The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function
Season 1
Episode 4
Editor’s Rating
3 stars
***
Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
I got some flak last week for complaining about the increasingly notable absence of Pennywise on It: Welcome to Derry, but my objection is less about missing Bill Skarsgård (though I do!) and more about the ways this series — by virtue of being stretched out over eight hours — is forced to drag out its storytelling. And while this week’s episode is better than the last, I’m struck even more strongly by a sense of wheel-spinning. We get more kindertrauma and more exposition (so much exposition), but it still feels a bit like we’re walking in circles. Now that we’re halfway through the season, I’d love a clearer sense of where the story is going, particularly when it comes to the younger characters, who at this point are mostly just there to get traumatized.
Consider that we spent an entire episode with Lilly, Ronnie, Will, and Rich trying to get photographic evidence of the creature tormenting them, only to start this week’s episode with the revelation that the ghostly apparitions of their friends have vanished from the photos. It makes last week feel like an even bigger waste of time, though at least Lilly gets a pep talk from Madeleine Stowe’s still-unnamed character. “My father always said to me that with good friends at your side, anything’s possible,” she shares, which strikes me as an insensitive thing to say to someone who just saw three friends slaughtered. Lilly’s new friend group does appear to be hanging in there for the time being — physically, that is. At home, Will immediately breaks down when Charlotte finds the cemetery photos and asks him what’s going on. He also has another scary encounter when his dad takes him fishing. After Leroy heads to the car to get a new fishing line, Will is pulled under the water by a burned zombie version of his father. “You’ll burn, too,” he growls. (Pennywise is really leaning into the whole impersonating parents shtick.) When Leroy returns, he sees blood on his son’s arms. “There’s something here in Derry,” Will tells him. “Something bad.” Together, father and son spot a familiar red balloon hovering over the water.
At school, Will shares his story with the others, and the kids continue to marvel at the fact that the being who’s after them hasn’t gone for the kill since the movie theater massacre. Maybe that’s the point, though: This thing could just be trying to scare them. Matty, Phil, and Teddy all had frightening visions before they disappeared, suggesting that this monster likes to play with his food. Or, as science-brained Will puts it, he could be the kind of predator who’s developed a taste for the fear hormones adrenaline and cortisol. When Ronnie notes that they can’t just stop themselves from being scared, Lilly comes up with a plan. She swipes some of Mrs. Bainbridge’s “Mommy’s Little Helper” pills — that’s Valium, for those not fluent in 1960s housewife — and suggests that they take one as soon as anything weird starts happening. It’s a clever enough idea, but like the photo adventure, I can’t imagine it going anywhere. For the time being, though, Lilly is feeling a little more confident. It helps that Marge is suddenly being nice to her again. During a lecture on the parasitic flatworm that turns snail eyes into pulsating broodsacs — pay attention, this will be on the test! — Marge even suggests a one-on-one lunch. “That’d be swell,” says Lilly, oblivious to the knowing glances between Marge and Patty.
Patty’s evil plan turns out to be tricking Lilly into thinking that Tim Flanagan has a crush on her so that he can humiliate her in front of the whole school. (I know kids can be cruel, but the relentless torture of this girl by her classmates is a bit much.) Marge is willing to go along with it, following Lilly into the bathroom and urging her to go talk to Tim. But hearing the hope in Lilly’s voice gives Marge a change of heart — she’s about to tearfully confess to the plot when her eyes start to hurt. In the bathroom mirror, Marge is horrified to see her eyes begin to bulge out of their sockets and swell into the larva-like broodsacs of the Leucochloridium paradoxum. It’s a thrillingly disgusting sequence, and a beautiful pay-off for the science lecture. (I told you to pay attention.) Lilly tries to grab a Valium for Marge but ends up dropping it in the toilet. By that point, Marge is already running toward the woodshop, desperately trying to see straight out of her bulbous eyestalks. In perhaps the most horrifying scene on Welcome to Derry so far, Marge attempts to hack off her new appendages with a metal wood chisel before putting her face into an electric saw. Lilly arrives with her toilet Valium, but she’s too late: Marge has already sliced through one of her actual eyes. The rest of the school barges in to find a bloody Lilly straddling and screaming at a mutilated Marge, chisel in hand. At this point, a more permanent trip to Juniper Hill is inevitable. How much trauma can one 12-year-old girl endure?
As much as I enjoyed the nauseating Marge scene, the adult storylines are where the show feels most cohesive. Charlotte meets with Rose, who acknowledges that bad things happen in Derry and gives the new arrival her number. It’s a reminder of the importance of solidarity among marginalized people, and it’s enough to begin Charlotte on a quest to exonerate Hank Grogan — or at least make sure he’s getting proper counsel. She’s already heard from Will that whatever happened to the missing kids from the Capitol Theater had nothing to do with Ronnie’s dad. At the police station, Charlotte is predictably dismissed by Chief Bowers, so she pays a visit to the Grogan family, where she tells Hank’s mother about her work with the civil rights movement, helping Black people who have been coerced into false confessions. Back at the police station, she uses the same background to threaten calls to MLK, JFK, RFK (the good one), and the Freedom Riders if she’s not allowed to speak to Hank herself. Charlotte’s tenacity — along with Taylour Paige’s performance — continues to make her the series’ most compelling character. She can’t stop Hank from being sent to Shawshank, but she does know his due process was violated, and she’s confident she can get him house arrest within a few days. However, the reveal that Hank was with a married white woman on the night of the theater incident could mean a fate worse than prison, so they’ll need to find another way to clear his name.
