8 Alternative Endings To Stephen King Novels That Were Originally Planned

11/22/63 follows schoolteacher Jake Epping who, after discovering a time portal to 1958, decides to go back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, wreaking havoc on space time and the fabric of reality. In the process, he meets and becomes engaged to a woman named Sadie Dunhill, helping her escape her abusive husband Johnny, but she dies helping him accomplish his mission of saving Kennedy.

The finished novel sees Jake, after closing the portal and resetting the timeline, find an 80-year old Sadie still alive (since he never met her). When he meets her, she seems to have some sense of deja vu.

King's original ending, which he released onto his website in 2012, instead sees Jake find a news article about Sadie in which he learns that she married a man named Trevor Anderson, with whom she has five children, eleven grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. The two never meet or interact face-to-face. This ending was changed by King at the insistence of his son Joe Hill, himself a novelist.