Randall Flagg

Flagg makes several appearances in King's Dark Tower series (1982-2012), which follows gunslinger Roland Deschain as he travels in search of the Dark Tower. Flagg's presence is felt in the opening sentence of the first book: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed". In this series, Flagg assumes the guise of several individuals. He first appears as Walter O'Dim, chased across the desert by Roland. In flashbacks Flagg assumes the identity of Marten Broadcloak, a wizard who conspires with the Crimson King to cause the fall of the Dark Tower. In the original edition of the first novel Marten is a separate person from Walter, who is also not known to be Flagg, but Marten and Walter are retconned into one character in the revised version.

When Roland was young, Marten had an affair with Roland's mother, Gabrielle, using the affair to provoke Roland to take the gunslinger test early. He hoped Roland would fail so he would be exiled but Roland passed the test. Eventually, Roland catches Walter; they have a long discussion about Roland's destiny and the Tower which causes him to slip into delirium. He awakens to find a pile of bones in Walter's place. In the original edition, Walter and Marten are separate characters, with Walter dying at the end of the novel. When King published an expanded edition of the novel, Walter and Marten are portrayed as identical, and Walter fakes his own death.

Flagg appears briefly in a flashback in the second installment of the Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. Roland recalls seeing two men named Thomas and Dennis pursuing a man named Flagg, who was almost certainly a demon. These are implied to be the same characters from The Eyes of the Dragon. This is the first example of the Dark Tower series crossing over with one of King's other novels.

Flagg makes his next full appearance in the series' third installment, The Waste Lands. In the city of Lud, Flagg saves Tick-Tock Man Andrew Quick, an enemy of Roland's ka-tet left for dead in an earlier confrontation. Quick becomes Flagg's devoted servant, and Flagg assumes the name of Richard Fannin. The character returns in the fourth book, Wizard and Glass, as Marten Broadcloak. Also identifying himself as Flagg, he warns Roland and his ka-tet to abandon their quest for the Dark Tower. In flashbacks, the reader learns that Flagg as Walter O'Dim was an emissary for John Farson, one of those responsible for the destruction of Roland's home Gilead.

The "Argument", a summary of the series thus far, beginning Wolves of the Calla—the fifth novel in the series—notes that Flagg is known as Broadcloak, Fannin and John Farson, depending on the world in which he lives. In Wolves of the Calla, Flagg makes a brief appearance as Walter o'Dim when Father Callahan arrives in Roland's world. Flagg gives Callahan Black Thirteen, a dangerous crystal ball, hoping it will kill Roland on his way to the tower. In this encounter, Flagg is described with "the face of a human weasel", and "the same welling red circle" on his forehead as the Can-toi. His appearance in Song of Susannah is via a flashback revealing that Flagg bargained with the succubus Mia; this resulted in the birth of Mordred Deschain, son of both Roland and the Crimson King.

In The Dark Tower, Flagg indicates that he is not John Farson, but served under him until the latter's downfall. Flagg reveals his plans to climb the Dark Tower, see the room at the top and become the god of all. Flagg believes that he can only achieve this by killing Mordred and taking his birthmark-stained foot. Although he tries to befriend Mordred and pledge allegiance to him, Mordred telepathically senses Flagg's true motives and eats him, forcing him to rip out his eyes and tongue first.

The Dark Tower reveals more of Flagg's background, relating that he was born Walter Padick in Delain to Sam the Miller of Eastar'd Barony. At age 13, Walter set out for a life on the road, but was raped by a fellow wanderer; author Bev Vincent hypothesized in The Road to the Dark Tower that Flagg's later actions toward Delain in The Eyes of the Dragon may have been revenge for the abuse he suffered as a child. Resisting the temptation to crawl back home, Padick instead moves toward his destiny; he learns various forms of magic, achieving a quasi-immortality. After centuries of wreaking havoc, Flagg attracts the attention of the Crimson King, who adopts him as his emissary.

Though Flagg is presumably killed in the final novel, Roland later learns that he is cursed to repeat his quest through multiple cycles of reincarnation. Therefore, Flagg is resurrected when Roland's next cycle begins, and the gunslinger pursues him.

