This week’s episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, “The Black Spot”, does finally take us to the murders at The Black Spot, but also gives us a glimpse of Ingrid’s childhood, and what will probably be the military’s endgame. It was written by Jason Fuchs & Brad Caleb Kane, and directed by Andy Muschietti.

As Brief a Recap as a King Adaptation Will Allow

We open in 1908, with a long setpiece about Bob Gray’s act as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Far from being mindless slapstick, his act starts as a kind of foreshadowing of Caddyshack as he battles a gopher, then turns into a sweet, silent fable about the death of his wife. The children of Derry are entranced—but as soon as the story ends and the fast dancing music comes back up, they storm the stage and try to tear Pennywise’s wig off.

Across the Midway, we see a small boy watching from a barn.

Backstage, Young Ingrid shows her Papa her extremely elaborate clown makeup and costume. He loves it and tells her to show him the bow, which she does.

He says that soon they’ll work together—“The Pennywise and Periwinkle Show.”

“That was mom’s name,” Ingrid says.

Bob immediately backtracks. “You can change it!”

“No I love it,” she says.

He assures her that “…one day the big tent will come a-callin’ again” and that their “act will be something new.”

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This achingly sweet interlude ends as badly as you would expect on this show. Later that night, Bob is leaning against a fence drinking, and staring out into the woods. A scruffy kid who looks like he wandered in off the Insidious poster creeps out of the woods.

“The children seem drawn to you,” the child says, as that’s a perfectly normal thing for a child to say.

Bob comments on that, and the “boy” changes tack, pitching his voice up and saying “I can’t find my parents.”

“Me neither,” Bob Gray replies, and now I’m wishing we’d gotten a whole episode of this fuckin’ guy.

But then there’s screaming in the woods, and Bob leaves the safety of the carnival and the lights, and the “boy” takes his hand and leads him away.

All that’s left to give Ingrid is her Papa’s blood-stained handkerchief, and the interlude closes with a narrowing circle of darkness like a silent film lens.

Back to the Black Spot, the mob have burst in. They wave their guns around, but, well, this is an officially recognized military hangout (kind of) and every man in the place pulls his own gun.

“Ours just happen to be government issue.”

Unfortunately, Hank Grogan does the honorable—and stupid—thing, and tries to give himself up to end the standoff. Reggie and the other men still refuse to let him go with the mob; Clint Bowers (still hidden behind a Dracula mask) convinces the rest of the mob to retreat, only to block the doors and set to work with gasoline and Molotov cocktails, now with the “justification” that the Spot is harboring a fugitive from the law.

The camera POV stays mostly in the club for an agonizingly long time. Heads are split open by the bullets the mob manages to shoot into the windows, arms catch on fire, the fire spreads across the ceiling, onto the bar. The doors have all been blocked by the mob, there is no clear way out. People churn and rush in circles, screaming.

In the midst of this carnage, a dancing figure appears in the background.

Pennywise approaches a sobbing woman, calls her Noreen, and claims he knows a way out. In her shock, she takes the hand of a giant clown and lets him lead her away, and moments later Ronnie Grogan stumbles over them. Pennywise is devouring her, dripping with blood.

“Whatsamatta? Do I have… face on my face?”

(For fuck’s sake, television show. You’re going to make me laugh during *this *scene?)

Dick, meanwhile, sees a Civil War era (???) ghost and follows it, and finds a way out under the fridge. He starts to climb down alone, but he hears Ronnie’s screams.

Reluctantly, *extremely *reluctantly, he goes back to rescue more people.

Dick sees the spirit of Necani, the Shokopiwah warrior, wearing a bear pelt, and asks her for help to find the children.

Pennywise spots him. “Seein’ things? I think THEY SEE YOU, TOO.”

Dick manages to get past him and practically throws Will and Ronnie into the passageway, and Ronnie practically drags Hank with her as he fights to try to get others.

And then… that’s it. A wall collapses, and Dick is separated from the rest of the living people. He escapes, but has to leave Rich and Margie behind.

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Richie helps Margie into the Coke fridge, and closes it on her just as she relaizes there isn’t enough room for both of them. He lies on top of the fridge.

“Remember what you said about knights? We don’t just pee in pots—we also protect fair maidens.”

He tells her the story of the first time he ever saw her, and they sob out that they love each other as the flames consume the roof.

Back outside, most of the mob has driven away, but Stanley Kirsh realizes his engine is messed up. As he gets out to deal with it, Ingrid flits through the trees. She approaches him.

She is fully done up in her Periwinkle clown gear.

Naturally, she’s the one who informed about Grogan. She set this all up, to lure Pennywise to a site of fear and horror.

She tries to tell Stanley that this is who she really is, but Stanley tells her to go home and take it off unless she wants to be “black and blue”. She seems disappointed in him for a moment, but then…

“Papa?”

