TV Show Review: IT: Welcome to Derry

Gruesomely invigorating and eerily fun: that’s the phrase I’d use to describe the atmosphere and delivery of the first two episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry. Somewhere at the back of your mind, you expect it to be scary; it’s IT, after all, but trust me, nothing, and I mean nothing, will prepare you for how it starts or what happens throughout both released episodes.

Episode 1: The Pilot

We’re welcomed to Derry through the eyes of Matty Clements, who sneaks into a cinema and eventually hitches a ride with a family seeking a way out of town. What starts off as a friendly ride turns eerily uncomfortable when Matty notices that they’re still in Derry despite the family saying they were headed elsewhere. Still asking to be let out, the mother delivers a demonic baby that literally tears out of her vagina in the car and kills Matty.

Four months after Matty’s incident, Major Hanlon arrives in Derry at the behest of the Air Force and is tasked with a mission they have yet to brief him on. Hanlon, being Black, faces the usual racism: some white folks go outright with their disrespect, while others give the “what’s the colored guy doing in our town?” look.

Convinced that Matty is speaking to her through the sewer pipes, Lily enlists the help of Matty’s acquaintances to find a solution. They seek out Veronica, whose father owned the cinema where Matty’s story began. Together, the four of them, along with the younger sister of one, make a late-night visit to the cinema, where they find what they think is Matty in a music video. The demonic baby from the car scene tears through the screen and rips the children apart one after another in the most disturbing series of events, leaving alive only Ronnie, who was in the cinema’s upper room, and Lily, who managed to escape.

Thoughts

The minute I saw this, I knew the show did not come to play. I initially thought the children would be the Losers’ Club of this series, but boy, was I wrong. They were wiped out as early as they were introduced, and the angle of the Black pilot raised a lot of questions.

The pilot episode was epic!

Yes, it was that good, good enough to leave you gasping at the end and eager to watch episode two. It’s even crazier when you realise the studio changed the promotional flyer after the children’s deaths, replacing them with other kids (who I think still won’t make it). For a pilot, it was a beast of an episode and worth every minute of its runtime, comfortably my best horror TV show pilot in the past five years.

Episode 2: The Thing in the Dark

Picking up from the children’s deaths at the cinema, the townsfolk are looking for a scapegoat and do their best to pin it on Veronica’s father because he’s a Black man. Despite testimonies from Lily and Ronnie, the townspeople still push and threaten the police chief with replacement if he doesn’t arrest “the negro.”

We also get a closer look at Dick Halloran, a Black officer with special privileges because of his work on a secret military mission. It’s revealed that Dick has special abilities that allow him to track… something that could be of use to the military.

The Scariest Scene

The scariest scene, so far, belongs to Ronnie’s room, where IT manifests as her late mother and guilt-trips her for killing her at birth, traumatising the poor child. As an adult watching, I felt bad enough; it felt real for her, but when her yelling attracted her father and grandmother, there was nothing there. You definitely can’t explain that away as a dream, can you?

Meanwhile, Major Hanlon’s family finally moves into their new home. His son faces bullying, while his wife realises that the town is weirder than usual, especially when people refuse to intervene in a public bullying incident and instead glare at her like she’s insane.

The police chief eventually caves and has Ronnie’s dad arrested on suspicion of murder, which we all know he didn’t commit. Also, Lily gets taunted by IT in a mall, and the incident pushes her mother to send her back to the mental institution.

The Secret Mission

To wrap up the episode, we finally get a hint about what the military wants with Dick Halloran and Major Hanlon. They’re using Dick’s psychic ability to locate a weapon that “in theory could scare a man badly enough to kill him where he stands,” and they need Hanlon to help retrieve it. Basically, the military wants to weaponise IT.

The episode left me asking some questions:

↪ Why Hanlon?

↪ What makes him so special that they think he can retrieve it?

↪ Why not one of the other Black officers, unless they see him as disposable?

↪ What makes them think he isn’t afraid?

And what extra information are they withholding? We already know they’re covering up the beating he received in episode one by framing an insubordinate officer, but what else is there?

This episode didn’t drop a beat from the pilot. It continued the momentum, introducing more scares and jump scenes while deepening the eerie tension that makes your skin crawl. The town knows something and is hiding something. Either they’re too afraid to speak, or they’ve been infected in a very odd way.

No matter, the remaining children (Will Hanlon, Ronnie, and Lily) and Will’s parents will surely play more roles, that is, if they’re not brutally removed from existence.

Side note: I’m so glad they brought back Bill Skarsgård. It’s not every day that a movie character returns for a TV adaptation, and I know we’re going to find him more terrifying than ever. For now, we’re seeing other demonic versions of him, which are clearly building up to his eventual appearance. Also, we’re seeing a bloodline tree appearing and linking other Stephen King’s projects like The Shining, Doctor Sleep and IT.

So far, IT: Welcome to Derry is off to a fantastic start. I’m looking forward to episode three.