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Stephen King’s Only Time Travel Story Became an Underrated TV Series, And Now It’s Hard to Watch
Stephen King has primarily focused on horror stories throughout his career. However, he has also worked on sci-fi and fantasy, with The Dark Tower series the best example of mixing those two genres. King has played with time travel before, too. The Jaunt is a short story that features travel across distances, with a brief mention of time travel, and The Dark Tower features characters hopping through time on their journey. However, the only real Stephen King story that uses time travel as a plot device is his 2011 novel, 11/22/63. That novel was also adapted into a Hulu streaming series, but fans got some bad news recently.
11/22/63 is no longer available on Hulu, even though it was a Hulu original series, and now it is more difficult to watch.
11/22/63 Is One of Stephen King’s Most Underrated TV Shows
11/22/63 is a Stephen King novel that asks one serious question. If a person could go back in time and prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy, would they do it? If they did, what would it change about the future? The time travel here is a little complicated. When a person goes back in time, they arrive at the same spot every time. When they return, no time has passed, but they have aged for as long as they were in the past.
Initially, a diner owner named Al Temleton was trying to go back in time to stop the assassination, but he is now dying. He asks his friend, a schoolteacher named Jake Epping, to take his place and find a way to stop the assassination, hoping to make the present day more inclusive and better than it turned out to be. Of course, when time travel is at play, things are not going to go well.
The Hulu streaming series premiered in 2016, starring Chris Cooper as Al Templeton and James Franco as Jake Epping. The series kept the same basic plot, as Jake goes back in time and tries to find a way to stop Kennedy’s assassination. As with the book, he succeeds, but the results are not what he had hoped. 11/22/63 was a great success for Hulu, running for eight episodes and remaining fairly loyal to the source material. Critics praised the series, and it has an 83% Rotten Tomatoes score, while also winning a Saturn Award for Best Television Presentation.
The story was always excellent, as this is one of Stephen King’s better late-era novels. However, the series received a lot of praise for its production from showrunner Bridget Carpenter and for the acting, with most critics pointing out James Franco’s impressive performance as Jake Epping. Sadly, most people can’t see 11/22/63 anymore.
How to Watch 11/22/63 on Streaming
Shockingly, Hulu removed 11/22/63 from its streaming service. This is happening more and more lately. HBO Max removed shows like Westworld, despite its intense fanbase, and now there is no way to watch it without buying or renting it. This is despite Westworld being an HBO original series. Now, Hulu has done it as well with this underrated Stephen King adaptation.
For a short time, it was available on Plex to watch, but it left that service as well, so the only way to see the Stephen King time travel series is to buy or rent it. Amazon, Fandango-At-Home, and Apple TV have it for sale, per episode, but that is the only way to watch it right now, unless a person wants to buy it on physical media. That is the one positive area. Even though it was a streaming series, it is available on DVD and Blu-ray, and physical media might be the only real option for people who want to have a favorite show or movie to watch anytime they want in the future, with streaming services randomly dropping shows like 11/22/63 at any time.
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