What Happens In Stephen King’s Original The Institute Novel? (Photo Credit – Prime Video)
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The Institute has been a massively successful series for the MGM+ streaming service, and according to Variety, it has been renewed for a second season. The series originally debuted on July 13, 2025, and is based on Stephen King’s 2019 story of the same name.
The show’s premise involves a group of young teenagers who’ve been admitted into a sinister institution that seeks to exploit their special powers. As the story progresses, the people in the titular institute gradually reveal the place’s dark secrets.
Read on to see what happens in the original Stephen King novel that inspired the MGM+ series.
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The Institute: Revisiting Stephen King’s Original Novel
In Stephen King’s original novel, the plot focuses on Tim Jamieson, a police officer who plans to move away from Florida, but ultimately changes his plan to move to New York City and settles down for a new job in DuPray, South Carolina, instead.
Meanwhile, 12-year-old prodigy Luke Ellis gets abducted by agents of The Institute, who murder his family in the process. Luke finds himself imprisoned along with many other children, including Kalisha Benson, George Iles, Nick Wilholm, Helen Simms, Iris Stanhope, and the 10-year-old Avery Dixon.
The Institute is a cruel and abusive environment where the children are subjected to torturous experimentation to awaken their latent telepathic (TP) and telekinetic (TK) abilities. Those who unlock their latent potential are sent to the dreaded Back Half and never heard from again.
As a consequence, when Luke discovers his own capabilities, he tries to keep them secret and plots an escape. He succeeds thanks to the aid of the place’s housekeeper, Maureen Alvorson, who later kills herself in atonement for her complicity in The Institute’s crimes, as well as to cover for Luke’s escape.
Luke manages to escape to DuPray, where he finds Tim Jamieson and the other police officers discussing The Institute’s horrors thanks to a USB drive Maureen gave him. The police then get into a shootout with agents from The Institute as they arrive to retake possession of Luke.
The shootout results in everyone from The Institute, other than the administrator, Mrs. Sigsby, and a doctor, getting killed. Sigsby is then forced at gunpoint to lead the police back to The Institute’s compound. When her second-in-command, Trevor Stachouse, tries to ambush them, he accidentally kills her.
Meanwhile, the Institute is sabotaged from within thanks to a revolt led by Avery, who sacrifices himself to ensure most other captive children can escape. The story ends a few months later, with Luke being visited by Mr. Smith, an administrator of another branch of the Institute.
Smith reveals that the Institutes were training children in order to create safeguards against malcontents that the precogs in their possession had deemed an existential threat. Luke pushes back against Mr. Smith’s reasoning and tells him to leave the escaped children alone, using Maureen’s USB drive as leverage, which Smith agrees to.
