Randall Flagg

Randall Flagg
The Dark Tower character
Randall Flagg. Art by Michael Whelan
First appearance	The Stand
Last appearance	The Dark Tower
Created by	Stephen King
Portrayed by	Jamey Sheridan
In-universe information
Alias	Walter Padick, Walter o'Dim, Marten Broadcloak, etc.
Nickname	The Walkin' Dude, The Dark Man, etc.
Species	Quasi-immortal wizard
Gender	Male
Family	Sam Padick (father)
Nationality	Delain

Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by writer Stephen King. Flagg has appeared in a number of King's novels under different names, many of which have the initials R.F. However, later books reveal that the name that the character associates himself with the most and uses for the majority of his appearances in The Dark Tower series is Walter o'Dim. He is described as "an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark" with general supernatural abilities such as necromancy, prophecy and influence over people's behavior. Flagg makes his first official appearance in the 1978 novel The Stand as the main antagonist, followed by significant roles in The Eyes of the Dragon and The Dark Tower. In addition to King's novels, Flagg also appeared in Marvel's Dark Tower comics and the TV miniseries version of The Stand, the latter in which he was portrayed by Jamey Sheridan.

His goals typically center on spreading destruction and causing conflict, usually through bringing down entire civilizations. In The Stand, where he is also referred to as the "Walkin' Dude," he organizes what is left of the "dregs of society" after America is almost entirely destroyed by the accidental release of a government-made superflu. In The Eyes of the Dragon, he hoped to bring an entire kingdom to ruin by manipulating various characters. In The Dark Tower series, Flagg is influential in weakening and destroying the "Affiliation," the feudal system of government in Mid-World, under the name Marten Broadcloak.

Concept and creation

According to Stephen King, the idea for Flagg came to him "out of nowhere" when he was in college. He had an image of "this guy in cowboy boots who moved around on the roads, mostly hitchhiking at night, always wore jeans and a denim jacket." With this vision in mind, he wrote a poem titled 'The Dark Man', but the idea of the character never left his head: "The thing about him that really attracted me was the idea of the villain as somebody who was always on the outside looking in and hated people who had good fellowship and good conversation and friends. So, yeah, he was there, really, from the beginning of my writing career. He's always been around...I've had a lifelong relationship with Randall Flagg...He's probably all the worst things that are in me."

In an interview with TV Guide, King responded to a question asking if the "darkly humorous" Flagg represents his idea of the Devil with: "I think the Devil is probably a pretty funny guy. Flagg is like the archetype of everything that I know about real evil, going back all the way to Charles Starkweather in the '50s—he is somebody who is empty and who has to be filled with other people's hates, fears, resentments, laughs. Flagg, Koresh, Jim Jones, Hitler—they're all basically the same guy."

Stephen King describes Flagg as "the one that I keep coming back to" and says that Flagg is "sort of the way that I sum up all the things that I think about evil: somebody who's very charismatic, laughs a lot, tremendously attractive to men and women both, and somebody who just appeals to the worst in all of us. His face changes, of course. He may look like Tony Curtis to me and he might look like Justin Timberlake to some little teeny-bopper and he might look like somebody else to you, but whatever it is, he's saying the same thing: 'I know all the things that you want and I can give them to you and all you have to do is give me your soul, which really isn't worth that much anyway.'"

Names, appearance, and role

Flagg goes by many names, ranging from the mythical, such as Nyarlathotep (an H. P. Lovecraft character) to the common. Many, but not all, of the names he goes by make use of the initials "R.F." Examples include Richard Fannin, who is involved in the storyline of The Waste Lands, and Rudin Filaro, who appears via flashbacks in The Dark Tower. He also draws on the archetype of the "plague-bearer", particularly in The Stand, and of Ahasuerus, the legendary Wandering Jew. He carries pamphlets for the Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground and other such groups, presumably to stir up trouble where none exists.

Flagg's appearance is not described in the novels as threatening; he is said to be an average-looking man, taking on the physical appearance of whatever the local people tend to look like. His attire frequently fits into the Americana style: blue jeans, a hooded jacket or a faded denim jacket, and cowboy boots with worn-down heels. He collects and attaches buttons to his clothing over the course of his appearances. Among these are a peace symbol, a smiley face with a bullet hole in the head , and a "CK" button. In The Stand he wears a button with a yellow smiley-face, one with a dead pig wearing a police cap asking "How's your pork?", and a button with an eye on it. In that novel, he is sometimes referred to as "The Walkin Dude", "The Dark Man", or simply as Flagg. However, he often takes on different appearances to adapt to different surroundings on occasions. For example, as Walter o'Dim, he takes on the guise of a hooded monk.