In the 2017 film, set during the next cycle, Flagg identifies himself only as his alias "Walter". He is also revealed to have killed Roland's father in the past. Flagg uses the minds of psychic children (whom his followers kidnap for him), to attack the tower. His goal is to destroy the tower (which holds the entire multiverse together), and thus allow the dark creatures beyond to invade and destroy reality. He kidnaps the powerful psychic child Jake Chambers (an alternate version of Roland's child companion in the previous cycle) and begins his next strike against the tower. However, Roland arrives and defeats Flagg's men. Flagg uses magic to battle Roland, but the gunslinger outsmarts him and fatally shoots Flagg in the head. This ends the sorcerer's reign once and for all, and frees Roland from his curse.

In 2012, King published a new story from The Dark Tower entitled The Wind Through the Keyhole. Here Flagg is depicted as the Covenant Man: central villain of the book's story within a story, "The Wind Through the Keyhole", a legend from Mid-World set years before the series' beginning. He is the Barony's "tax collector" from Gilead, attempting to collect taxes from residents of the small town of Tree. The Covenant Man sends the story's protagonist, a young boy named Tim, on a perilous quest through the Endless Forest to save his mother; unbeknownst to Tim, the Covenant Man is supplying him with false prophecies and misinformation as part of a cruel practical joke. However, Tim succeeds in his journey; he saves his mother after encountering the wizard Maerlyn, who has been imprisoned in the form of a "tyger". While the Covenant Man is not explicitly identified as Flagg, with only the initials "RF/MB" in his signature as identification and at one point being referred to as 'the man in the black cloak', Stephen King confirmed in an interview with Bev Vincent for his book The Dark Tower Companion that the two are one and the same.

In Hearts in Atlantis (1999), Raymond Fiegler is identified near the novel's end as leader of an activist group when he prevents Carol Gerber from retrieving an unexploded bomb on a college campus. King never identifies Fiegler as Flagg, but Christopher Golden and Hank Wagner suggest in The Complete Stephen King Universe that there is little doubt Fiegler is Flagg. Golden and Wagner cite evidence such as Fiegler's ability to make himself appear "dim", an ability shared by Flagg in Eyes of the Dragon, his manipulation of Carol Gerber and her activist friends and Flagg's frequent use of aliases, usually with the initials "R.F."

Stephen King's novel Gwendy's Button Box, which he co-wrote with Richard Chizmar, features a mysterious man in black named Richard Farris. Farris gives a young girl, Gwendy Peterson, a "button box" which, depending on the buttons or levers that are used, can dispense magical treats or cause death and destruction. Farris reappeared in Gwendy's Magic Feather (written solely by Chizmar) and Gwendy's Final Task (co-written by both King and Chizmar).

Chizmar was asked whether or not Richard Farris's initials signified that he was another manifestation of Randall Flagg; his response was "Maayyybee... He's definitely mysterious, and it's really obvious there's more to him than meets the eye." Chizmar later revealed during a Reddit AMA session that the initials were indeed indicative of Farris being Flagg. In 2022, King stated while the character started off as Flagg that was no longer the case: "I saw him as a force of evil when I first started to write about the box. By the time I realized he was a force of the White, it was too late to change the initials."

The 2016 miniseries 11.22.63, based on King's 2011 novel 11/22/63, incorporates numerous references to other King stories, including an appearance by Randall Flagg, who is seen cycling through the Dallas throngs just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the final episode.

In 2019, Finnish actor Jasper Pääkkönen was cast as Marten Broadcloak for the pilot of Amazon Prime Video's television adaptation of The Dark Tower, but Amazon ultimately decided not to pursue the series. In the same year, Swedish actor Alexander Skarsgård was cast as Randall Flagg in the CBS All Access miniseries adaptation of The Stand. Showrunner Taylor Elmore described Skarsgård's Flagg with "[he] is so beautiful, he is absolutely a lion-like God figure. With perfect hair and... and also, there's a softness to Alex's performance that I think is fascinating. Alex just plays it where you feel not only sympathy for this character, but you hopefully understand why it's so easy for people to gravitate toward him. He's just magnetic, he's just absolutely fascinating to watch. He's galvanizing as a leader."

In his interview with Bev Vincent, Isanove opined that Walter was his favorite character to draw; "Jae [Lee, the original artist for the series] established him as almost androgynous. He's always got this bare chest, and he's very feminine in the way he moves, with his hands raised. He's always moving his hands around. He's got this weird face, with a broken nose and greasy hair. He's starting to bald, but he's always got a very white separation in the middle of it. He's just so greasy, he's great to draw. And he still has to be seductive at the same time, so you can't make him repulsive... He's such a great character."

