With Stephen King’s new book, Holly Gibney is officially Randall Flagg’s foil

Stephen King announced that he has a new book coming out next year, Never waverand with that, Holly Gibney is officially established as Randall Flagg’s accountant. Never waver is being described as yet another King crime stable, featuring two intertwined narratives that come together in the third act. In it, a madman sends a letter to the Buckeye City Police Department, threatening to kill 14 people in what he claims is an act of atonement. With that, detective Izzy Jaynes asks her old friend for help: private investigator Holly Gibney.

Holly Gibney is a well-known name to Stephen King readers, and thanks to Justine Lupe for portraying her in Mr Mercedes adaptation, and Cynthia Erivo playing Holly Gibney in The stranger miniseries adaptation, she is also a familiar face. Along with these two adaptations, the first novel starring the character, Holly, is also in development as a TV show. That’s it the first time a Stephen King character will appear in adaptations of three different booksbut it’s not the only thing that puts Holly Gibney in the rarefied air of Stephen King’s universe.

Holly Gibney has appeared in more Stephen King books than any other character outside of The Dark Tower

Only Randall Flagg and Roland Of Gilead have appeared in more

Never waver will bring the total number of Stephen King books in which Holly Gibney has appeared to seven. She appeared in the Bill Hodges trilogy, two other novels, including the first as a main character, and the titular novella in the short story collection If it bleeds. What started out as a character was only intended to serve as support in Mr Mercedes and then leaving the page turned into a much bigger function. In the last decade, Holly has been the most recurring character in Stephen King’s work and their appearances are increasing.

The number of his appearances is also significant because This doesn’t happen often in Stephen King’s books. Although the prolific author is known for having characters from one story appear in another, this is usually only in a few books, or their appearance is just a cameo. It’s not often that an important character in one book becomes an important character in another, like when Father Callahan from ‘Salem Lot appeared in The Dark Tower series to become a significant player in the last three books.

It’s the same series in which the characters have appeared more times than any other. Roland of Gilead has appeared in all seven major Dark Tower books as well as the prequel The wind through the keyholeand the short story “The Little Sisters of Eluria”. The Dark Tower Stephen King’s most prolific antagonist and villain, Randall Flagg, has appeared in even more books, appearing in at least nine novels, several short stories, and, if fan theories are correct, appeared in more works under different guises. Holly Gibney is the only character outside of Randall Flagg to appear in at least three loosely related works as a main character.

Holly is Stephen King’s mirror inverse of Randall Flagg

Flagg is chaotic evil to Holly’s cool good

However, although she is beginning to rival Randall Flagg in most appearances, Holly Gibney is the opposite of Flagg. While Randall Flagg, aka The Man in Black, aka The Walkin’ Dude, aka so many other nicknames, is a pure villain, King’s ultimate expression of evil, Holly is a force for good. Flagg exists on the page to sow fear and incite others to commit evil acts, if he is not already doing evil himself. He is King’s version of Satan the Devil, the incarnation of chaos, destruction and lies.

Holly, on the other hand, represents order and truth in the world of Stephen King. Your analytical mind doesn’t miss a beat and his gift is getting to the bottom of things and fixing them. She has a knack for hunting down perpetrators of evil, whether fully human killers like Brady Hartsfield from Mr Mercedesor more supernatural assassins as the titular entity of The stranger. Holly’s purpose is to unite the frayed lives and narratives that bad men unravel, placing her in symbolic opposition to Randall Flagg. It is still unclear whether the antagonist of Never waver It will be more human or supernatural, but Holly will still put her prodigious powers to work helping those who have nowhere else to turn.