Spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry Episodes 1-7.
The Augery is upon us: hide your kids, hide your wife.
Every Pennywise cycle ends in a horrible mass casualty event and, of all of them, the burning of the Black Spot is probably the most well-known to fans thanks to its connection to the Hanlon family and prominent mentions in Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter One. Muschietti returns to the directors’ chair this week at a critical juncture for the show and, befitting the bizarre alchemy of the show’s horror, drama, and King fan service, the stuff that works best about the first season’s penultimate episode might surprise you.
Though “The Black Spot” has last week’s cliffhanger ending to get to, the episode prologues with another substantial flashback to 1908 and the traveling circus that visited Derry, where the local kids are delighting in the stylings of one Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). But this is not your grandpappy’s shapeshifting monster: after a very brief appearance last week, Welcome to Derry finally gives It fans their first real look at Bob Gray, the performer whose whole vibe It decided to co-opt all those years ago. And what a vibe it is.
Bill Skarsgård’s performance of the human Pennywise is a rousing high-wire balancing act unto itself, one which not only evokes the scary intensity the character’s famous for but, more impressively, modulates the form of the demonic dancing clown into a believably human, turn-of-the-century performer whose glory days are long past. Skarsgård cavorts around with Pennywise’s signature ragdoll fluidity but tones the throaty voice down, preserving the aesthetic shape of Pennywise and yet filling it with a sensibility that may still feel off-kilter, but probably no more off-kilter than some of the other clowns running around in 1908. Special mention has to go to the costume design and makeup departments, as well: Bob Gray’s Pennywise looks great. While the outfit is cleaner, it’s the ill-fitting hairpiece and lighter makeup that really sell what a reality-based Pennywise would be like.
This entire dynamic is captured as Pennywise performs an Up-style pantomime for the group of assembled children, which hints at the early death of his wife and performing partner, who went by, say it with me now, Periwinkle. Young Ingrid (Emma-Leigh Cullum) helps her dad by pulling strings behind the scenes, giving Pennywise/Bob the chance to snatch at growing flowers (some nice, clean thematic imagery right there) before tearfully saying goodbye to a floating marionette dress and collapsing in tears at his wife’s grave. You know, kid stuff! While the children are fascinated by Pennywise’s performance, they still bum rush him and try to beat the snot out of him, which does reveal Bob’s resentment towards his current circumstances.
But in perhaps the most shocking twist of the whole season… Bob Gray seems to be a genuinely loving father to Ingrid, even if he hits the bottle a little too often. Bob delights in the painted face and costume with which Ingrid presents him, awkwardly passing his late wife’s Periwinkle moniker on to her before realizing that Ingrid may want to pick her own name. But Ingrid loves this idea, excitedly taking on the mantle. The sensitivity and affection between these two gives the moment where It takes Bob a surprising sense of tragedy, as a poorly lit vagabond child leads Pennywise the Dancing Clown to his death in the western woods. As Dick Hallorann once said, “It all comes around. Ka is a wheel.”
The action moves to back to 1962, with Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge) leading his armed, masked lynch mob into the Black Spot demanding Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) in return for the rest of the patrons’ safety. Though Hank’s ready to give himself up, the Black airmen here aren’t about to let these good ol’ boys take Hank without a fight… but that’s exactly what they get and it does not go their way. Chaos erupts as Bowers and his mob lock the doors and firebomb the place, giving way to stressfully choreographed long takes where Muschietti catches glimpses of airmen and their dates being shot through the windows, hit with Molotov cocktails, and succumbing to smoke inhalation. And that’s all before Pennywise enters the fray and starts to feed while the place is still in flames.
Amidst the morass of adult patrons either dying by fire or gunfire, the kids (minus Lilly) struggle to find their way to safety and we bid farewell to Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya), who goes out like the brave knight he always dreamed of becoming, protecting his “fair maiden” Marge with his life. Rich uses the old “there’s enough room on the door for both of us” trick to get Marge into the only refuge left in the Black Spot - a refrigerator - as the roof starts to collapse. Their final farewell through the door where they confess their love for each other shows Cartaya and Matilda Lawler at their best, each totally unguarded and grounded in their terrifying circumstances. Now feels like as good a time as any to point out that the legacy of Rich’s sacrifice will reverberate for years to come in Derry: “Marge” being short for Margaret, Margaret being the name of Richie Tozier’s mom and all that…
It’s in the immediate aftermath of the fire that Derry’s resident nightcrawler Ingrid Kersh/Periwinkle emerges just long enough for her to introduce her “dad” to her jerk husband Stan Kersh, and for Pennywise to cut Stan’s head in half with his own cleaver. Here, the absence of that genuine love Bob showed for Ingrid finally hits home, but she comes to that realization too late to prevent herself being glamoured by Pennywise’s deadlights. Madeline Stowe plays this dawning horror just fine, but the moment doesn’t really make all that much sense in the context of how much she seems to know about It’s violent proclivities. It’s felt like Welcome to Derry has been kicking the Periwinkle can down the road all season, and, strong though “The Black Spot’s” prologue may be in its own right, Muschietti doesn’t connect the dots very well here.
There’s still some hope for Periwinkle in the finale though: that creepy, catatonic glance at Will (Blake Cameron James), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), and Marge (Matilda Lawler) as she’s being wheeled away by paramedics suggests she’s ready to get into her new family’s business. Lilly (Clara Stack) better hold that ceremonial dagger close. After all’s said and done, the Augery proves to be intensely horrific and tough-to-watch, but there’s not a lot of room in all the flame and fury for many affecting scares.
Despite the Augery now being complete and It seemingly sated, General Shaw’s (James Remar) decision to “leave the cage door open” by melting down the pillar they’ve recovered (encased in a turtle shell, no less) feels like a turn more rooted in squeezing one last big set-piece out of next week’s season finale than in maintaining the believability of Shaw’s motivations, as most of the turns of this plot thread have. Remar has been a steady hand throughout Welcome to Derry, at times the only part of the military machinery that kept this corner of the story worth revisiting, but even he can’t keep the chaos that ensues once Leroy pulls a gun on the soldiers smelting the pillar on the rails. By the time Shaw’s trying to explain why defeating “the enemy within” America by striking fear into the hearts of homegrown degenerates, it’s hard to care too much about his reasoning.
It’s hard to imagine looking back favorably on this incohesive military storyline next to the far more interesting goings on in Derry proper. Welcome to Derry had some interesting directions to take this thread with Shaw and Rose’s (Kimberly Guerrero) shared history in town, but unless next week features a total rug-pull that completely upends Shaw’s thought process here, it’s hard to imagine looking back favorably on this incohesive military storyline next to the far more interesting goings on in Derry proper. The exception to the overall weakness of the military plot, of course, remains Chris Chalk’s Hallorann, whose brawny performance continues to transcend Hallorann’s otherwise limited role as Shaw’s pillar detector. Hallorann has an important part to play during the Black Spot fire, surviving a face-to-face encounter with Pennywise and helping Hank, Will and Ronnie escape with guidance from Sesqui’s (Morningstar Angeline) spirit. But while we get some nice imagery of the encroaching ghosts plaguing him now that his mental lockbox has been opened by Pennywise, Hallorann’s mostly in the background this week – here’s hoping Welcome to Derry puts Hallorann’s (and Chalk’s) Shine to good use in the finale.
With the pillar destroyed, Pennywise is awake for a little mid-hibernation snack, and he’s already got Will in his deadlights and on his plate. Did you know Pennywise slept in a pool of blood and viscera? I didn’t! Looks cool as hell!
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