When the first announcement came that a show would serve as a prequel to the “IT” film franchise, most netizens predicted it would be a buzzkill and a cash-grab move by HBO. Once the trailer hit the market, a reasonable hype began to build, and when the first episode dropped, a thunderous rave spread like wildfire. With a high-stakes script in hand, it’s not an exaggeration to rate this show as one of the best that has aired this year. Created by Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs — all of whom were involved in the “IT” movies — the premise follows a group of pre-teen misfits in Derry who become entangled in the games of the dangerous cosmic entity.
On a night just like any other, when the kids meander the streets of Derry hoping to get closer to their hunches, they unleash a shape-shifting phenomenon that’s evil-spirited and relishes feeding on its prey. The astounding aspect of this prequel is holding on to the element of palpability that the movies brought to the table. The plunges it takes and the folklore it carries take the plot into an uncharted territory that keeps the viewers hooked. Bill Skarsgard, reprising his role, multiplies in the narrative’s favour, and even though the series is still in the early stages, it delivers the goods and exhibits potential to be the next big thing on television.
This article contains spoilers.
IT: Welcome To Derry (Season 1) Recap:
Who Are The Kids And What Is The Ploy At Derry Base?
The storyline opens in 1962 inside a theatre, focusing on a little boy named Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt), who would be the starting point of all the havoc that’s going to strike the town. Shortly after, he hitchhikes into a car trying to evade trouble, his riders entrap him, where a woman gives birth to a mutant baby, with it spiralling and breaking out eventually. Cut to four months later, Matty has been reported missing and not found since. We get introduced to Matty’s buddies — Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), Phil Malkin, Phil’s sister Susie Malkin, and Teddy Uris, who find it hard to come to terms with his disappearance. The kids suffer hallucinations and feel a sinister presence lurking over them. Desperate to alleviate their paranormal encounters, they decide to investigate Matty’s cause of vanishing and bump into Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christie), who confesses to sharing their experiences.
In parallel, Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) arrives at Derry military base, roped in by General Francis Shaw (James Remar) to assist them with a secret experiment the US government is conducting, for which it has chosen Derry as its headquarters. When the kids enter the theatre Matty once visited on Ronnie’s advice—now revealed to be where her father works as a projectionist—they unknowingly fly too close to the sun, reawakening the mutant baby. The blood thirsty baby pounces on them and massacres everyone except Lilly, who crawls out.
Lilly is traumatized by the death of her friends, and this incident causes unrest in town, as Ronnie’s father, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), becomes a prime suspect in the murders just because he’s black, and it’s too convenient for Chief of Police Bowers (Peter Outerbridge) to pin a case on him. Keep in mind that Ronnie didn’t witness the violence that happened in the theatre alongside Lilly, so she naturally has an issue with Lilly’s version.
The horror is taken up a notch with gruesome imagery and a blood bath during a scene involving Ronnie having an apparition of her dead mother in flesh and bones. Instances of Lilly having tiffs with Marge Truman (Matilda Lawler), who patronizes the former, are an example of the callous nature of the masses in Derry who refuse to believe anything inconvenient for them. We get shown that the army is searching for something in the woods with Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), who apparently possesses telepathic powers. Meanwhile, Leroy’s son Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) befriends Ronnie and a vibrant kid, Rich Santos (Arian S.Cartaya).
Chief Bowers blackmails Lilly into admitting that Ronnie’s father might have been the killer, and a conflict breaks out between the two kids when Hank is arrested. Lilly has a vision of her dead father in a supermarket, which buys her a return ticket to Juniper Hill — an asylum where she was once admitted due to having mental issues in the past.
The Totalitarian Greed
We are taken back to 1908, where a young Shaw is terrified by a monster chasing him through a forest until he bumps into Rose (Kimberly Guerrero). It turns out the monster can’t leave the forest. She confides in him about the legend of the monster in Derry. Cut to the present, a middle-aged Rose eggs the townspeople to file a cease-and-desist letter with the local government until they reveal the true purpose behind their excavations. Lilly has a personal moment with one of the nurses in Juniper Hill named Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), who promises to help when things get out of hand next time.
Meanwhile, Shaw advises Leroy to utilize Dick’s psychic abilities to find a weapon they’re desperately looking for, which they believe is buried in Derry. Ronnie and Lilly come to a truce and determine to debunk the events happening around them, including proving Hank’s innocence. The duo inducts Will and Cash to help them out. Cash advocates carrying out a ritualistic ceremony in a cemetery to draw the mutant baby out, which results in them getting hunted down by Teddy and Susie’s spirits. The kids manage to take pictures of the ghosts from which they later discover a shady figure in one of the images, which happens to be Pennywise the Clown.
