It: Welcome to Derry delivers once again one of the most gruesome episodes on TV! This time, we dive into the past, and discover the origins of Pennywise on Earth in what we could call an eye-opening episode! (pun intended)
We now have our Losers Club from the 60s trying to find a way to prove they’re being threatened by ghosts and monsters. And an evil clown. The pictures they took in the cemetery in the previous episode, featuring the ghosts that chased them, turn out to show tombstones and blurry things that look nothing like what they saw. What they thought was undeniable proof almost backfires when Lilly (Clara Stack) lost her cool with the cops.
Their only chance now is to find more help. Lilly decides to meet with the nurse from Juniper Hill, who seemed very open to Lilly’s struggles and even encouraged her to find her own answers. This woman was already very suspicious before, but seeing her doubling down and pushing Lilly to investigate more with her friends raises many red flags. Nothing is left to chance in this series, and this character acting quite out of place will probably be more relevant later. She could also very well be related to Pennywise.
At the Hanlons, Charlotte (Taylour Paige) finds the photos the kids took and questions Will (Blake Cameron James) about them. Of course, he doesn’t share the whole story, but he feels safe enough with his mother to tell her he’s scared. Charlotte decides to keep that story between them for now and later suggests to Leroy (Jovan Adepo) to spend some father and son time with Will. It’s obvious that Leroy is having a hard time connecting with his son, but he’s trying. Far from the stern and detached usual military father figure, Leroy is supporting his son the best he can — which means rather awkwardly — never belittle him for liking things he doesn’t quite understand, things children usually don’t enjoy. Spending time together should be a good idea, right? But it’s Derry we’re talking about…
While fishing, something Leroy seems to enjoy a lot more than his son, Will experiences one of Pennywise’s attacks. The creature chooses the moment when Leroy has to go back to the car to get some fishing equipment to drag Will underwater. Usually, adults see close to nothing when it comes to these horrific events, but Leroy is not just any adult. When he comes back and saves his son, Will tells him what he saw, that his father was burning in a plane crash (a deep fear of Will, as expected), and tried to drown him. Leroy has two choices now: believe his son or think he just has too much imagination.
It’s a nice surprise to see that Leroy chooses to believe his son. Of course, seeing the marks of the attack on Will’s arms helps, but he could have thought it came from messing with something underwater. Instead, he trusts his son. And this is when they both see a red balloon floating in the air above the water. Pennywise was indeed here. This incident, added to what he saw of Hallorann on the plane, and another red balloon hidden in a tree in front of their house later in the episode, are enough to make him want an explanation from General Shaw (James Remar): what are they really chasing?
Later, the kids regroup at the water tower, and Will figures out that whatever is attacking them doesn’t just want to kill them, not before scaring them enough for their body to be literally filled with fear, making them more… tasty. Fear seems to make a perfect seasoning.
This week’s gory scene is served by Marge (Matilda Lawler) herself. After watching a video on cordyceps in class, and the way they invade and transform their snail hosts, and especially their eyes, she starts hallucinating about having elongated bulgy and pulsing eyes. Yes, nothing less. What was already a disgusting scene turns into pure gore when she tries to remove the eyes, first with a hand tool, then with nothing less than a band saw. After cutting the hallucinated protuberances, Lilly tries to stop her… only to find herself in a position that makes her look like the aggressor. Oh, Lilly…
Leroy and Will are not the only Hanlons experiencing the wonders of Derry. As an activist, Charlotte is set on helping Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), Ronnie’s (Amanda Christine) father. She’s inquiring about him at the police station, insisting at the risk of being arrested. When she eventually manages to talk to him, she learns that he’s been having an affair with a married white woman, which was the ultimate sin at that time for a black man. The night of the murders, he was with his lover, a secret no one else can know. Hank would prefer to go to jail for a crime he didn’t commit rather than hang from a tree without due process for loving a white woman.
The last part of the episode focuses on the secret indigenous people kept for ages about the land, and about Pennywise. The whole story is revealed through an interrogation led by Hallorann (Chris Chalk) using his shine on a young indigenous man named Taniel (Joshua Odjick).
Leroy witnesses Hallorann interrogating Taniel and diving into his head. Taniel retells the story of Pennywise’s arrival on Earth, millions of years ago, in a star that crashed on what is Derry today. The main takeaway is that the local tribe fought him centuries ago. They discovered that the star itself was a cage the celestial creature escaped from. They used shards of it to trap him inside a wide perimeter in the forest. Thirteen shards have been buried forming a circle, which means Derry has been built inside this perimeter, otherwise Pennywise would probably have been visiting other places. This is exactly what the military wanted to find: a way to harness the power of Pennywise. Now, if they remove even just one shard, the trap will be compromised.
It’s eventually revealed that the Well House is the way to reach the star underground, and if you watched the two It movies from 2017 and 2019, you obviously already knew that. For the new watchers, the descent to the underground will be a new level of hell!