Elsewhere in Derry, Dick is helping clean out the requisition shed that’s been offered up as a place for Black soldiers to let loose, but he’s distracted by a ghostly visit from his grandmother, warning him to watch himself and “keep that lid on tight.” Before Dick has time to parse the ominous message, he’s interrupted by a more corporeal visit from Leroy, who is suitably freaked out after his fishing excursion with Will and the boy’s insistence on something bad in Derry. “Hallorann, what the hell are we actually looking for?” Leroy asks. Dick says he doesn’t know — he’s just following orders, though his actions in this episode are a good reminder of the limitations of that excuse. Meanwhile, Leroy remains on edge and doesn’t find much relief at home, especially after he learns that Charlotte has been on a crusade to free Hank Grogan. “Don’t be looking for trouble,” he cautions. “There’s gonna be trouble everywhere we go,” she snaps back. “That’s the country you swore your life to defend.” True as that may be, Leroy is worried about the kind of backlash Charlotte’s advocacy could inspire. When Will spots a shadowy Pennywise-shaped figure outside his window, Leroy assumes it’s someone watching the house because of what Charlotte’s stirred up. But there’s no one in sight when he steps onto the street and demands to know who’s out there — just that same red balloon in a tree.
Leroy may not know what’s going on around him, but he’s made the connection between whatever’s after Will and Operation Precept. He decides to take his questions directly to General Shaw, bursting into his office to ask, “What the hell do you have us chasing?” Not put off by some light insubordination, Shaw answers Leroy by taking him outside a room where Dick is seated with Taniel, Rose’s nephew, who has been monitoring the military digs. As Shaw explains, Taniel knows the location of the weapon they’ve been searching for, and Dick is going to get it out of him. In the room, Dick tries to reason with Taniel. “What they want me to do to you, it’s not going to be pleasant,” he warns, urging him to share the location and spare both of them pain. After Taniel spits in his face, Dick starts a different kind of digging. Thanks to The Shining (and Doctor Sleep), we’ve always seen Dick as a hero, so it’s harrowing to watch him violate Taniel with an uninvited trip into his mind. The young man screams as Dick finds himself inside his head, with doors leading in all directions. One opens, and Dick walks through it.
What follows is an origin story for It, one that has been passed down through the generations by Derry’s Indigenous peoples, as related by a young Taniel to his aunt Rose. It’s a very long (though not unengaging!) sequence, so I’ll give you the condensed version. The creature arrived caged in a falling star that hit the Earth and broke open. The wisest man of the tribe cut a piece of the star and carved it into a dagger to protect against the monster, which came to be called the Galloo. The locals lived in balance with the Galloo, which was confined to the Western Wood, but when the settlers arrived, they hunted in the wood and were hunted by the Galloo in turn. Over the generations, the monster became more powerful until a single dagger was not enough to stop it. After the Galloo killed war chief Sesqui, her daughter Necani traveled into the Western Wood to break off more shards from the star. Instead of a weapon, 13 sacred pieces were buried deep in the ground to create pillars. “Our people made a sacred promise to guard the pillars and keep their places secret, so the monster trapped inside could never break free,” young Taniel concludes. At this point, Dick startles the boy by interrupting his story to ask where the pillars are now. The door opens, and a now-adult Taniel points through it. “Follow the tunnels through the old well and you’ll find the pillars,” he advises. What the military has been searching for turns out to be another location familiar to It fans: the Well House on Neibolt Street.
• The reveal of the Well House is a little deflating, because we already know that’s where to find Pennywise, but these characters haven’t had the benefit of watching the It movies, so I’ll cut them some slack. In the King novel, the house on Neibolt Street is just an abandoned building that Pennywise frequents, while the Muschietti films establish it as the entrance to his lair.
• I had guessed that the buried weapon the military was looking for was the asteroid that brought It to Earth, but it appears Shaw is actually in search of the being itself. Great plan, guys! Can’t imagine how this could backfire.
• The origin story we get via Taniel is an expanded version of what Bill Denbrough learns about Pennywise through the Ritual of Chüd in the novel, namely that the shapeshifter arrived on an asteroid from outer space (or from the Macroverse, but I’m trying not to make this too complicated). Its true form is the deadlights, which are those glowing balls of light that we see escape from the fallen star after it breaks open.
• The name “Galloo” is a show creation. In the novel, the creature is called a glamour, a type of shapeshifter that feeds on fear. We also learn that one Native American term for this kind of being is a “manitou.”
• The pillars binding the Galloo are very reminiscent of the 12 spokes that form the six beams holding up the Dark Tower in that series (and the larger Stephen King universe). In addition to being Pennywise’s nemesis, Maturin the turtle is one of the 12 guardians of the beam.
• Enough of the “cosmological shit,” as Maturin puts it in the novel. Let’s get simpler. Pennywise taking the form of Leroy to tell Will, “You’ll burn, too,” is a reference to Will’s ultimate fate. (This isn’t a spoiler. We know from It that Mike’s parents die in a fire.)
• I’m still not sure what to make of Madeleine Stowe’s character, but the fact that she hasn’t been named makes me think she’ll end up being someone significant. I’m also wondering if she’s the married woman Hank was with on the night Phil, Teddy, and Susie disappeared.
• Dick’s grandmother, Rose, telling him to “keep that lid on tight” could be a reference to the mental lockboxes where he traps harmful spirits, a concept he teaches Danny Torrance in Doctor Sleep.
• Speaking of Doctor Sleep, the name Tim Flanagan may be a nod to Mike Flanagan, who directed the film version and other notable King adaptations.
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