Randall Flagg

[close] Randall Flagg, also known as "the Dark Man" or "the Walkin’ Dude", is the main antagonist of The Stand. More (or less) than a man, he is the embodiment of evil, an antichrist-like being whose goal is destruction and death. In the novel, he is presented as diametrically opposed to Mother Abagail’s personification of good.

The Dark Man character appears in many guises in other King novels and short stories, often with the initials "R.F." This very powerful, yet very unstable character is spread through King's other stories, most notably in The Dark Tower series. Flagg is also the main villain in The Eyes of the Dragon, and there are some passages in that book that allude to Flagg being immortal and pure evil.

Flagg's appearance shifts between human, demon, and various animals, and it is implied that he has lived many lives in many times; "Flagg" is just the name of his present form. Flagg is described by Tom Cullen as follows: "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." On the occasional instances when the reader sees through Flagg’s perspective, this insight is borne out: he does not know where he came from, has no memory of his life before Captain Trips though he vaguely remembers isolated violent or hateful events such as KKK lynchings and murdering police officers, taking part in race riots in the 1960s, being involved in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, and some vague speculation that he was involved in Charles Manson's family. Most of these memories are marked by the note that Flagg was able to escape just at the last second at the end of many of these events, but that the events nourish his evil nature.

Like Mother Abagail, Flagg appears to various survivors in their dreams, providing a choice and attracting those who are drawn to structure, destruction and power. He rescues Lloyd Henreid from starvation in prison and with him as second-in-command establishes a community in Las Vegas, Nevada. Though Flagg has the ability to predict the future, along with several other demonic powers, as the events of The Stand unfold he begins to lose his power little by little as his plans go more and more awry. At the end of the novel, the Hand of God detonates a nuclear bomb, destroying Flagg’s gathered followers and Las Vegas. The uncut edition of the novel includes an epilogue in which Flagg, in a new incarnation, wakes in an unknown tropical location, where he meets a primitive tribe, telling them that he has come to teach them civilization and identifying himself as Russell Faraday.