As we all well know, even taken beyond the realms of It, Stephen King’s fictional town of Derry has had something of an extraordinarily complex past – Hell, it even pops up in in Edgar Wright’s recent The Running Man remake. However, sometimes it feels that you need to be something of a historian to be able to string all those freakish occurrences together, especially when they’re delivered as footnotes in the midst of a larger story. It’s here that we find one of It: Welcome To Derry’s greatest strengths thus far as it’s been working overtime to put some flesh on the bones on the sizable lore that lurks in that expansive backstory of King’s infamous clown. Even without all the other shit that’s occured in the titular town, Pennywise is singularly responsible for literally hundreds of years of murderous mischief long before the Losers Club shoved their multiple noses into his horrific business. Thus Welcome To Derry’s most intriguing aspect floats to the surface – why allude to that history when we can be immersed in it?
We kick off this episode with a flashback set in 1908 that sees a young boy named Francis giving himself the willies when he gets lost within a freakshow at a carnival and has an alarming run-in with the skeletal man attraction. However, while his disapproving father chastises him for being scared, Francis’ day perks up when he meets a group of Native American kids on the way home and gets to know them after his attention is drawn by young Rose. Of course, nothing remains sweet and pure in Derry for long and soon Francis has another meeting with the Skeletal Man when he heads into a forbidden part of a forrest. However, we soon discover that this seemingly unrelated event has very important ramifications on what is occurring in Derry now.
After Dick Halloran’s psychic discovery of the buried remains left over from Bradley Gang Massacre from 1935, we find that Rose has grown into a member of the Derry Native American community that has seemingly dedicated itself to keeping the shape-shifting entity we know as Pennywise restrained somehow. However, even more surprising is that young Francis has grown into General Shaw, the very man who is launching a campaign to locate and capture Pennywise for military gain despite the fact that he’s had no memory of the town since he’s left it.
As they awkwardly reunite, the other groups in town that are also on the trail of the child-eating clown start to make some headway. Spearheading Shaw’s mission is Halloran who starts to bond with fear-immune pilot, Leroy Hanlon and armed with an object retained from Shaw’s brush with the “entity”, he manages to make a mental connect with the evil force that nearly kills him. However, on the ground, we find that the clutch of kids recently effected by the massacre in the cinema head out to get photographic evidence. But can Ronnie, Lily, Will and Rich manage to do what drives psychic military personnel to nearly hurl themselves out the back of a helicopter?
Now that It: Welcome To Derry has settled in nicely, we can clearly see what the show excells at, however I have to admit that while it was the genuinely outlandish horror setpieces that were holding my attention the most, what’s truly reeling me in now is that dedication to laying out Derry’s history in extraordinarily detailed fashion. Apparently the grand plan behind Andy Muschietti’s spin-off to his It movies is that every subsequent season (assuming we’ll get them) will work backwards, detailing each major cycle of Pennywise’s existence. Usually, the prospect of laying our the past/origin of a horror icon leads to them ultimately losing their effectiveness – but in the case of Pennywise it’s actually proving to make him all the more fascinating as the unravelling of decades of evil is proving to be fascinating. Our sidestep to Francis’s ordeal 1908 and constant references to the Bradley crime spree is clearly smoothing out a cluttered timeline that’s making me worried that Muschietti somehow won’t get his plan finished. Anyway, with Halloran making mental contact and seeing visions of Pennywise’s floating mountain of victims, the show is actually doing a fantastic job of having the clown itself have a massive influence despite not actually yet making a full appearance.
While that evil influence is gradually turning to more physical manifestations such as silhouettes, burning disembodied eyes and even a line of dialogue, the fact that everyone is slowly circling toward Pennywise is getting more exciting every week – but while the military stuff once felt like a strange add-on to the story compared to the other stuff, now all the players have now been properly introduced its suddenly become more engrossing than the kid’s thread.
There’s always been a sense of Stranger Things about Muschietti’s It adaptations that became especially prominent thanks to the year shift to the 80s and the appearance of Finn Wolfhard, but now that the cluster of child characters have reformed after that barnburster of a first season twist, there’s something slightly been-there-done-that about watching a gaggle of kids hunt down an otherworldly evil – especially when you realise that this is the exact same year that Stranger Things comes to an end. Obviously it wouldn’t be It without that central group of meddling kids and the show is doing well giving them their individual plots (Ronnie wants to exonerated her father, Lily is terrified of bring sent back to Juniper Hill, Will like Ronnie, Rich wants to talk about boobs) – but after two full episodes of showstopping, surrealistic setpieces, it seems that Welcome To Derry’s ambition may be exceeding it’s reach. While the sight of a fairground performer becoming a feral beast during the flashback is cool enough, the CGI flounders somewhat and a final sequence that sees the pre-losers club fleeing from spectral corpses in a graveyard as the struggle to snap a photo of the monstrous threat not only feels more like something from a modern Ghostbusters sequel than It, but it also suffers from some distractingly weightless visual effects.
Still, all the background stuff makes up for it. The continuing racial tensions in Derry still bubble away threateningly and the added presence of a community of Native Americans who stand guard give an enticing hint to the cosmic powers in play that the movies only touched on. However, best of all is that growing feeling of just how huge Pennywise’s corrupting influence truly is as it constantly teases Bill Skarsgård’s iconic, cosmic prankster as his peripheral menace slowly creeps in towards the centre of the screen. While arguably the weakest install.ent yet in terms of the fucked up shit the show’s been giving us so far, it’s actually the strongest for plot – so it’s not exactly what you’d call a bad trade off. Still, with the hunt for Pennywise well under way and Dick Halloran’s powers catching the creature’s attention, there’s still ample opportunity for the show to shine.
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