Bill turns, and there’s Pennywise. Holding a comically huge meat cleaver, of course. And there goes Bill’s head.

As Pennywise slurps her husband’s brain out of its skull, it seems to occur to Ingrid that things are amiss. She calls Pennywise Papa again, and he stops eating long enough to say “Show me the bow.”

She does, he applauds, and then says he’s going to sleep. When she panics, he reassures her that he’ll come back, but she grabs his arm and begs “Don’t abandon me!”

He drops the act and looks at her with pure malevolence, and she screams that he’s not her papa. Pennywise giggles. “I ate him! He still lives inside of me! I can feel him right now!”

And then he hits her with the Deadlights, and she levitates.

The next morning, the fire department cleans up what used to be The Black Spot. They find Margie, alive in the fridge, and she finds Rich’s body propped up against it. Ronnie and Will come back in from the woods and gather around her.

Later, when the kids are sitting outside, we see Ingrid on a gurney being wheeled into an ambulance, and she *seems *to be catatonic—until she flicks her eyes toward Will. When Major Hanlon and Charlotte get there, Will tells them that Mr. Hallorann got them out, and Hanlon’s called over to speak with Dick.

Ronnie takes that opportunity to tells Charlotte that her dad’s in the woods.

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Dick Hallorann is sitting on a log, his eyes rolling and head shaking as the dead press around him.

Hanlon stands in front of him. “Hallorann! You all right?”

“…nooo? Nooooo.”

(This is not just the best line read on this show, I think it’s the best line read I heard on TV this year. The way these actors wring incredibly dark humor out of their dialogue is amazing.)

“I had to talk to ‘em.” Dick says.

From Hanlon’s perspective, it’s just Dick sitting there. From Dick’s, there are legions of dead people whispering, “Make it right…”

He tells them that IT is gone, or dormant—“It’s like a light went out”—but that he can still lead them to a Shard.

“Now we just gotta follow her,” Dick says, staring past Hanlon.

“Who?” he asks.

“HER,” Dick replies. He’s looking at Necani, who stands in the woods watching him.

Major Hanlon suggests that Charlotte take Hank to their house in Derry, as no one will look for him there.

As morning dawns over Derry, the radio DJ informs the town that an “electrical fire” destroyed “an illegal Colored speakeasy.” He says that among the dead were Stanley Kirsh (“Rest in peace, Stanley. No one could filet a tenderloin quite like you.”) and Hank Grogan. So now at least the town thinks he’s gone. Lilly’s mom glares at her daughter to eat more of her breakfast as they listen to the horror on the radio.

The Shokopiwah meet, and tally up the dead. Twenty-three adults, seventeen children. As some of the newer members of the circle react in horror at the numbers, Rose reminds them to “focus on the lives we protected because we keep this thing in ITs cage.”

Meanwhile, at the latest dig site, that cage is, um…

The military find the Shard that was inside a turtle shell and load it into a truck. Hallorann is told he’s done good work and sent back to base, and Major Hanlon is told to stand down as the plan has changed, and they’re taking the Shard to scientists on the base. When he protests that it’s like “leaving a cage door open” he’s assured that since the entity is dormant, they’ll now be able to study the Shard safely.

Sure.

Taniel, somehow, has staked out the Shard site and sees them take it.

Ronnie and Margie go to Lilly’s to tell her about Rich, and the three of them go to the Tower to gather his things. Margie starts sobbing again as she realizes that he never got one of his balsa planes all the way to Main Street.

Charlotte has Hank change into one of her husbands old uniforms, and tells Will to stay home because even if IT is asleep, as Mr. Hallorann says, it wasn’t IT that set fire to the Black Spot. She takes Hank to Rose, and tells the other woman that she has contacts in Montreal who could help him start over. They just need help getting him over the border.

“Just a line on a map, right?”

As Rose smiles, Taniel bursts in. “We might have a problem.”

The scientists and military men are slowly putting the Shard into what looks like a barbecue smoker.

Major Hanlon rushes in with a gun to try to stop them, and for a moment they stand down at Shaw’s order. Shaw finally explains his *real *plan.

The country is “fracturing into jagged pieces”, but “the one thing that makes people listen is fear.” In Derry, after the horrific events at the Black Spot: “The streets are calm today. No rioting, no looting, no unrest. The Fear settles on every living person it touches… like a fog. Like a goddamn anesthetic.”

(I think the streets might also be calm cause Derry’s fucking racist, and the good white people of Derry are pleased about what happened, even if they won’t admit that, and the small Black population knows a protest will only lead to more murder—but I doubt the General’s going to hear that opinion.)

Major Hanlon is, in his way, as horrified at this mask coming off as the kids are when they glimpse IT. “You want to make America Derry???”

He tells Major Hanlon that his actions “may very well have saved this country” and tells him to go home. And as soon as he’s out of earshot he tells his underling to make sure Hanlon never leaves the base.

