By: Kelly Kearney
Easter eggs—those little drops of familiarity that connect stories across worlds—are a cornerstone of the Stephen King universe. In the third episode of “IT: Welcome to Derry,” we get the most overt reference yet, as the episode jumps between turn-of-the-century flashbacks and 1962 Derry to unravel Pennywise’s origins and explain why General Shaw is leading a dig for a so-called fearsome super-weapon beneath the town.
The episode focuses on young airman, Dick Halloran—a name familiar to fans as the chef at the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. Dick uses his psychic abilities under the orders of General Shaw, to help determine the true nature of the evil preying on Derry’s children. Shaw sends Dick and Hal on a flyover of the town, hoping that getting physically closer to “It” will help Dick locate where the entity is hiding.
Meanwhile, Lily is released from Juniper Hill and is intent on doing right by Rinnie and her recently imprisoned father, Hank. Along with Ronnie, and their newest allies Will and Rich, the group hatches a plan to prove the unbelievable: that a paranormal demon infant was responsible for their friends’ deaths—not the local movie projectionist now facing a lifetime in Shawshank. To do that, they’ll have to descend into the belly of the beast—or, in this case, the town graveyard—where the past and present collide in a carnival of horrors.
1908
The episode opens with a flashback to 1908, where we meet a young Francis “Frank” Shaw (Diesel La Torraca), decades before he becomes a 1962 Air Force general. He’s walking through a traveling carnival with his father, fascinated and disturbed by the performers displayed like sideshow animals. Something about this carnival feels wrong, and those instincts prove justified when Frank is pressured into entering an attraction with the description emblazoned on the entrance sign as “A grotesquerie of horrors beyond our imaginations.” Inside, he encounters a gaunt skeleton-like, half-blind man (Peter Schoelier) peering at him from the darkness. There is a pulse of something ancient and malevolent lurking in the shadows—something Frank can feel, even if he cannot yet name it.
Later, after mocking his son for being frightened, Frank’s father wins him a slingshot at one of the carnival games. Frank treasures it—until their car breaks down in the summer heat, and his father sends him to buy water from a group of indigenous teenagers selling jars along the roadside. When Frank realizes he’s short on money, the teens offer a trade: the jar of water for the slingshot. His father is furious, but Frank doesn’t care—he’s made new friends, including a girl at the stand named Rose (Violet Sutherland). In the present-day storyline, Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) now runs the secondhand shop in Derry–the same one Major Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) bought that telescope from.
Young Frank spends what becomes an idyllic summer: running through the fields, swimming in creeks, and most importantly inseparable from Rose.
One day, while playing tag near the edge of the woods, Frank ignores Rose’s warning not to cross the treeline and takes off beyond the perimeter. When he realizes she hasn’t followed, the woods begin to close in around him. That’s when he sees it—the same skeletal, one-eyed man from the carnival, now stalking him through the trees. It moves on all fours, spider-fast, teeth snarling. Rose, knowing exactly what lurks in the woods, breaks her own rule and saves him, hitting the creature in its eye with the slingshot. It recoils, wounded, giving them just enough time to escape.
Rose explains the creature cannot cross beyond the trees, and that there is no true name for “It” that rules the woods. The encounter leaves a lifelong scar on Frank—though, as Rose warns, the farther one gets from Derry, the more the memories fade. When Frank’s family eventually leaves town, he promises to never forget her. Rose knows he will.
Up in the Air, Halloran Shines
In the present, General Shaw (James Remar) and Colonel Fuller (Thomas Mitchell) discuss the mud-covered vehicle recovered the previous week. While the audience assumed it was the one Matty Clements disappeared in, it is actually connected to a 1935 Bradley Gang massacre—one of the earliest documented sightings of the very entity Shaw is now hunting. Fuller believes this may point to Its location. This prompts Shaw to suggest bringing in Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk), who could better track the entity if he had something “marked” by it. The slingshot Shaw once gave to Rose is exactly that—though Shaw seems to have a spotty memory when it comes to her and the creature. Derry’s amnesia is selective. As it targets the adults while turning the children into its victims.
