The Outsider, also known as El Cuco, is the titular main antagonist of Stephen King’s 71st novel from 2018 The Outsider, a stand-alone sequel to the "Bill Hodges" trilogy, and a posthumous antagonist in the 2020 novella If it bleeds, published in the short fiction collection of same name.
He is a shape-shifting entity that feeds on the suffering of others. In the novel, he rapes and murders 11-year-old Frank Peterson in Flint City, using the form of Frank's baseball coach, Terry Maitland, resulting in Terry's arrest framing and plunging the town into chaos and grief.
What Makes Him a Hate Sink?[]
- While he does need to kill to survive, he goes well beyond what is needed, being a sadistic pedophile who graphically raped and murdered several children and came all over their corpses to leave DNA to incriminate other people so they would be sentenced for his crimes.
- Despite his supernatural nature, he acts like an arrogant psychopath who constantly taunts his victims, like Ralph and Holly.
- He hypocritically speaks of humanity as being like cattle to him and accuses them of treating animals the same way.