i still think very often about lloyd henreid's undying doglike devotion to flagg and how it was snubbed and erased in 2020. lloyd's character is also cowardly from the beginning as well in 2020, which doesnt quite align with the lloyd we know in the early chapters of the book.
lloyd was a killer, an attempted rapist with no real grasp on the importance of any human life, not even his own! one could argue that he thought of himself as above others and as very important, but to me this is not the case. lloyd is easily manipulated. he has always been below others and been HAPPY below others. he isnt a coward. hes impulsive and dangerous and a killing machine under the right (wrong?) command. it's why hes so quick to fall to poke's manipulation. he needs that demand and command to thrive. he thinks of himself as too stupid, too incompetent to hold power himself. he doesnt truly value his life when theres no one bossing him around. even when his life is in danger, he only truly attempts saving it once he gets pushed in a certain direction by someone else.
nothing "cowardly" about lloyd shows up until he is dying a slow, painful death in the jail, but wouldnt you be scared if you were rotting away? wouldnt you be afraid, maddenigly afraid, if everybody around you got a merciful death from sickness while you were made to starve?
lloyd was never a "coward." he was impulsive, easy to manipulate, and didnt value his life until it was being brutally ripped from him. the 2020 lloyd seemed like he was genuinely bullied and abused into being what he was with poke when in the book lloyd took the opportunity to go with soneone he viewed as stronger and possibly even smarter knowing how lloyd sees himself with flagg.
the ending arc in 2020 is ridiculous and ruins the entire point of lloyd's development as well.
i suppose even in the book youre meant to hope lloyd can get out somehow. you see how abused and left in the dust he is by flagg and pray that he realizes he has more power than he thinks and that he can take it back. i think that the scene where flagg allows him to yell at him and immediately apologizes, as well as the scene where whitney tells him they need to leave and they want lloyd with them... which he declines. not to mention the glen prison scene, where lloyd is being told the truth by glen, a truth he admits he already knows. there doesnt need to be anymore convincing from flagg, and any outside force is futile. he kills glen when hes told he doesnt know any better. i think lloyd is tired of being treated like he knows nothing. tired of being seen as a helpless person who's made the wrong choice. he KNOWS hes making the "wrong" choice... but what will he have without flagg?
lloyd's character is very concrete and finalized. he makes the showdown between flagg and the boulder crew possible. he knows he is not loved by flagg, but he takes the fake stuff anyways because it's all he has. this truth is not even close to being portrayed in the stand 2020.
in 2020, lloyd is an airhead who cant make his own decisions or discern right from wrong until the very climax of the show where randy faces off against boulder. he has no true arc despite having much more of a presence than he did in the book. he is taken advantage of for being stuoid at every turn. he doesnt have the big yelling match or the realization that flagg needs him. he doesnt have the conversarion with whitney, and, worst of all, he doesnt have the intimacy of killing glen bateman with only flagg in the room with him.
this in particular always upset me. why? why change it so that lloyd has eyes all around him? why make it the pressure of vegas that breaks him and not the pressure of the man he loves and is dependent on for survival? does that not water down the entirety of flagg and lloyd's dynamic, perhaps even more than the martyr bullshit they tried pulling near the end? are you serious???
lloyd is a terribly misunderstood and brutally ruined character in the 2020 adaptation. unfortunately, this is the adaptation most people are aware of. it's the adaptation that's most successful. that means nobody will ever know the intimacies and toxicity of flagg and lloyd's relationship, nor will they understand that lloyd is a character with depth and love and devotion and a very sad and tragic arc. theyll only see him as a character with a rushed arc and horrible trashy ending. what a joke.
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