The Ancient Roots Of The Clown
To the group’s astonishment, the clown or ghost pictures don’t show themselves while submitting them to Chief Bowers as evidence. Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) emerges to bring justice to Hank, where she demands a personal session with him in jail and extends support to him. As Charlotte enquires about his alibi, Hank divulges that he was with a white woman that night. Forced back to square one, we see the kids pondering alternate methods to expose the supernatural. A chilling scene takes place during a fishing activity concerning Will, when he is pulled into the water by something that takes the shape of Leroy, burned from a plane crash. As soon as Leroy is alerted by his son’s screams and notices burns in Will’s arms, panic sets in on him. Confronting Dick about his dark ordeals, Leroy learns more about the real danger they’re dealing with.
A particularly graphic and grotesque scene sends shockwaves down the spine when we see Marge’s eyes bulging and protruding to a point where the only viable solution is to chop them off. Fortunately, she is saved by Lilly, which allows the audience to heave out a deep sigh and take a breather. We get some answers to the origins of Pennywise when Rose’s cousin Taniel (Joshua Odjick) is dragged in for a probe by the military, and Dick invades his mind.
The show elaborates on Pennywise’s arrival on Earth — curled up inside an asteroid, and how the then natives tried to contain it inside a cave until one day they messed up and allowed it to seep out. A black shard, which the natives discovered in the cave, is said to be the armor that can protect anyone from Pennywise. Thirteen of them in total, buried around the Western Woods encompassing Derry, guard the town by acting as a force in caging Pennywise, one of which Taniel holds. Dick accomplishes what he set out to do by extracting the location where Pennywise currently resides, disclosed to be the “Well House” in Neibolt Street, which we have seen in the movies.
The Puzzle Slowly Reveals Itself
Also Read: The 10 Best Stephen King Film Adaptations
Shaw briefs Leroy that he plans to use Taniel to capture the mysterious clown. Matty is mysteriously shown to be alive, hiding inside a tent in the group’s usual hangout spot. He also blurts out that Phil might also not be dead in the sewers. At the outset, Lilly urges him to accompany them to the sewers, which he denies, but eventually agrees when they threaten to hand him over to the police. When Hank is transferred to Shawshank prison, the bus crashes, allowing him to escape. Simultaneously, Hanlon uncovers the military’s activities in Derry — an outrageous plan to weaponize the primeval entity to end the Cold War, envisioned by Shaw.
The kids venture into the tunnels, headed by Matty, who transforms into a fully-grown Pennywise, finally making an entrance that’s hard not to like. Contrarily, Hanlon’s team, along with Taniel and his shard, enter Neibolt House and, through a hole going down, find themselves in the same tunnels. While stepping in, Dick drowns in a memory of his own where his grandmother, equipped with powers of her own, is talking loudly beside an abusive grandfather who pesters him to open a box. Dick hesitates initially, but gives in ultimately, which lets out something unnamed.
At a time when Hanlon’s team is separated, Tanlon ditches them and takes flight, where he drops the shard in the process. Pennywise kills one of the captains in Hanlon’s team, and when he chases the kids, Lilly loses her way and bumps into a dead-end. When she thinks her fate is sealed, she is protected by the shard that Tanlon has left in the water, which stops Pennywise from attacking her. Ingrid Kersch is startled by Hank waiting in her car, where it comes to light that she is the woman Hank is in love with. Ingrid notifies Charlotte of this and seeks her help. Dick exits the tunnels alone after everyone’s made their way out.
After dodging a near-death face-off with Pennywise, Leroy lashes out at Will for going into the sewers. Back in their dugout, Lilly showcases the shard (also referred to as “pillar”) to her group and insists on destroying the clown with this newfound weapon. Charlotte visits Hank in a military bar (called “The Black Spot”) where they’ve sheltered him. This frustrates Dick when he comes to know of it. An interesting plot development happens when Lilly stops by Ingrid’s house to enlighten the latter about “the pillar” she’s found. Halfway through their discourse, Lilly’s eyes fixate on a few photos of Pennywise, sitting on Ingrid’s shelves.
Extremely shocked by observing this, she accosts Ingrid, who drops a big revelation that Pennywise is actually her father and only she has been dressing up as him to scare the kids (in every scene except the one in the tunnel) in the hope of resuscitating him. Flashes from the past recount a horrific memory of Ingrid at Juniper Hill in 1935, where Pennywise brutally murders a little girl. Ingrid, who’s clearly blinded by the love for her father, vows to bring him back. This news unnerves Lilly, who flees Ingrid’s house by fighting her way out. Knowing about Hank’s whereabouts from a tip, a now-demoted Chief Bowers gathers some hate-mongering white townsmen and reaches the Black Spot, masked and ready to cause chaos.
