He is the Man in Black, the man Roland desperately wants to kill in order to avenge the death of his loved ones and Gilead. There isn’t a single scene where the Man in Black is fleeing across the desert.) Walter Padick (They’re actually very clearly in the woods and not the desert at all in the movie. In the movie, the Man in Black kills his father, Steven, and flees across the desert.
The gunslingers’ final defeat came at the Battle of Jericho Hill, which only Roland survived. Roland’s entire order was decimated in a war against the forces of John Farson, an agent of the Crimson King who sought to topple the ruling feudal government of Mid-World known as the Affiliation. You could say that Kay Deschain was one of the original gunslingers. One of Arthur’s original knights, Kay Deschain, died protecting the king from a demon known as the Crimson Queen, who tricked Arthur into impregnating her with a son known as the Crimson King, the main antagonist of the series. Roland is descended from the legendary Arthur Eld (think King Arthur), who was the greatest protector of the Tower and the first king of a unified Mid-World. The Gunslingers were once the highest authority in all of Mid-World, the planet on which the physical manifestation of the Tower is located. Roland is the last of the gunslingers, an order of peacekeepers tasked with protecting reality and, therefore, the Tower.
