Stephen King Accurately Guessing the Twist Ending of 'Mare of Easttown' Is the Most Stephen King Thing Ever

Psssst: spoilers for Mare of Easttown Season 1 lie below. If you haven't watched the season finale due to passing out way too early last night, now is a good time to click out of this article!

Much like everyone else on the internet, Stephen King's been spending the past seven weeks theorizing about who the hell killed Erin on Mare of Easttown: and he got it right. Last night ahead of the season finale, the iconic horror writer hit Twitter with this theory, which ended up being entirely true:

"My guess as to who killed Erin in MARE OF EASTTOWN: The boy, Ryan Ross."

And in response to a follower who said that he's just sad and angry, he wrote "True, but that's a kid with a lot of rage inside. Case in point, beating the bully with a lunch tray when the bully was mean to the girl with Down Syndrome, aka trisomy 21."

He then added that his Billy theory was, in fact, just a theory, saying "Just theories. I could be wrong. I was once, I think it was in 1973."

I mean, yup. Midway through the episode we/Mare find out that John Ross was covering for his son, Ryan, who accidentally shot Erin after confronting her at the park about her affair with his father. While Ryan's name has been floating around as a potential suspect, most people thought his mom Lori would end up being the killer. But not Stephen King, apparently.

Meanwhile, creator Brad Ingelsby told Entertainment Tonight that when it came to unveiling Ryan as the killer, "I had the ending in my head even prior to writing the opening episode page one, but I hadn't had Mare in my head, had a lot of these characters in my head. It was about eight months of just having these characters in my head, but not knowing exactly where it was going to end. And then it wasn't until I kind of landed on Ryan and I was convinced that was a really emotional way to end the show, but also it would speak to the show and the female relationships and the loss of a son. And it would speak to the themes of the show in a way that was honest and organic. And so once I landed on Ryan, we stayed with that. It never changed. It was always going to end with him."

WATCH MARE OF EASTTOWN

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