The primary antagonist of the early Dark Tower books and one of Stephen King's most recurring villains across his wider fiction. A sorcerer of vast age and power who serves the Crimson King, Walter has manipulated events across countless worlds and centuries. He is the Man in Black whom Roland has been pursuing since the first line of the series, and their confrontation at the end of The Gunslinger is one of the key set pieces of the sequence. Devious, theatrical, and ultimately not as powerful as he believes himself to be.