Character backstory

Throughout most of King's novels, Flagg's origins and true nature are left to the reader's imagination. In The Stand, it is suggested that Flagg cannot remember his life before each "era" of his history, and just at some point "became". He has vague memories of having been a Marine, a Klansman, and of being involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, the latter in which he was the one who suggested to Donald DeFreeze that Hearst be driven insane instead of merely ransomed. He is shown to be able to detect and find extremists as well as rally them together for malevolent causes. In The Stand, a hypnotized Tom Cullen, who claims to be "God's Tom", tells that Flagg was once cast into a herd of pigs by Jesus, referring to Legion, a demon of many personalities.

In his final appearance (The Dark Tower VII), it is revealed that Flagg was in fact a human being, born around 1500 years earlier, to Sam the Miller of Eastar'd Barony, as Walter Padick in a land called Delain (the setting of Eyes of the Dragon). He ran away from home at the age of 13 and set out for a life on the road — where he was raped by a fellow wanderer a year later. He resisted the temptation to slink back home and instead went on further to find his destiny and devote his life to darkness. He became determined to exact revenge on Delain, the place of his suffering. Becoming a powerful wizard, Flagg began to sow discord and strife through Delain and neighboring lands. He seldom acted directly, preferring to act behind the scenes and patiently set events into motion over years, decades, or even centuries. At some point after fleeing Delain, he attracted the attention of the Crimson King and became his emissary.

Appearances

In literature

The Dark Man

In the 1969 issue of Ubris a poem was published by Stephen King called The Dark Man. The poem tells of a man who wanders the country, riding the rails and observing everything around him. The poem turns sinister when the narrator confesses to rape and murder. "I forced a girl in a field of wheat/and left her sprawled with the virgin bread/a savage sacrifice/and a sign to those who creep in/fixed ways:/I am a dark man." Although not considered to be canon for the character, "The Dark Man" would later form the basis for Randall Flagg.

The Stand

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Randall Flagg from The Stand. Art by Bernie Wrightson.

Flagg made his first official appearance in the 1978 apocalyptic novel The Stand. In it, he was an antichrist-like being who was trying to rebuild civilization in the United States in his image after a devastating plague. Flagg is portrayed as the personification of evil set against Mother Abagail, the personification of good, and attracts many drawn to law and order and fascist culture around him in Las Vegas, Nevada. Flagg is described in the book by the character Tom Cullen:

He looks like anybody you see on the street. But when he grins, birds fall dead off telephone lines. When he looks at you a certain way, your prostate goes bad and your urine burns. The grass yellows up and dies where he spits. He's always outside. He came out of time. He doesn't know himself. He has the name of a thousand demons. Jesus knocked him into a herd of pigs once. His name is Legion. He's afraid of us. We're inside. He knows magic. He can call the wolves and live in the crows. He's the king of nowhere. But he's afraid of us. He's afraid of . . . inside.

Flagg planned to attack and destroy the other emerging civilization in Boulder, Colorado, leaving his civilization as the dominant power in the former United States. His plan was foiled when the hand of God turned upon him, causing a nuclear bomb to detonate in front of his assembled followers. Flagg himself was not killed in the explosion.

Says King:

I didn't really want the devil! [Flagg]'s minor league compared to what I assume the devil to be in a Christian theology, assuming that he really existed. But I wanted to play very consciously off that Revelations idea, where you have a kind of testing, almost like an Old Testament deal...The image that I had of Flagg was of a gigantic evil who will begin to deflate by the end of the book, which is not such an exciting concept. I just hoped that the good characters would carry readers over that. Really, I think that if in the end I could have made him into a sort of cringing salesman, a guy who's going bald and wearing red pants and white shoes, I would have done it. But I didn't quite have the balls to do it.

In the original version King implies that Flagg may have had an out-of-body experience in the instant of the explosion that allowed him to escape unharmed. While the original version of the novel does not tell of Flagg's fate afterwards, the 1990 expanded re-release of the novel, The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition, explains that Flagg reappeared somewhere on a beach with complete amnesia, where it is suggested that he continued to wreak havoc upon the human race in his new form.

The Eyes of the Dragon

Flagg (pictured right) with King Peter from Eyes of the Dragon. Art by David Palladini.

