10 Insulting Ways Characters Were Killed Off Between Horror Movies
3. Wendy Torrance’s Secret Demise – Doctor Sleep
Wendy Torrance is put through the wringer throughout Stephen King’s third novel, 1977’s The Shining. That said, perfectionist filmmaker Stanley Kubrick arguably put her – and actress Shelley Duvall – through even more agony when he brought it to the big screen in 1980.
Already a victim of husband Jack’s alcoholism, the traumatized Wendy spends the latter half of The Shining valiantly protecting herself and her son, Danny, from Jack’s violent madness. Eventually, she fends off Jack’s murderous axe swings and then escapes the Overlook Hotel with Danny after Jack dies in the frozen hedge maze.
Decades later, King wrote a sequel to his book – Doctor Sleep – which Mike Flanagan turned into a movie in 2019. Miraculously, Flanagan succeeded in making his version both a faithful adaptation of King’s text and a fitting continuation of Kubrick’s divisive original.
Considering that Doctor Sleep follows an adult Danny and includes flashbacks to his life with his mother following Jack’s death, more attention should’ve been given to giving Wendy a proper send-off. Unfortunately, though, Flanagan merely chose to have Danny vaguely explain to a ghostly version of Jack that Wendy died when he was 20 years old.
How? Sadly, he doesn’t say.
At the bare minimum, King’s respectably tragic fate for Wendy – her dying of lung cancer in 1999 – could’ve been retained for Flanagan’s film.