 Hello everybody. E here. Welcome back to Thursday Theories. Today we are talking about Stephen King's 2019 release, The Institute. So if you're new to the show, this is where I pretty much spoil all of Stephen King's work. I connect it all together to the Stephen King universe, most importantly to the Dark Tower. The whole point of this project is to tie in every single one of his books, his short stories, his novellas, all that stuff to the Dark Tower. So if you're worried about spoilers, please click away from the video. But we're going to jump right into it. I got a lot to talk about today. A couple of things right off the top that really have no bearing on anything. I want to go ahead and get out. The first one is the mention of Harry Cross, who is the bully in The Institute. Of course this is a reference, it's got to be a reference to not only Harold Laudner and Nadine Cross from The Stand, but oddly enough there is a Harry or Harold Cross in The Fireman, which was an obvious reference to those two characters in The Stand. Next up we have a mention of an exit 181, and the whole reason I bring this up is because Stephen King all throughout his career he's made note of, especially in the Dark Tower, the importance of the number 19. If you take the one, leave the one there and then do 8 plus 1, you have 19. I know that might be a stretch for some of you, but Stephen King has mentioned how Room 217 in the Institute, not the Institute, sorry, Room 217 in the Shining adds up to 19 also. Of course it does not add up to 19, but if you take the number 2 and leave the number 2 alone and then add 17 to it, you have the number 19. So it is a stretch, but he has mentioned before how he will add numbers together to make that work. The next one is also a slight mention, I'm going to bring up the Shining, is Greta and Greta, Greta, their twins that are mentioned in the Institute, and Grady from the Shining also had twins. He was the caretaker that murdered his family before Jack Torrance and his family got there. So you have, it's Greta, G-R-E-T-A and G-R-E-D-A, so Greta and Greta, I know. There's another thing with, these are going to be spoilers for Black House, so if you have not read Black House, go ahead and you like, still, it's pretty, we're pretty much going to be talking about all of Stephen King's work, so if you're not a constant reader who's read all of his stuff, it's probably best to, you know, click away. There is green everywhere in this book, there's a lot of green, and there's a lot of green in the Talisman, there's a lot of green in Black House. Both of those books are heavy on the green, watch those Thursday Theors for more on that. But also, green is important through the Stephen King universe because he has an affinity for the Wizard of Oz. In fact, in Wizard and Glass, the Fourth Dark Tower book, he ends up, they end up, the Cotet, Roland and his crew end up at the literal Emerald City, Castle, whatever you want to call it, from Oz. So that, I have to feel like green is important. In this one, you have a green corridor on page 107, you have the mention of Emerald a lot. The first time I saw it was on page 214, and then you have on page 297, Wrapped in Green Canvas. Each one of these scenes are important to the story, so I have to feel like there's a reason for the green. There might not be, but this is Thursday Theors, this isn't Thursday Facts, okay? Let's see here. The next thing is the Levers and the Breakers, we'll talk about this because the ending of Black House is important for this book, I feel it's also important for Revival, which was my favorite Stephen King book in my top five. But at the end of Black House, I'm going to spoil the ending, they get rid of the house, they break the spell or whatever, and all the kids are pouring out of it, remember that. But before that, they're looking up and they're seeing all these children pulling these levers. But then in the Institute, there's one point where Avery, they're connecting all of the houses, they're connecting all of the institutes all around the world, and he sees all these levers being pulled. Now in Black House, like I said, you have all of these kids that were released from Sheol at the end, which is basically the version of Hell, which is the landscape that, what's his name, Jamie, I think ends up in at the end of Revival. The reason that's important is there's a mention that there's institutes all over the world at the end of the Institute. There are mentions that there might be more than one Black House. In this book, there's literally a mention of the Black Houses, multiple ones. Now, let's see here, there's a mention of On the Beam on page 368, so that's another thing that Stephen King uses when he's trying to loosely connect things, like with misery. I don't know if it's when he's trying to loosely connect things, but it's little things that he throws out there. He says it in Misery, he says it in Dolores Claiborne, he says it through several different books he says On the Beam. I haven't found anybody