Flagg makes his next appearance in the 1986 novel The Eyes of the Dragon as an evil wizard causing havoc in the medieval country of Delain. His appearance and mannerisms are slightly different and more understated than they were in The Stand; he is hidden under a dark cloak, and most of his magic comes from performing spells and using a complex variety of potions and poisons.

Here, Flagg is described as having a white corpse's face, and as "well preserved"—a "thin and stern faced man of about 50":

He had, in fact, come to Delain often. He came under a different name each time, but always with the same load of woe and misery and death. This time he was Flagg. The time before he had been known as Bill Hinch, and he had been the King's Lord High Executioner [and] had made an end to hundreds — thousands, some said — of prisoners with his heavy axe. The time before that ... he came as a singer named Browson, who became a close adviser to the King and a Queen. Browson disappeared like smoke after drumming up a great and bloody war between Delain and Andua.

Flagg always showed up with a different face and a different bag of tricks, but two things about him were always the same. He always came hooded, a man who seemed almost to have no face, and he never came as a King himself, but always as the whisperer in the shadows, the man who poured poison into the porches of Kings' ears.

He wanted what evil men always want: to have power and use that power to make mischief. Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisers to Kings . . . the spinners in the shadows . . . such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsman's axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his actions just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble came – as it always did after a span of years – Flagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn. Later, when the carnage was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more.

In Eyes, Flagg schemes to throw the kingdom of Delain into chaos by poisoning the king and framing Prince Peter, the rightful heir to the throne, for the crime. In doing so, Peter's young, impressionable brother, Thomas, becomes King. Flagg easily manipulates Thomas to do his bidding since the wizard was the only person Thomas considered a friend during his childhood. Thus, Flagg is ruler of Delain in all but name, and plunges the kingdom into a Dark Age.

However Flagg's plan had one fatal flaw; when Thomas was younger, Flagg had shown him a secret passageway that allowed Thomas to view his father's quarters through the glass eyes of a dragon head mounted on the wall. In doing so, Thomas witnessed his father being poisoned but had been too frightened to do anything about it. In the climax, Thomas finally gains the courage to fight back against Flagg, using his father's arrow and shooting the wizard in his eye. Though Flagg is not killed, he is wounded badly and vanishes, perhaps to escape mortal death. Thus, Peter is once again restored as the rightful king. Thomas, along with his loyal butler Dennis, leave Delain and vow to track Flagg down.

The book ends with the cryptic comment that "Thomas and Dennis ... did see Flagg again, and confronted him," but no details are given. Many fans expected this plotline to continue in The Dark Tower (King has even said that Eyes is a Tower story when asked if there would be a sequel) but it does not, despite a brief reference in Drawing of the Three in which Roland recalls seeing the two chasing Flagg in the final days of Gilead.

Hearts in Atlantis

In the 1999 book Hearts in Atlantis, Randall Flagg makes a brief appearance towards the end of the book. While little is said to show that it is him, the disturbing nature of his presence along with the use of the name "Raymond Fiegler" (which follows Flagg's "RF" theme in many of his aliases) clue readers into the character's true identity.

In Hearts, a radical group called the Militant Students for Peace plants a bomb in a lecture hall on a college campus. The bomb is apparently supposed to go off at six in the morning, when the building is empty. It fails to do so, going off in the afternoon, killing six people and wounding fourteen others.

There was evidence that at quarter past noon, while the job interviews were in recess for lunch, a young woman made an effort—at considerable risk to her own life and limb—to retrieve the UXB herself. She spent perhaps ten minutes in the then-vacant lecture hall before being led away, protesting, by a young man with long black hair. The janitor who saw them later identified the man as Raymond Fiegler, head of the MSP. He identified the young woman as Carol Gerber.

Carol Gerber later tells an old childhood friend that “I’m good at not being seen...It’s a trick someone taught me a long time ago. The trick of being dim.” The trick of being 'dim' was an ability that Flagg practiced in The Eyes of the Dragon. Carol goes onto say that she got involved with "[a] man who could always move the cards just a little faster than you thought he could. He was looking for some confused, angry kids, and he found them."

Although it was never specifically confirmed by King, it has been assumed by the majority of King's fans that Raymond Fiegler is a manifestation of Flagg. In The Complete Stephen King Universe: A Guide to the Worlds of Stephen King by Christopher Golden and Hank Wagner, it is written that "Flagg has been shown to have many aliases over the years, and a number of them have also had the initials R.F. Raymond Fiegler is undoubtedly also an alias for Randall Flagg."

The Dark Tower

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Walter o'Dim. Art by Michael Whelan.

