Stephen King Dropped A Dash Cunning ‘Dark Tower’ Spoiler On Twitter

This changes everything. No, really. It literally changes everything. Stop reading here if you don’t want to know the clever way Stephen King and The Dark Tower‘s director and co-writer Nikolaj Arcel are shutting down fan complaints before they can even start.

Here’s the part of the post where I blather a bit about the background of The Dark Tower movie’s development and what we know so far so you don’t accidentally see the spoiler in the photograph below. So, anyway, Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey will play the Gunslinger and the Man in Black, respectively. The film also stars Fran Kranz (as Pimli Prentiss), Katheryn Winnick, and Abbey Lee, and may also cast Jackie Earle Haley and Aaron Paul. The film starts in media res and much of it takes place in the present day. It’s currently filming with a planned release date of January 13, 2017.

Now for the spoiler. Stephen King tweeted this on Thursday:

BOOM. Horn of Eld, motherf*ckers! Oh, you want to nitpick about how something is different from the books, like Pimli Prentiss showing up so early in the story? HORN OF ELD. Somebody getting mad about Idris Elba’s skin color? HORN OF ELD. HORN OF ELD. La la la I can’t hear you HORN OF ELD.

Okay, we’ll let /film explain this genius sh*t right here.

The seventh and final book in the Dark Tower series concluded with Roland the Gunslinger reaching the Dark Tower, facing the villainous Crimson King, climbing the tower and… realizing that this is not the first time he’s completed this quest. In fact, he’s reached the Dark Tower many times, only to be sent back to the start of his journey by Gan, the godlike being that uses the tower as his physical form. And then Roland is shot backwards in time, back to the start of the first book in series, without any memory of having made the journey in the first place. The only difference is that he is now carrying the Horn of Eld, the family heirloom that he had abandoned at the Battle of Jericho Hill years earlier. The implication is that something has changed. This time, the journey may be different and Roland’s quest may actually reach a satisfactory conclusion.

What King’s tweet suggests is that this is the continuation. The gunslinger doesn’t just look like sexy Idris Elba now. He’s also got his Horn of Eld back, and maybe he’s just a little less stubborn and more ready to take on the Crimson King again. Maybe this really will be his “last time around.”

Now if King and Arcel want to change something for the cinematic adaptation, and someone wants to complain about it going differently in the books, they can just point to the Horn of Eld and go, “Nuh-uh-uh, Horn of Eld,” which… you know, come to think of it, I need to go buy a replica Horn of Eld to carry with me always. Then if anybody wants to dredge up sh*t from the past, I can just point to the Horn of Eld. Hey, it’s cool. I’ll get it right this time around.

(Via /film and @StephenKing)