that can confirm whether or not that used to be a saying, or if it's just King that uses that saying. Going back real quick to the Black House and to, this is spoilers for regulators, for desperation, for it, for Black House, for talisman, all that stuff. In this book, there's a thing called the Stasi Lights, or Stasi Lights, I'm not sure exactly how to pronounce it, but it's S-T-A-S-I, S-T-A-S-I. These are little balls of light, multicolored lights, that the kids see when they are being injected, when they are being enhanced by the Institute to try and draw out their power more. Now this isn't, sorry, this is important, I believe, because I think this is more instances of things like the dead lights, or the lights that were inside the knights at the end of the talisman, or the creature at the entity known as TAC in regulators, at the end he is reduced to nothing but balls of light. Pennywise, or the entity known as it, is just balls of light, the dead lights. Now each one of these lights have different colors. And the tommy knockers, green, once again is a very important, very important color in that book. In that one, the tommy knockers have the ability to, well not the ability, but their psychic powers leak and infect the people in the town. And one of my theories with the tommy knockers is the reason why there's so much psychic activity in the state of Maine is because of the tommy knocker ship. And it had been in the ground for so long it had leaked out and infected the entire state just over the course of a, over however many decades, or however many millennia. We don't know how long that ship was in the ground. Now another thing to mention as far as the colored lights are concerned is the mention of Ruby Red in this book. It is mentioned several times, but what is Ruby Red? It's pink grapefruit, right? So you have Marilyn's pink grapefruit from the Dark Tower series, and you have Ruby Red mentioned here, plus you have the Stasi lights. So I can't help but connect it all, it just, it feels right. It feels like that's what was meant to bring to mind. It feels like that's where Stephen King was going, and I feel like all of the stuff throughout the Dark Tower series throughout Stephen King's work can all come back to lights, and those balls of light, those lights are the power that are given by the balls that are mentioned in the Dark Tower series. Now we are going to go into the hard connect. All the stuff that I've been talking about before, other than maybe the on the beam reference, all the stuff that I have talked about beforehand has been just my theories. A lot of that stuff is really reaching, especially like the Exit 181 I'm aware at how much I'm reaching there. But with this one, there are some hard connects in here, and I'm going to break out the book for this one. It's page 364 on the first edition, at least the American, the US first edition of the Institute. Okay, so on page 364 of the Institute, you have a paragraph where Annie is talking about a show, a podcast done by a character named Greg Allman called The Outsiders, The Outsiders, and this is one of the things she mentions. I'm going to read the entire dialogue here. She got up and shook out her Serape. Is that how you pronounce that? Not sure. That's right. You tell Sheriff John, y'all need to be on your guard. They're apt to come locked and loaded. There's a town in Maine, Jerusalem's Lot, and you could ask the people who live there about the men in black cars. This is one of several times Stephen King has mentioned throughout his career after the release of Salem's Lot, what happened to the town? There's another short story that happens after Salem's Lot happened, and it's called, let's see here, One for the Road. I believe it's called. Night Shift, if I get the title wrong. But that story deals with a car that breaks down just outside of Salem's Lot, and it proposes that the vampires are still around. Well, in this one, we finally get mention of what happened to the town of Salem's Lot. Also in, let's see here, it's the Dark Tower Five. We are reintroduced to Father Callahan from Salem's Lot, and he is a main character in the last three books of the Dark Tower series. So there is your hard connect. Just a final note before we go on, I love this book. There's a lot of stuff in here, and I probably missed some stuff. Most of the Thursday Theorist episodes that I've done so far, I had read those books multiple times, and I plan on reading this one multiple times throughout my life. And anytime that I come across something new, I will update these videos. So for now, that's all I have for you. I have left one thing out. So if anybody find that one thing, I will pin your comment down there in the doobly-doo. Anything that you guys find that can possibly be related to this book, definitely, even if it's just a theory of your own, definitely leave that down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U, this has been another Thursday Theorist review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!