Marvel later released a comic book adaptation of The Stand, which began in September 2008 and ran for thirty issues. Writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa described Flagg as "The man of nightmares. Or, put another way, our nightmares given human (more or less) form. The dark side of the American Dream... King's 'Walkin' Dude' may not be the Devil, himself, as Mother Abagail says, but he comes pretty damn close..." Initially, artist Mike Perkins said he felt "Flagg needed to be designed less as a man—more as a force of nature. His hair will obscure his features, his face will be almost always in heavy shadow. This is the creature lurking under your bed, in your wardrobe, in your nightmares. Slightly familiar but wholly terrifying." Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa later commented on the original idea of hiding Flagg's face: "...the further into the book and the adaptation you go, the less feasible that becomes. Stephen spends so much time describing [Flagg]'s features and smiles, you need to show those things."

Douglas Winter, author of Fear Itself: The Horror Fiction of Stephen King, believes that Flagg epitomizes the Gothic villain—an "atavistic embodiment of evil"—since his appearance is indistinct, malleable and a "collection of masks". Flagg symbolizes "the inexplicable fear of the return of bygone powers—both technological and, as his last name intimates, sociopolitical". Like other Gothic villains, Flagg's plans seem to fail at every turn as he seems to need to convince others of his importance. Winter asserts that Flagg is a Miltonic superman who receives his strength from a dark, mysterious source. He compares him to J. R. R. Tolkien's Sauron in The Lord of the Rings: both collapse when directly confronted.

Journalist Alissa Stickler describes Flagg as a "contemporary medievalist interpretation on the themes of evil, magic and the (d)evil figure". She likens Flagg to Merlin, whispering in the ear of Arthur. Stickler notes that Flagg is politically powerful in The Stand and The Eyes of the Dragon; he uses his power differently in each novel, challenging depictions of evil and witchcraft common in medieval times. She explains that there does not appear to be a higher power to which Flagg "must appeal to his abilities" as there is with traditional evil. Flagg is more of a "humanesque evil", which works against him as much as it does for him. His supernatural knowledge is fallible, and the customary black-and-white depiction is replaced with an "acceptance of a shadowy gray area". Stickler says that although Flagg appears "terrifying and supernatural" as depicted by King, there are no absolutes. She concludes that Flagg represents the medieval monster both past and future, which challenges and yet supports the literary Middle Ages.

Flagg's character has its detractors. In his essay "The Glass-Eyed Dragon", author L. Sprague de Camp criticizes Flagg in Eyes of the Dragon, saying that he is one of the least-believable characters in the book and too evil to be credible. According to de Camp, absolute evil is hard to envision; whereas Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin believed they were improving the world, Flagg only enjoys causing destruction and chaos. De Camp notes that Flagg fails to see that there is no advantage to his actions.

Flagg's embodiment of evil is not the only characteristic seen by critics. Author Joseph Reino commented that the character's presence in The Stand was "Stephen King's version of a pestilential Big Brother". Tony Magistrale revisits the character in a second book, this time comparing him to Norman Mailer. Here, Magistrale states that in The Stand Flagg gives the reader an "illustration of King's jaundiced perspective of modern America" as he presents the consequences of technology—worship and the sacrifice of "moral integrity to the quest for synthetic productivity".

Flagg's background as a rape victim and its impact on his character have also been explored. Patrick McAleer, author of Inside the Dark Tower Series: Art, Evil and Intertextuality in the Stephen King Novels, argues that Flagg's situation is the most sympathetic of all of King's characters, and his evil may be retribution: "[I]n suspending any disbelief in the possibility that reprisal is a reaction to rape, the life of Flagg becomes one that looks to strike a balance for the sexual crime committed against him. And although Flagg's possible search for justice and balance is that which becomes imbalanced and even prejudiced, the mitigating factor here is that Flagg is not an originator of evil - he is just caught up in its web as another wronged individual seeking justice". McAleer compares Flagg to Satan in Paradise Lost, suggesting that he may be another "fallen angel who has a valid case supporting his devilry". While agreeing that Flagg can be seen "relishing in evil deeds at almost every juncture", he contends that no judgement can be made without the full story and context for his actions.