Preparing For The Worst Winter
A scene taking place in 1908 shows Ingrid’s father, who goes by his real name Bob Gray and stage name Pennywise, lured into the woods by a peculiar child. When he never returns, Ingrid is devastated by his disappearance. Cut to the Black Spot in the present, Bowers and his men terrorize the patrons to release Hank, but when the military personnel refuse, they set the bar on fire. An overstretched sequence with everyone inside the bar screaming and panicking over the hot inferno becomes hard to stomach and sit through. Heartbreakingly, Rich dies while trying to save Marge. Hank and his daughter, Ronnie, later joined by Will, Hallorann, and Marge, somehow scrape through to live another day. Hank is taken to Rose’s house by Charlotte, who promises to help him and his daughter skip town.
An intense scene marks a terrific re-entry of Pennywise with blood drooling from his mouth. He meets his daughter, Ingrid, intuitively waiting behind one of the trees near the burning Black Spot. Unable to digest the fact that her original father can’t be brought back after seeing his present state, Ingrid despises and throws a fit, which ends up in Pennywise casting his deadlight on her. A worried Marge and Ronnie inform Lilly about Rich’s demise. It is made clear that the clown, who is actually a cosmic entity, hibernates every twenty-seven years, and with the sleeping cycle about to begin now, Dick persuades the military to locate the other twelve pillars in order to cage him.
It is hard to ignore the naive writing in a scene where Hanlon attempts to stop the military from destroying a newly unearthed pillar, only to learn from General Shaw that the real motive is to free Pennywise in the belief that it can spread fear and keep the Americans in check. Leroy, disgusted and appalled, leaves the base. Meanwhile, Will is aghast by Pennywise hiding in his house, who freezes him with the deadlight.
A Fracture In Time
A dense fog descends on Derry and engulfs the town, causing panic in the streets. Pennywise goes a step above by breaking and entering the town’s school and striking the children, turning them catatonic. Lilly, Ronnie, and Marg,e residing at their common hangout spot up until this point, drive to the school and can’t believe the town’s abandoned streets. Swearing to kill the clown, they follow a blood trail from the entrance of their school, hoping it will take them to Pennywise.
Leroy curses himself for losing his son, which enrages his wife. Hallorann and Leroy assemble at Rose’s house alongside Charlotte and Hank to hatch a plan and put an end to Pennywise. After Hallorann narrows down Pennywise’s location with his mind, they all sprint to carry out what they signed up for. When the trio of kids and Hanlon’s crew reach the spot, they are induced with deep fear upon seeing a long line of children unconsciously floating in the air, slowly moving behind Pennywise, who is driving a cart.
Shaw’s men, having followed Hallorann’s crew, shoot him in the leg for disobeying them and land another bullet in Taniel’s neck, which instantly kills him. After rescuing Will, the four kids clutch harder and move forward inch by inch to place the shard in a tree, which would connect with all the remaining pieces and form a chain effect to trap Pennywise. Shaw brainlessly tries to appease the creature and ends up being the monster’s meat.
IT: Welcome To Derry (Season 1) Ending Explained:
How does the concept of time work in the IT universe?
Marge gets a taste of death when Pennywise chooses her as his prey. The moment reveals that the entity is unbound by linear time and also explicitly states that her son Richie Tozier – part of the “IT” movies losers club – will be a key factor in killing him. Perhaps, the entity wants to avoid it by killing the parents of the losers club. When it seems all over for the kids with Pennywise advancing towards them, the ghost of Rich magically appears out of nowhere and aids his friends in affixing the shard to the tree. The united power of the shards blows out Pennywise and puts him to sleep, at least for another twenty-seven years.
In a post-credit scene in 1986, we get to see an old, ill-struck Ingrid Kersch, biding her time at Juniper Hill. When a ruckus in a nearby room invites her, she meets none other than Beverly Marsh (Sophia Lillis), who we’ve seen in the IT movies, mourning the suicide of her mother, Elfrida Marsh. This incredible easter egg at the climax spills out a crucial detail that the linear concept of time doesn’t apply to Pennywise. This changes everything and represents a glitch in the matrix, which paves the way for a much more complex problem in our hands now: “Can Pennywise ever be completely killed?” This contradictory conundrum can’t be ignored since Pennywise transcends time and desires to erase the previous generations directly responsible for his passing.
With the show already renewed for two more seasons, future installments are expected to move further back in time, potentially to 1935 and then 1908, exploring the mythology of the monster behind Pennywise that first arrived on Earth. It can be considered that the first season lived up to its billing and concluded on a victorious note. We can be excited that we will be rooting for new characters each season who will lend their hand to restore peace in Derry, re-emphasizing that some battles can’t be won alone.