Flagg has made the majority of his appearances in The Dark Tower series. His presence is hinted at early on in the series, but his role in the story does not become evident until near the end of the third book, The Waste Lands.

Flagg appears in the first line of The Gunslinger with "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." He appears under the name of Walter o'Dim (the character is not identified as Flagg at this time) and practicing the art of necromancy. After leading Roland Deschain, the series' protagonist, on a lengthy pursuit across the Mohaine Desert, he gives Roland a tarot reading which predicts events to occur in several of the following novels. In the revised version of The Gunslinger, Walter warns Roland about himself as the "ageless stranger", telling him that he must be defeated before Roland can enter the Tower and, paraphrasing the Bible, identifies himself as Legion (Mark 5:9: "And Jesus asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.") He then gives Roland a vision of the Tower that sends him into a deep delirium. When Roland awakes, Walter is gone, having left behind a skeleton that convinces Roland, for only a moment, that his old foe is dead.

Flashbacks in The Gunslinger show Flagg's role under the name of Marten Broadcloak, the wizard who had corrupted Roland's homeland, betrayed his father Steven, seduced his mother Gabrielle, and conspired along with the Crimson King to cause the fall of the Dark Tower. Marten uses his affair with Gabrielle to anger Roland and spur him into taking his test to become a gunslinger early, with the hope that he will fail and be exiled. His plan fails, however, and Roland becomes a gunslinger successfully.

It should be noted that in the original publication of The Gunslinger, Walter's final 'palaver' with Roland and his subsequent revelations were a bit different. In the original novel, Walter was a separate character from Marten, and had definitely died in its conclusion. It is was only when King revised the novel in 2003 that Walter and Marten were revealed to be one and the same, and that Walter had merely faked his death. This causes some discrepancies when reading the second book through the fourth one as they still follow the continuity of the original Gunslinger; Walter and Marten are referred to as different people in allegiance with one another, and Walter is referred to as being dead, which contrasts with Roland knowing that they are one and the same and doubting that Walter's remains are real at the end of the revised Gunslinger. Another difference between the two versions was that instead of making reference to Legion, Walter tells Roland he must face Maerlyn.

He next appears near the end of the third novel, The Waste Lands, in the city of Lud to save Andrew Quick, the Tick-Tock Man, an enemy of Roland's ka-tet who was left for dead in an earlier confrontation. Quick becomes Flagg's devoted servant afterwards. Flagg appears for just a short time in this book, so there is little else of him until the fourth book, Wizard and Glass. In this, Flagg is finally revealed to be Marten Broadcloak, Roland's sworn enemy. After luring the ka-tet to an 'emerald castle', Flagg sics the Tick-Tock Man on the ka-tet, but Quick is easily defeated and killed. Flagg tells Roland and his ka-tet to renounce their quest for the Dark Tower before it's too late. Flagg manages to escape from Roland before the gunslinger gets a chance to kill him, but not before leaving a warning offering one last chance to renounce the Tower, promising that he would not leave the next time.

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Walter o'Dim. Art by Dave McKean.

Flagg also appears in the lengthy flashback that comprises the middle part of Wizard and Glass. Once again in the role of Walter o'Dim, he acts as an emissary for the rebel leader John Farson, one of the main architects in Gilead's ultimate destruction. Walter entrusts the Pink Grapefruit of the Wizard's Rainbow to Eldred Jonas, Farson's agent in Mejis. Jonas in turn entrusts the crystal to the witch Rhea of the Cöos.

There was some initial confusion as to whether or not John Farson was another identity of Flagg's. In the first four books, John Farson was a separate character from Flagg. When King revised The Gunslinger in 2003, he made reference to Marten being known in some quarters as Farson. Later, in the 'Argument' in the fifth book, he describes Roland's nemesis with "...Marten Broadcloak, known in some worlds as Randall Flagg, in others as Richard Fannin, in others as John Farson..." Robin Furth even wrote in her first Concordance that the two were the same. In the last novel, however, Flagg makes reference to his service under Farson and having survived the latter's downfall, indicating that they were separate all along. This caused Furth to state in her second volume that her earlier entry was a red herring. Finally, Marvel's Dark Tower comics attempted to reconcile these two discrepancies by stating that while there were rumors in Mid-World that the two were the same, they were in fact different people, even creating a scene where Marten and John Farson discuss the events in Hambry together.