Meanwhile, Dick and his fellow Black airmen are trying to unwind—even as they face constant hostility on and off base. The others encourage Dick to use his “special privileges” to secure them a place to relax, as even the tent they call home is wet and leaking all over their card game. Dick agrees to call in a favor but for now his attention shifts to the General’s orders. He is to accompany Major Leroy Hanlon and Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) on a reconnaissance flight over Derry. He is given the slingshot as a psychic compass guiding him and the plane to the location It might be hiding in. As they near the woods, Dick’s mind is pulled out of his body and the plane and finds himself in the sewers, face-to-face with a door marked Pennywise. Deep in the recesses of the darkness he sees yellow eyes staring back at him.
The entity’s presence overwhelms him with visions—battlefields, drowned toys, bodies floating upward from darkness into light. His grandmother appears among them, screaming a warning: “He’s coming, Dicky—get out now.” Dick snaps back aboard the plane mid-panic, nearly throwing himself out the hatch before Leroy stops him. Dick is changed from the expereince–shaken and jittery with fear. Something has seen him.
At the infirmary, General Shaw checks on Dick and offers him something in exchange for his cooperation. Dick requests a safe place for him and the other Black servicemen to relax, and Shaw agrees, it is the least he could do since Dick almost just died. Before Shaw leaves the infirmary, Dick quietly says: “It wasn’t supposed to see us. Now that it knows we’re looking… something bad is coming.”
After their dramatic day, the Hanlons invite Dick to dinner. Over the course of the meal dick touches on Charlotte’s (Taylour Paige) feelings about living in Maine. This is when we learn that she was involved in the Civil rights’ movement before moving to town. She was also a history teacher, who now can’t seem to find anything but clerical work in Derry.
After dinner, Leroy cautiously asks Dick about his abilities. He got this feeling Halloran was inside his mind the night he was attacked by those masked men. Dick doesn’t deny it but after he mentions Leroy’s son, Will (Blake Cameron-James), whose name was never mentioned in Halloran’s presence, Leroy orders Halloran—lightly but firmly—to stay out of his head,
The Past and Present Collide
Elsewhere, the Indigenous Wabanaki community meets to discuss the military dig and its threat to their protected ceremonial land. Taniel (Joshua Odjick)—Rose’s nephew—whsipers to her they must act now, but Rose warns him and the others to stay out of it until they know more. There is no sense in alerting them to their suspicions if this military project is harmless.
Later, Shaw visits Rose’s shop, as his memories seem to be returning in fragments and he knows she wouldn’t support him stirring up the land and it’s trouble.. He insists the military dig is simply a water transfer project, asking Rose to help identify land to avoid—assuming her concern is about burial grounds, and not what lives in the woods. We flash back to their childhood goodbye, where Rose returned the slingshot, hoping it would one day break through the inevitable amnesia.
While Shaw edges closer to his own buried past, the story shifts to the present-day kids. Lily (Clara Stack) leaves Juniper Hill and tries to repair her relationship with Ronnie (Amanda Christine), hoping to prove Hank (Stephen Rider) is innocent. The girls recruit Will and Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), forming a plan to lure the entity out and capture it with undeniable proof– photographic evidence. Rich recalls that a demon taking the form of the dead may be an Orixa, something his uncle— a Santería priest—once summoned in cemeteries. The idea sparks their strategy.
Later that night they break into the town’s graveyard and form a ritual circle of candles. It all seems so silly and when they call Rich out on it, their united front crumbles. That’s when the ground shifts and the headstones crack. The four hop on their bikes to pedal home but the exit gates stretch into impossible distances. The Earth cracks open, ghosts rise, and familiar dead faces— Susie (Matilda Legault), Teddy (Mikkal Karim Fidler), Rich’s uncle—swirl laughing around them, knocking the camera around like a volleyball. In the commotion, Will becomes separated from the group, but manages to be the last one holding onto the camera. He spots something and follows it into a crypt where something stares back at him from the darkness.
Assuming the worst, his friends panic, calling out to him. When he returns to the others alive—he is holding the camera and gasps out confirmation that he got the shot they came for.
After developing the photos they see Teddy and Susie, unmistakably dead, but emerging from the shadows behind them is something else. A faint but unmistakable figure…A clown.
Pennywise has made Its first shadowy appearance. The circus is coming to town—and it is hungry for kids.