Ryan Kirksey
The following recap contains spoilers for IT: Welcome To Derry S1E4, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function” (written by Helen Shang and directed by Andrew Bernstein). Spoilers also include plot points from the films IT (2017) and IT: Chapter 2 (2019).
Writing this recap of IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 before it airs on Sunday night, I have not seen any reviews or critical commentary about the episode yet. I predict it will be heavily debated, at least among the hardcore Stephen King fans. While there’s an expected amount of creative license taken when any written work of fiction is adapted to the big screen or the small screen, often the screenwriter will try and stick as close as possible to the original materials. Episode 4 expands upon and takes some left turns away from King’s source material, and I am interested to see how that is perceived.
The episode begins right after the events at the end of Episode 3. The 1962 Losers Club has developed the pictures they took at the cemetery, and they immediately race them over to the Derry police, so they can show them proof of what killed Teddy, Phil, and Susie, which should allow the man they have behind bars for the murder to be exonerated.
To none of our surprise, the police laugh at their suggestion that there is some kind of clown-shaped evil spirit that is going around Derry, terrifying all the children and murdering some of them. The kids, apparently too naïve to know about systemic racism, local politics, and adult cynicism, are stunned that the police don’t believe them, so it’s back to the drawing board to try and figure out what this thing is and how to stop it.
But some credit to the kids is due here. What they may not have picked up on in a civics class or history class, they did retain some information in biology. Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) gives them a quick refresher on adrenaline and cortisol. When we are scared, we secrete these hormones into our bloodstream. Many predators in the wild stalk their prey until this hormone is at the right levels that are the most appealing, and it’s at this point that they attack.
Ding, ding, ding! The kids have figured out the nature of Pennywise and what he is doing when he reawakens every 27 years in Derry. Lilly’s (Clara Stack) brilliant solution to get around being afraid of Pennywise is to steal medicine from her mom’s compact. She says,
Whenever she’s really nervous about stuff like bills, or me, she just sticks one under her tongue. She says it makes all her fears and troubles melt away like magic. She calls them Mommy’s Little Helper.
So Lilly stole her mom’s barbiturates (which would later stop being commonly used because of the risk of overdose and addiction). Glad to know this is the 13-year-olds’ plan going forward. Back in class, while they watch a film about worms, Marge (Matilda Lawler) makes a fake attempt to get back in Lilly’s good graces again. The Pattycakes are seen urging her to do this so they can embarrass Lilly at lunch. In the bathroom, Lilly is about to fall into Marge’s trap when Marge seems to have a change of heart before something horrific happens.
Marge’s eyes seem to start bulging out, just like in the video they watched about worms. Marge believes they have grown out to somewhere around six to 10 inches away from her face and is desperate to remove them. Her fear leads her into the shop class, where she activates a table saw and cuts them off before Lilly can arrive.
By the time Lilly gets there, Marge has taken a hand chisel and is about to plunge it into her right eye. Lilly pounces on her and takes the chisel away. But when the other kids show up, it looks like Lilly has Marge pinned down and is about to take a tool to her eye. This can surely only end with Lilly back in Juniper Hill, where any number of horrific (human and non-human) events await her.
Pennywise also continues its pursuit of Will as he and his father, Leroy (Jovan Adepo), try to get some quality time together while fishing in the river. Will has recurring nightmares about his father being injured during his time at war, and a vision of his burned and injured father comes out of the water and tries to drown him before Leroy can show up to rescue him. For the first time in the series, the two see the red balloon float by afterwards, the definitive sign that Pennywise has been nearby.
Later that night, Will sees the silhouette of Pennywise outside their house, and when his father investigates, he once again sees the red balloon in the tree by their house. While I feel strongly that Lilly, Will, and Leroy have some pretty strong plot armor for the next few episodes, we know the nature of this show is that Pennywise wins and survives until the events of 1989 and 2016. If we’re creating a death pool for characters on IT: Welcome to Derry, these three would need to be at the top of the list.
Leroy’s wife, Charlotte (Taylour Paige), is caught up in a different kind of controversy in Derry. We know from conversations and contextual clues that she was heavily involved in “the Movement” when they lived in Louisiana, focusing her time on civil rights issues and assisting others who were mistreated. Even though that was apparently a significant reason they had to move away, Charlotte can’t deny her sense of justice, and she seeks to help Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), whom she believes is falsely imprisoned for the deaths of Teddy, Phil, and Susie at the movie theater.
She visits Chief Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), who insists they have the right man, but that she can not speak with him or consult him in any way. Charlotte then pays a visit to Hank’s mother, who grants her permission to see him, so she is able to get a one-on-one with Hank. Her goal is to convince him to file papers that he was treated prejudicially, which should allow him to go on house arrest until his trial.
Hank is intrigued by this prospect, and he won’t have to “go off to Shawshank*” the next day. And while Charlotte believes this is the case, she also learned from his mother that he was not at home the night of the murders, which he claimed to be. Hank admits to Charlotte that he was having an affair with a married white woman that night. He is petrified about that information getting out because he knows Shawshank won’t be in his future, and that the police “will just find the nearest tree” and take care of him that way.
We have not seen many (or any) married white women on the show yet. Lilly’s mother is a widow; we haven’t met Marge’s mother, so unless Hank is talking about Teddy’s Jewish mother (unlikely), this is a character we have not met and may or may not prove relevant in the episodes ahead.
What is extremely relevant to this series is the ongoing work being done by the military in search of the weapon they intend to harness. After Leroy’s two incidents with his son, he barges into General Shaw’s (James Remar) office and demands to know what they are looking for. He apparently came at just the right time because they are just about to question Taniel (Joshua Odjick), who is Rose’s nephew and a member of the local Native American tribe.
Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is summoned in as the interrogator, and when Taniel refuses to answer any of his questions, we see Hallorann use his Shining ability for the first time. While in Taniel’s mind, we see the origins of the monster they are hunting and how it came to be trapped in Derry. We can assume that the tribe that Rose and Taniel are a part of is the fictional Shako tribe from the book. They were the first to discover and try and defeat the monster back in the 1740s, but it was through the Ritual of Chüd.
In this series, the story Hallorann uncovers is that the Shako tribe used pieces from the meteor the monster arrived in against the creature (which Taniel calls The Galloo, a new term as far as I can tell), as it was the only thing it was afraid of. The meteor served as a kind of cage or prison, and when it broke open and released The Galloo, he was free to roam. Eventually, the Shako tribe broke off 13 pieces of the meteor and buried them around the woods surrounding Derry. These “pillars” were meant to cage the monster forever.
The military intervening by looking for these items has once again disrupted the plan to cage The Galloo, which is what has made it so difficult for the excavators to find the creature. When Hallorann demands to know how to find it, Taniel shows him a path that leads directly to 29 Neibolt Street, the house that has become famous for being the above-ground lair of Pennywise in the two films.
Episode 5 appears as if it will focus on this house and what they will find hidden there. The two films showed us the town’s sewer system connected to that house, and Pennywise’s chamber, where he keeps his victims, is also underneath the house. Do we see the military enter this house? Does the Losers Club get wind of this and try to make their way in? Will we finally see Pennywise in Episode 5? At least in terms of the last question, I think the answer is a definitive “Yes.”
*In the Spring of 1962, Andy Dufresne and Ellis “Red” Redding are at Shawshank prison. This is about the time Andy starts working on the prison library.