The phone rings, and Will, trapped at home, runs to it. It’s Ronnie, calling to talk about what happened at the Black Spot—but once she starts describing how delicious Rich’s fear was, Will realizes that his enemy isn’t dormant after all. “I’m done being afraid of you!” he screams, which is easy to say over the phone, but harder when he turns and sees Pennywise crouched on top of the fridge like a particularly menacing cat.

IT Deadlights him.

Do We All Float?

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Hoo boy.

I absolutely love the way the show takes the time to give us the long set piece at the circus. Seeing Ingrid’s dad’s artistry, seeing how great he is with her, seeing how, in the midst of this life that was clearly broken down, he was trying to give her acceptance and creativity and magic, makes it all the more horrible when the idyll comes to an end. It goes a little way towards explaining her actions as an adult.

Bob Gray’s silent play is amazing? It created a fascinating cognitive dissonance to see Pennywise perform something so moving.

And then to drop us from that into the horror at the Black Spot was masterful.

By keeping us in the building for the fire, the show doesn’t allow us to look away from what’s happening, it doesn’t soften any of it, and then it shows us the aftermath: the happy white folks of Derry going about their day, the stern white generals informing their Black reportees that what America really needs is more racist massacres. My only frustration here is that Dick only managed to get Will, Ronnie, and Hank out—given how cavalier the show has been about plot armor, it would have been nice if the show had included a couple of background characters escaping to let it work both ways, and add to the realism. The scene with Margie and Rich is just perfect.

After those two sequences, I was shocked to see how much episode was still left. Both of them were so riveting that they felt like entire episodes on their own. But the show still added actual nuance to moments that could have just been plot machinations, with Charlotte finally reaching out to Rose for the friendship she was promised, the kids all coming together to mourn their friend, and Major Hanlon trying to make a giant heroic play only to learn just how high up the evil goes.

In all of this, it’s Dick Hallorann who’s proving baffling. When the spirits tell him to “Make it right”—what does that mean? Surely not to let IT escape. Why would Necani lead him to the Shard, after everything she sacrificed fighting IT? Is this some sort of huge spiritual trap? Or is IT still manipulating him, even though, at this point, he think IT has gone dormant?

Aside from that, I really love how he was going to fully abandon everyone to their fate. I’ve really enjoyed seeing the beginning of the Mr. Hallorann who risks his life for a boy he barely knows decades in the future.

And finally, holy crap, Madeline Stowe as Ingrid. The arc on this character has been beautiful to behold, and the way she says “Papa?” destroys me. All of the acting has been stellar here: Arian S. Cartaya and Matilda Lawler in their final (???) scene together, all the kids coming together to mourn Rich, Bill Skarsgård as Bob Gray. The only way this kind of horror works is if it’s grounded, and these performances have been fantastic all the way through.

#JustKingThings

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In the book, the murders at The Black Spot are recounted as a horrible act of racism that becomes part of Mike Hanlon’s generational trauma. I was extremely concerned with how this would be handled, since it could so easily become exploitation, or trauma porn, but the way the show expands on it is brilliant. The massacre is set in motion by a white woman. BUT. She isn’t just acting out of jealousy, racism, or some twisted power game—she sets the massacre up because she wants to draw Pennywise out, to try to save her father.

Which is much more interesting, and even more tragic. This disturbed person uses her lover, who protected her at the risk of his own life, as bait. But not bait for a stupid white power fantasy, bait for an evil alien creature that feeds on fear.

I also have to note that both of the white girls make it out alive—the girl who is recognized and sent home by a mob member, and then Margie, who Rich saves at the cost of his own life. Almost every Black person, and one Cuban boy, are murdered by white supremacist thugs. And as General Shaw notes, there are no riots the next day, because the few people in Derry who have tried to ally across racial lines—all of them quite young—have been terrified into submission.

Turtles all the Way Down

The military finds the shard that was sealed up in a turtle shell, but they seem to be able to take it and barbecue it easily enough.

Mike Hanlon’s Photo Album

We finally see the killing at the Black Spot, and we see the last day in the life of Bob Gray, so it’s kind of the photo album come to life.

Ridiculous Alien Spider, or Generationally Terrifying Clown?

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After all the irritating “Pennywise is gonna run really fast now” stuff, the show finally shows us some things that transcend all of that. First the creepy child wandering in from the dark woods, with its strange, obviously performative voice and unblinking Kubrick eyes. But better, I think, is that we simply see IT eating. We see the delight it takes tormenting humans, and the sheer* joy* IT takes in burying ITs teeth into flesh. After all the bells and whistles of embodying people’s deepest fears, IT is simply a carnivorous animal hunting us and chucking us straight to the bottom of the food chain—the most primal fear most people don’t even know they have. And best of all, ITs sick glee in laughing at Ingrid and ripping away her fantasy that somehow her dad is still in there, able to fight back.