This article contains spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 and Doctor Sleep.
The latest episode of HBO Max’s IT: Welcome to Derry revealed more about Dick Hallorann’s past, yet for fans of Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining, 2013’s Doctor Sleep, and Mike Flanagan’s 2019 movie adaptation of that book, what we saw was thrillingly familiar. The episode presented a skewed, IT-fueled version of information King had previously introduced about a special skill set available to some who possess the shining.
Dick Hallorann was first introduced in King’s novel The Shining in 1977 and Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film version as the infamous Overlook Hotel’s head cook. More importantly, he shared the same psychic abilities as young Danny Torrance, helping Danny to understand more about how his powers work and the “shining” name he used for them. Hallorann explained that when he was a child, he and his own grandmother were able to psychically communicate thanks to both of them sharing this trait.
Dick Hallorann’s Bogus Journey
Stephen King has always had most of his books take place in a shared universe, and Hallorann was included briefly in King’s IT in 1986; he appeared in one of that book’s flashback interludes, explaining what happened to Derry’s Black Spot nightclub. In Welcome to Derry, we’ve been following a younger Dick (Chris Chalk) who’s an airman stationed in Derry in 1962. In this week’s episode, Dick got separated from his troop while on a mission into the Derry sewers. After being pulled into the water, Dick surfaces in his own childhood bathroom, where he and his grandmother are terrorized by his grandfather, who bursts into the room carrying a locked box.
Dick is horrified that his grandfather has found this box, which his grandfather in turn demands to be opened. Communicating psychically, his grandmother warns him, “You know what’s in there boy. Don’t let him open it!” But as it turns out, not so dear-old Grandpa is able to open the box himself, his face contorting into a Pennywise-esque grin as Dick screams at whatever is being unleashed.
This is an especially exciting scene if you’re a fellow Doctor Sleep fan, because while most people associate Dick Hallorann with The Shining, he’s also a part of that story’s sequel, which is where all of this specific information about Dick’s backstory comes from. Dick’s role in both the Doctor Sleep book and film are very similar with a few deviations, most notably the biggie that Dick died at the end of The Shining movie but not in the book, so his appearances in the Doctor Sleep movie are entirely (friendly) ghost-based. But the crux of what occurs is the same, so for the purposes of clarity, I’m going to mainly stick to the Doctor Sleep movie here, partially because that excellent film is the superior version of the story.
A Lesson for Danny Torrance
Very early in Doctor Sleep, Dick (played in this version by Carl Lumbly) appears to young Danny (Roger Dale Floyd) in events set not long after Jack Torrance tried to kill Danny and his mother, Wendy, at the Overlook in Colorado. Dick knows that Danny, despite living in Florida now, continues to be haunted by the ghost of Lorraine Massey, the rotting and naked bathtub ghost from the Overlook. He explains that the evil spirits from the Overlook are following Danny because those with the shining are something of a beacon for malevolent forces to feast upon.
As Dick puts it, “The darkest things are the hungriest and they’ll eat what shines,” and Danny shines particularly bright. Having come into contact with Danny at the Overlook, these things don’t want to let him go. But Dick then informs Danny, “What you can do is turn what they come for against them.”
He tells Danny about his horribly abusive grandfather, and how even after he died, “He kept on coming back.” But, as Dick explains, his grandmother taught him a trick to combat this, and he presents Danny with a box. He tells Danny he wants him to study this box: “You’re gonna build one just like it in your mind. One even more special. So next time that bitch comes around, you’ll be ready.”
Danny takes this advice to heart, confronting Massey’s ghost in his home and trapping her within the psychic box he’s been able to manifest in his mind. And when Doctor Sleep then brings us forward in time to an adult Danny (now played by Ewan McGregor), we learn he continued to build box after box that he slowly but surely used to trap all of the Overlook ghosts as they came for him through the years, in what is almost his personal psychic version of the Ghostbusters’ traps and containment unit.
These psychic boxes prove to be crucial to the story in Doctor Sleep’s third act, as Danny confronts Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson) back at the Overlook Hotel. Rose and her fellow members of the True Knot are also drawn to those with the shining, feeding on their energy like vampires. Danny comes to realize he might need to fight fire with fire, using what’s inside the boxes against Rose, since – in her own way – she shines as well. Danny obviously knows that opening the boxes is incredibly dangerous, but he’s in an extreme situation. Again, the specifics of this are different in the book, where the Overlook had burnt down already, but the basic ideas remain the same.
What Else Did Dick Hallorann Have Trapped?
Going back to Welcome to Derry, the only thing we knew from Doctor Sleep that Dick had locked up inside his own psychic box was the spirit of his grandfather. And while this first appears to then be that very same grandfather appearing in front of him demanding he open the box, it’s pretty clear this is actually IT, with “Grandfather’s” face laughing and distorting like Pennywise the Clown (complete with his eyes going in different directions) when he opens the box.
This would indicate that the actual spirit of his awful grandfather is likely now free. But his grandmother warned “They’re gonna get you” if the box was opened, which implies Grandpa wasn’t alone in there, and Dick had his own other encounters with additional spirits or dark forces that he locked up. Perhaps there aren’t as many as Danny had, thanks to the Overlook, but there are probably enough to be very bad news. And yeah, Dick didn’t mention this to Danny, but it also doesn’t feel like too much of a leap.
In the episode’s final scene, Dick wanders back out of the sewer, only to see his crewmate Pauly (Rudy Mancuso) standing before him. Pauly was shot and seemingly killed earlier in the episode, but now he looks zombie-like, stumbling about with dead eyes. We then cut back to the box in Dick’s mind, still open, insinuating IT may have just unleashed a whole other threat within Derry… perhaps tied to what’s happened to Pauly!?
In Conclusion, Doctor Sleep Rules
This is all a really exciting inclusion for Welcome to Derry, further connecting King’s ideas about how the shining works and how those with these abilities can hone them – which were deepened in major ways in Doctor Sleep – to this series. Beyond that, it’s also cool to see Doctor Sleep and the concepts it introduced have such significance here. It might not have the name value or popularity of The Shining, but it was a good book that was turned into a great movie. Mike Flanagan pulled off the magic trick of adapting King’s book and making a proper sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s movie – which King famously hated despite its acclaimed status – that delivered on all fronts and dealt with all the implicit contradictions, yet was simultaneously a compelling, creepy, and emotional story in its own right. Among constant Stephen King adaptations across TV and film, it stands out as an especially strong and impactful one.
This is a really exciting inclusion, further connecting King’s ideas about how the shining works to this series.Chris Chalk and the producers of Welcome to Derry have acknowledged how the younger Dick Hallorann we’re seeing on the show is a much colder person than the warm mentor he would become to Danny Torrance in The Shining and Doctor Sleep. But this new turn of events is likely setting up how and why Dick will change his perspective. There’s nothing like being manipulated by an ancient evil being that feeds on children into freeing other dark spirits within your head to make you take stock of your life and inspire you to be a force for good, is there?
We’ll see what happens in this earlier timeline as IT: Welcome to Derry heads into the final three episodes of its first season. In the meantime, you should check out Doctor Sleep if you haven’t!
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