I’ve had some folks suggest that Dale didn’t damage or break the timeline he originated from, when he moved on–and I couldn’t really say any interpretation is wrong right now. That’s as valid a reading as any other. 

But to me, taking Laura away from the woods changed everything. When he steps out of Glastonbury Grove, we really don’t know where he is. The world he started in, to me, is already gone. It explains how all the other plotlines just… end. There’s nothing left to tell, because the reality they were authored by has been silenced.

And his reaction in the final scene makes more sense to me, this way–his horror goes beyond realizing he’s in a strange world, not his own. He already knows he’s in an alternate reality. That wouldn’t fill him with this kind of shock. But he’s literally staggering on the pavement. To me, he’s realizing he’s erased something that may not be recoverable. And if it is recoverable, he has no idea how to do it.

I can’t imagine the cold horror of that moment. It gives me chills to try.

That’s where I leave poor Dale. It’s somehow fitting, for me, to have the universe we lived in so long start to fall apart, in the last moments it’s on the screen. They didn’t pull the curtain, they burned down the theater.