchhiking on the side of the road. The car passes by and then Flagg is inside the car with his arm around Charlie’s baby daughter. Flagg is smiling, as he knows that Captain Tripps has been set loose on the world and his time for domination has arrived. This moment is significant because it directly connects Flagg to the virus.

What’s more, it was Flagg’s foot that held the door open, allowing Charlie to escape. Charlie tried to do the right thing, but he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to run. He makes an impulsive decision in an attempt to save himself and his family. Who can blame him? Nevertheless, if the automatic door had shut as it was supposed to, it’s possible the Superflu could have been contained within the facility, preventing the death of 99.4% of the United States’ population.

In CBS’s The Stand, Randall Flagg is directly responsible for the spreading of Captian Tripps. Not only does this introduce him far earlier in the miniseries’ story than in King’s novel, but it also foreshadows the malicious nature of his character. At its heart, The Stand is about the conflict between Mother Abigail and her people and Randall Flagg and his minions. It is about good versus evil. In King’s novel, the events that take place around the pandemic are disconnected from the story about the survivors attempting to rebuild civilization and fight off the evil that is The Dark Man. While the ’94 miniseries attempts something similar by having Charlie Campion speak about being pursued by a dark man, CBS’s The Stand has found a clever way to better tie the narrative together.

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