Walter o'Dim went on to have cameos in Wolves of the Calla and Song of Susannah. In Wolves, after jumping out a window and effectively committing suicide to escape the can-toi, the agents of the Crimson King, Father Callahan wakes up in the Way Station and runs into Walter during the events of The Gunslinger (where Jake and Roland were only moments before). Walter gives Callahan Black Thirteen, the last and most dangerous of the Wizard's Rainbow, in hopes of it killing Roland later in his journey. Walter later taunts Callahan to which the priest responds that he is cruel. Walter looks hurt.

Walter's eyes widen, and for a moment he looks deeply hurt. This may be absurd, but Callahan is looking into the man's deep eyes and feels sure that the emotion is nonetheless genuine. And the surety robs him of any last hope that all this might be a dream, or a final brilliant interval before true death. In dreams—his, at least—the bad guys, the scary guys, never have complex emotions.

"I am what ka and the King and the Tower have made me. We all are. We're caught."

Walter later shows up in Song in a flashback. He appears to the infertile succubus Mia, who desperately wants a child of her own. Walter makes a Faustian bargain with her that culminates in her losing her immortality and giving birth to the son of Roland and the Crimson King. This later leads to his tragic downfall.

Death

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Randall Flagg is killed by Mordred. Art by Michael Whelan.

Flagg finally dies in the final book of the Dark Tower series. Before this, it is revealed that his goal all along has been the same as Roland's, to climb The Dark Tower and see the room at its top. To unlock the tower, Flagg believes he needs the red-marked foot of Mordred Deschain, the son of Roland and the Crimson King. Flagg sees this as an opportunity to become the God of All.

Flagg meets up with the infant, pledging allegiance to his cause, but Mordred senses Flagg's ulterior motives telepathically and seizes control of his mind, completely immobilizing him. Mordred transforms into his true form, that of a giant spider, and forces Flagg to pluck out his eyes and tongue before devouring him. Before dying, Flagg realizes that the sigil he would have needed is not Mordred's red heel, but the red hour-glass shape on the bottom of Mordred's spider form.

Flagg's death was controversial with both readers and critics. Supporters claimed that it was fitting that Flagg would be ultimately undone by his arrogance and that it suited King's general opinion that all evil people are ultimately 'bumhugs'. Bev Vincent defended King's controversial decision in his book The Road to the Dark Tower; While admitting that "readers may be disappointed at the unspectacular demise of this legendary villain who outwitted great minds for centuries without ever truly achieving any of his goals" and that "Roland isn't even present when this ancient deceiver who bedeviled him all his life finally pays for his prodigious list of sins", Vincent believed that it was "fitting, that Walter, like Dr. Frankenstein, dies at the hands of a creature he was instrumental in creating."

On the other side of the argument, some were disappointed that one of King's greatest villains, one who had appeared since the very first sentence of the series and in King's earliest works, only appeared briefly in the final book and was summarily dispatched by a new character. Flagg's death was also criticized as a ploy on King's part to give Mordred extra credibility, especially as the mind control powers were not used again to any great extent in the book. Readers were also disappointed that Flagg never battled Roland as a confrontation between the two had been foreshadowed early in the series. Matthew Peckham wrote that "[f]rom the perspective of King's loyal base, the story has a few problems, notably the untimely demise of one of King's most nefarious creations [Flagg] early on and in a way that does not at all seem to justify Stephen King's narrative expenditure on the character in previous and related books." Another reviewer wrote that Flagg's demise was "somewhat pointless, anti-climactic, and even contradictory given his nature as a supernatural being." Even Michael Whelan, the artist of both The Gunslinger and The Dark Tower, shared mixed feelings of Flagg's ultimate fate on TheDarkTower.net's forums: "Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the series tremendously, but hey, the whole thing starts with 'The man in black fled across the desert...', so to have him just sort of...well, dispensed with so cavalierly was a disappointment. That being said, I found his death to be one of the most horrible scenes in King's canon. For a puppetmaster like Walter to be made to help in his own demise, by bog, I found that extremely chilling." In retrospect, Flagg was the only major villain in the series who did not face Roland and his ka-tet.

In comics

The Gunslinger Born

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Marten Broadcloak changing to Walter o'Dim in a scene from The Gunslinger Born #4

In 2007, Marvel Comics released The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, the first of several miniseries that serve as a prequel to the Dark Tower series. The first miniseries uses the flashbacks from The Gunslinger and Wizard and Glass to present one cohesive story, and the rest of the arcs will follow different events prior to the beginning of the books.

