If Welcome To Derry has succeeded at anything during its previous four episodes, it’s that it’s gone to great lengths to remind us that the It of the title isn’t just limited to the form of the prancing clown known as Pennywise. Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen it adopt a myriad of different, nightmarish shapes that range from a disembodied pickle jar creature, a mother monster complete with chomping womb and, most recently, a vision that had a girl believe that her eyes have elongated into blobby stalks and thus far they’ve all been showstoppers; however, would the nightmares in the Nightmare On Elm Street Movies been so iconic if they didn’t have Freddy Krueger presiding over them?
That’s right; it’s time for the ringmaster to finally enter centre stage, stand in the spotlight and give the (possibly doomed) heroes a singular face to swing at. It’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to get down with the clown.
Things are moving fast now in the seemingly sleepy town of Derry. After leeching the information about the ancient, shape-shifting, fear-monster that lurks within the city limits out of the head of Taniel, a member of the order sworn to keep it trapped, psychic Dick Halloran now knows exactly where the creature resides and how to trap it. From there, General Shaw assembles a team that includes Halloran, Leroy Hanlon and Paul Russo to enter the lair of the thing via its main entrance point: the dilapidated house on Neibolt Street. However after Shaw once again ignores the warnings of Rose, she smuggles a fragment of the meteorite/cage that originally brought the creature to Taniel to keep him safe.
Meanwhile, after the vicious vision that’s practically cost Marge one of her eyes, Lilly brings her to meet the rest of the gang planning to take their own fight to this child gobbling monster. However, while they are relieved that Lily avoided another fateful trip to Juniper Hill Psychiatric Hospital, they are all stunned when they discover that Matty is still alive and hiding out in their clubhouse. He tells them that even though he escaped the creature in the sewer, he claims that Phil is still alive and the group figure out a rescue plan that requires them to swallow Lilly’s mother’s medication in order to keep their fear levels down.
But while both the kids and the military are both heading into the sewers to confront the shape-shifter for very different reasons, wrongly accused Hank Grogan manages to escape his trip to Shawshank prison after the transfer bus crashes. With nowhere else to go, he shows up at the door of the white woman he’s been having an affair with – Lilly’s former nurse from Juniper Hill, Ingrid.
However, while racial tensions mount above ground, underneath Derry things are going nuts. Not only does Dick Halloran discover that the creature is able to unlock his mind from within, literally, but the kids discover that when chasing a shape-changing monster, maybe don’t trust your friend who has mysteriously come back from the dead.
While I’m one of the many that’s been enjoying seeing It indulge itself by taking a variety of other fucked-up forms, I also have to agree that bringing back Bill Skarsgård’s unforgettable role as Pennywise the Clown for the first time in 6 years is the cherry on a hugely enjoyable cake. After 4 episodes that alternated between stern, but zippy, build up and horror-show blow out, it’s time for the season to go full-tilt boogie to unleash arguably it’s strongest episode to date. Obviously seeing Skarsgård back under the grease paint and drooling like a lunatic helps a great deal, but the facts that the show has already put in the hard work to restore It as a credible threat without him means his belated appearance helps edge matters into the stratosphere. Up to his appearance, 29 Neibolt Street prepares us remarkably well for the second (First? Third? Bloody prequel logic!) coming of the franchise’s main figurehead by almost adopting an Aliens style approach that leads to a decent sub-section of the cast heading down into the sewers for a dark and dingy bug hunt.
Shaw is now ready to launch his offensive to locate the pillars marking out the edges of the creature’s territory/prison and bring them closer together in order restrict its movements to the point of capture. But with Halloran’s psychic whammy leading the way, we find that the group are doomed to fail when It starts scrambling his frequencies and gets inside his head. The result has Dick taken completely off the playing field as he’s trapped within his own head with the creature toying with his memories and tormenting him with images of his abusive grandfather in order to open aspects of his powers that have been metaphorically locked away in a metal box within his mind.
It’s all very Shining-esque and it’s bizarre to think that we’re getting a It and The Shining prequel in one go. In fact, by the end if the episode, we see a shell-shocked Halloran now seemingly with the ability to see dead people which sets him up nicely with his future, fateful date with the Overlook Hotel. Elsewhere, we also get a nice Texas switch in the form of the unlikely reveal that Matty wasn’t actually killed at the beginning of the season, but has actually been in hiding. It’s exactly the sort of twist that a show would love to spring on you and stand by it, but while the revelation that “Matty” is just Pennywise in another form luring them into the sewers may be fairly obvious, it not only provides a ton of classic “don’t go in there!” moments for the imperiled nippers, but we get a Thing-esque transformation sequence that shifts the dead boy into the candyflossed haired villain (“Duck and cover, kiddoes!”).
However, while we get a damn fine, hour long, scare machine of jump scares and weird imagery (Pennywise adopts to form of a zombified Uncle Sam to take out two of the slower grunts), the plot still manages to do some organic heavy lifting. Having Leroy shoot a fake, fanged version of his wife builds tension that he could also shoot his actual son who’s down there with him and this leads to the sacrifice of Pauly who stops that from happening at the cost of his own life. Our nerves are also unbalanced by the fact that those dumb kids take too much of Lilly’s mom’s meds which means they go to face their fears completely tripping balls, but while it genuinely seems that Lilly’s a gonner by the climax, the mcguffin of the fragment of meteor that can keep Pennywise at bay comes into play as it shifts from Rose, to Taniel, to being lost in the sewers, to inadvertently saving Lilly’s life proves to be something of an exciting rollercoaster. Even the stuff occurring above the sewers all slots together in a satisfying way as all the events that are befalling poor Hank Grogan are gradually leading us towards the terrible events that close out this cycle of the creature’s feeding pattern. If racial tensions were bad when he was imprisoned, it’s going to go into overdrive now we know that it’s the creature’s discharge in Derry’s water supply that’s been negatively affecting the townsfolk for decades.
With easter eggs and revelation abound (you mean to tell me that Madeline Stowe’s Ingrid Kersh is the same old lady who attacks a grown Beverly Marsh in It: Chapter 2!?!) and the return (but not overuse) of Pennywise, we find Welcome To Derry now firing on all cylinders as the tragic path to the fire at the Black Spot is all but laid out. If the season can keep things chugging at this speed and this intensity, we’ll have a show that certainly ain’t clowning around despite the presence of the patron saint of coulrophobia.
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