(This article contains spoilers)
There’s no rest for the tortured souls of Derry. Episode 5 picks up directly where the previous episode left off. After the interrogation, Hallorann (Chris Chalk) knows exactly where to go and what they’re looking for. To reach the thirteen pillars keeping It trapped, they need to go through the house on Neibolt Street, the Well House.
At school, Marge (Matilda Lawler) is being treated for her injury, and she made sure to clear Lilly’s (Clara Stack) involvement in the incident. Now, both girls share a common secret, and both are unable to seek help from competent people. Looking for a way to stop the horrors, Marge joins Lilly and the other kids at the water tower to come up with a plan. Then the unthinkable happens: Matty (Miles Ekhardt) emerges from a corner of their secret place. His ashen skin and dead eyes show what he must have been through, and the kids are quick to welcome him back.
He retells the events following the attack at the theater, the way Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) ended Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler) and Susie’s (Matilda Legault) lives, and reveals Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) is still alive. Together, the children end up agreeing on going back to the sewers to save him with the help of “Mommy’s little helpers” (which are Valium pills, by the way) to soothe their fears. It’s obviously a bad idea, but no one else could help them except for Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), but Will (Blake Cameron James) could never have convinced him anyway.
The thing is, none of them has enough knowledge about Pennywise to really understand what Matty’s saying, but there’s one thing that should have made them doubt. In an attempt to make the children decide to go down the sewers, he tells them the “clown” sleeps during the day, but we know for a fact it’s not true. Sure, Matty could be honestly ignoring some things, but he’s also insisting on not calling the police, preferring going back to the sewers if he has to. Now, abusive parents are monsters of their own, but after retelling the way Pennywise ate Teddy and let Susie die, I’m not sure which is worse.
In town, Pennywise is starting to mess more and more with the current events. He appears to Charlotte (Taylour Paige) as a creepy smiling cop when Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) is transferred to Shawshank. And he doesn’t stop there. The bus transporting the prisoners will eventually be attacked by “something”, allowing Hank to escape. The killer clown is getting bolder.
At the military base, Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) finally meets Taniel (Joshua Odjick). She knows that Shaw (James Remar) plans to tighten the perimeter around Pennywise with the pillars to get a hold of him, and they need Taniel to guide them underground. Left with no choice, she gives him the shard inherited from Necani (Kiawentiio). We know the plan will fail because Pennywise will still be alive decades later, but with Hallorann among the team and this weapon, there is hope for them to at least survive.
Knowing the whole story of It arriving on Earth, and now aware of the fact that Derry is a prison for it, Hanlon takes his family out of the town and installs them on the base, as it should have been from the beginning. They’re now safe, but it doesn’t mean it’s over for any of them, as Will has other plans.
At Neibolt Street, the army is using a gas leak as a reason to evacuate the area. As the team reaches the underground, things start to go wrong very fast. After hearing his grandmother’s voice in the sewers, Hallorann disappears into the shallow water of the underground, sucked into what seems to be whatever place he goes when he’s using his shine, but this time it’s in his head, made up of his own fears.
The team is now separated with Hanlon and Russo (Rudy Mancuso) together on one side, and Colonel Fuller (Thomas Mitchell) and Taniel on another. Hanlon also starts to hallucinate, but his lack of fear makes him recover faster. Pennywise uses the image of Charlotte to approach him, but it fails. Hanlon then understands: there’s no way to trust what they see, especially if it doesn’t make sense in this situation.
Further into the tunnels, Taniel tries to escape and loses the weapon doing so. Of all the things that could have happened, this is by far one of the worst! Losing the one truly efficient weapon against Pennywise is dramatic. It means death.
Meanwhile, the children are still looking for Phil in the same sewers. Pennywise has to be busy with all these people in his tunnels! As they reach a dead end, they find the corpses of their friends, Phil included. And this is when Pennywise finally reveals itself. Matty wasn’t back, it was obviously all a trick. The young boy changes into the killer clown in front of the terrified children, who manage to run away, but lose Lilly, who fell and lost them.
Derry is not a big town, and the sewers are all connected. As they all run away, it’s almost inevitable to have the military and the kids meeting each other. But Hanlon now believes that anything out of place is the creature trying to kill them, so when he sees Will, his own son, running towards him in the sewer, he’s not thinking twice. Russo realizes that he sees Will too, which means this is not a hallucination. In an act of bravery and quick thinking, he tries to stop Hanlon from shooting his own son, only to be shot in his place.
This is it for Russo in this life. Pennywise made another victim without even killing him himself.
In another part of the sewers, Lilly is lost and alone. Reaching another dead end, she’s eventually caught up by Pennywise ready to kill her. By a stroke of pure luck and the power of screenwriting, Lilly is standing right behind the shard of star lost by Taniel. The celestial weapon stops Pennywise in its attack, his monstrous face frozen, before he recoils in the darkness of his lair. This weapon will no doubt be useful in the coming episodes. Lilly witnessed its power against the monster, she will hopefully make good use of it to protect her friends and the town.
In a second twist, we discover that the nurse, Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), is the secret lover of Hank Grogan. Hank manages to get to her after escaping the bus crash, and they both try to find a way to keep him hidden and safe. This explains why she seemed sketchy. She, too, has a secret she can’t reveal to anyone, at least until now. To help them, Ingrid reaches out to Charlotte.
For Hallorann, the nightmare is only beginning. After escaping his own hallucination, he’s now back in the real world. But what happened “on the other side” has heavy consequences for him. The true power of his shine, kept safe inside his own version of Pandora’s box, has been unleashed by Pennywise.