The dual character of Marten Broadcloak and Walter o'Dim are present in the series. Marten's role in the first issue has him using his affair with Gabrielle to spurn Roland into his manhood test early so he would be exiled, but fails when Roland succeeds and becomes a gunslinger. An additional scene reveals that Marten was acting on the orders of the Crimson King to prevent a prophecy that Roland would later kill him.

Later issues show scenes with Walter that were not present in the books as we see him plotting against Roland behind-the-scenes with the Crimson King and John Farson, the latter's appearance proving once and for all that Farson and Walter are not the same person, despite King alluding to it in earlier novels.

The Long Road Home

The second installment to Marvel's Dark Tower series, The Dark Tower: The Long Road Home, is set to appear in March of 2008. Once again, Walter is set to have a significant role. In addition, information of how the relationship between Maerlyn and Walter came to light will also surface. Robin Furth, one of the creative team on the book, also hinted that "John Farson and Walter o’Dim are hatching some wicked plans…"

In film

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Jamey Sheridan as Randall Flagg.

Stephen King had very definite preferences when he was looking for someone to fill the role of Flagg on screen. The only time Randall Flagg has been depicted in film was by Jamey Sheridan in the 1994 TV miniseries version of The Stand. As he states in the DVD commentary for the miniseries "To my mind, he's the best villain I've ever created." The original ideas tossed around by director Mick Garris and the studios were to give the role to an established star such as Christopher Walken, James Woods, Willem Dafoe, or Jeff Goldblum. Miguel Ferrer, who ended up playing Flagg's henchman in the film was also interested in playing the villain.

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Sheridan as a transformed Flagg on the cover of the June 1994 Fangoria to promote The Stand.

King's idea for the role was someone who "would make the ladies' hearts go pitty pat" who looked like the type of guy you would see on the cover of one of those "sweet, savage love paperback romances." He eventually won the decision makers over to his idea of casting a lesser known name as Flagg, because as he explains: "I didn't want people to be saying 'Oh, there's Miguel Ferrer playing the most evil villain in the history of television.' Or 'there's Alan Alda playing the devil.' Or 'Oh, look. It's Elliot Gould and he's being a bad guy this time.'"

Sheridan's performance, as well as the entire miniseries itself (which received a 'fresh' rating of 79% from Rotten Tomatoes), was generally well-received. Erik Childress of Apollo Movie Guide wrote that "[t]he actors in this lengthy production give strong performances with...Jamey Sheridan (as Randall Flagg) standing out amidst the first-rate cast." Ken Tucker of Entertainment Weekly wrote "[B]y far the best acting comes from Sheridan. Granted, playing the personification of evil is an inherently juicy role, but Sheridan avoids the temptation to camp it up. Instead, he plays Flagg for his grim intensity. Offsetting his leading-man looks with the longhaired 'do of a dissolute heavy- metal star, Sheridan gives every line a purr of hostile contempt. Even without the special effects that regularly turn him into a horned devil, he is one unsettling dude, the perfect Stephen King bad guy." Douglas E. Winter wrote in Fangoria that "Sheridan's Flagg, although young and perhaps a bit too zany, is a credible Walkin Dude—a myth, madman and monster who, with the magic of morphing, wears many faces. He comes at the role with the swagger of Elvis, the sway of David Koresh and as much residual craziness as your heart desires (and network TV allows)."

Literary analysis and criticism

In his essay, "The Glass-Eyed Dragon", author L. Sprague de Camp criticized Flagg's role in Eyes of the Dragon, saying that Flagg was one of the least believable characters in the book and that he was too evil to be credible: "In our post-Freudian era, absolute evil is hard for a literate adult to believe in. Whether or not God is dead, Satan is certainly terminal." He compared Flagg to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, stating that whereas both men believed that their goals were to better their world, "Flagg's desire is for simple chaos and destruction, to no intelligible advantage to himself or to anyone else."

Joseph Reino wrote about Randall Flagg's character in The Stand in his book Stephen King: The First Decade, calling him "Stephen King's version of a pestilental Big Brother".

Tony Magistrale, in his book Stephen King: The Second Decade, wrote "...the novel [Eyes of the Dragon]'s most interesting Shakespearian resonance is found in the character development of Flagg." Saying that Flagg is "a direct descendant from Shakespeare's lineage of villainy", Magistrale compared Flagg to other Shakespearean villains such as Iago, Edmund, and Richard III; "Like a Shakespearean antihero, Flagg seeks to make trouble where none has been before — to wreck and destroy things just because they have been united and are flourishing. His evil is disinterested; he seeks power, but power is only means to greater levels of destruction."