Netflix’s Mr. Harrigan’s Phone Explained- What Do The Text Messages Mean?

Netflix’s adaptation of a short story by Stephen King titled Mr. Harrigans’s Phone premiered today. The beautifully written, poignant story is one of love and companionship even from beyond the grave, assuming your idea of love includes killing people. Stephen King has had a renaissance of sorts. The prolific writer never stopped writing, but in recent years his massive library is being revisited, rebooted, and in some cases, brought to the screen for the first time.

Many of King’s stories involve relationships between unexpected companions and children in peril. Everything from The Shawshank Redemption to Firestarter are about humanity and how it relates to the supernatural as opposed to straightforward horror. Characters have abilities that can be used for terrible things, but the real monsters are the humans. King and his son Joe Hill love to write about the frailty in humanity. Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is about the best and the worst of us all.

In the novel and the movie written for the screen by director John Lee Hancock, Jaeden Martell from Defending Jacob and the upcoming The Lost Boys reboot plays Craig, a lonely boy who has been reading to a wealthy elderly man since he was a young boy. He lives with his father after his mother passed away. The older man, Mr. Harrigan(Donald Sutherland, The Hunger Games), is equally lonely, and the two build a surprising friendship.

Over the years, they develop mutual trust and affection for each other. They discuss politics, ethics, careers, literature, and life truths. On special occasions, Mr. Harrigan gives him scratcher cards, one of which is a winner. Craig wins three thousand dollars and uses part of the money to buy Mr. Harrigan an iPhone so Mr. Harrigan can experience some of the wonders of technology and communicate even when they are apart.

A few months later, Mr. Harrigan dies, and Craig finds him holding his phone, having not received his final message. Mr. Harrigan left a sizeable trust to Craig to ensure he could go to college and pursue his writing career. That isn’t the end of the story for them, though. Craig learns that Mr. Harrigan had a dark side and some things are better left alone. Here is everything you need to know about the ending of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone and what those text messages mean.

The ending of Mr. Harrigan’s Phone

Shortly after Mr. Harrigan dies, Craig begins to suspect that he can still communicate with him. He receives texts from him after he has been buried, indicating he saw Craig’s final text message even though that should be impossible. When Kenny(Cyrus Arnold) beats him up at a school dance, Craig turns to his old friend for help. Mr. Harrigan was a shrewd businessman who did not let others take advantage of him. Kenny thought he reported him for selling drugs which resulted in his expulsion. It wasn’t Craig, but Kenny refused to believe otherwise. The much larger boy might have killed Craig if they had not been interrupted by a car door. Kenny warned Craig not to tell anyone and threatened him again.

Yes. Craig stop.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) May 8, 2020

Poor Craig was scared and felt trapped. He couldn’t talk to his favorite teacher or father, so he turned to someone he thought would be safe—the person who had always given him great advice and listened without judgment. Unfortunately, shortly after Craig leaves a message on Mr. Harrigan’s phone, which was buried with him and should have run out of charge months before, Kenny dies. When Craig wakes up the following day, he has a text message that Kenny is dead. Supposedly it was a tragic accident, but Craig thinks otherwise. He begins looking into Mr. Harrigan’s employees and finds this isn’t the first person to commit suicide or have an accident after getting crosswise with his friend. It seems Mr. Harrigan meted out justice ruthlessly.

Craig is appalled by what he thinks he did by calling Mr. Harrigan, but he doesn’t have absolute proof so he vows to leave it alone and not look gift horses in the mouth. Time marches on without incident, and eventually, Craig goes to college. Unfortunately, the death of his favorite high school teacher draws him back home. A drunk driver killed Ms. Hart one afternoon, and he walked away with hardly a scratch. Making things worse, the man was ordered to go to a cushy rehab instead of jail despite his multiple arrests. Feeling angry and powerless, Craig reached out one more time to his old friend and asked him to kill the drunk driver. The next day he received a message and discovered the man was dead.

He investigated the man’s death and discovered he died a gruesome death by choking on the same brand of soap that Ms. Hart used. At this point, he knows he caused this man’s death. It is a poetic but grisly bit of justice that haunts him. He is devastated by what he did and throws his phone and Mr. Harrigan’s into the water, hoping this would end the cycle once and for all.

Whether that is the end of things, we can’t be sure. Mr. Harrigan still has his phone buried with him, so presumably, if he ever wanted to contact Craig, he could and vice versa. Mr. Harrigan was a brilliant man, and it is doubtful that even a phone number change would not deter him. His cryptic text messages to Craig indicate that he wishes Craig would move on without him.

What do the text messages mean?

Craig receives several text messages in the film from Mr. Harrigan’s Phone. They are all short and, in many cases, contain just letters. One of those is cccaa which meant Craig ask me anything. The older man wanted to communicate with his friend. It wasn’t about hurting anyone at that point, just helping Craig navigate a challenging situation. The other important texts are cccst and cccx, which both are Mr. Harrigan desperately trying to get Craig to stop, or so Craig believes. Knowing what we do about Mr. Harrigan, it probably is the older man trying to save Craig from himself. He is asking him to let him go and not ask him to kill anyone else.

The only real question is, did Mr. Harrigan want him to stop because it hurt him or Craig? It likely is both as Mr. Harrigan wouldn’t want to be responsible for hurting and destroying Craig, and knowing he was contributing to that would cause him tremendous pain. The messages are weird letters because the man was decomposing in a dark box. He probably couldn’t hit all the buttons perfectly. Give the guy a break. King himself has indicated that these messages did mean stop.

In the end, Mr. Harrigan’s Phone is about the dangers of becoming disconnected from friends and family. Those connections mean far more than the multitude of fake friendships found on social media. When Craig ultimately decided to let go of Mr. Harrigan, the past, and his phone, he was set free. He may still carry the guilt of what he put into place, but he couldn’t wield that power anymore and instead focused on relationships that matter.