It: Welcome to Derry Season 1, Episode 4
"The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function"
Writer: Helen Shang
Director: Andrew Bernstein
Cast: Clara Stack, Amanda Christine, Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Blake Cameron James, James Remar, Kimberly Norris Guerrero, Joshua Odjick, Chris Chalk, BJ Harrison, Stephen Rider, Matilda Lawler, Arian S. Cartaya, Peter Outerbridge, Madeleine Stowe, Kiawentiio, Morningstar Angeline
…Now You Don’t
Last week, our intrepid Losers secured photographic evidence of supernatural activity in the town graveyard, including a shot of Pennywise himself. Rather than vying for big bucks at a reputable tabloid, they haul ass to the police department to show Chief Bowers. Upon inspection, he and two other officers don’t see the specters of Teddy or Susie or any sinister clown. The filmmakers describe this as a “fog” cast over Derry’s adults, rendering physical evidence of It imperceptible. That’s bad news for Hank Grogan’s junior defense team.
Back at the standpipe, Will theorizes that the evil presence afoot in Derry isn’t just trying to kill kids; it’s seasoning them with fear-induced adrenaline.
Charlotte Hanlon discovers the curious photos in the back of Will’s drawer and confronts him about his newfound hobby. I like that Will is a sensitive kid who folds instantly with the slightest pressure from Mom. His tearful breakdown is very real. He explains he’s not a midcentury goth, but that he and his new friend Ronnie have seen some pretty messed up things in their attempt to exonerate her old man. Charlotte is of course aware of the case and decides to put her experience volunteering for civil rights efforts to good use. She decides to launch her own investigation to make sure Hank isn’t being railroaded like so many other Black men.
Chief Bowers initially refuses to grant Charlotte access to Hank because she’s neither family or part of his legal counsel, so she pays his mother a visit. Louella (Harrison) concedes that she can’t say for sure Hank was home for the entire night in question, though she has no doubt of his innocence. With her permission, Charlotte returns to the police department to ask him for herself. He ultimately admits that he went out that night to meet a woman. He’s hesitant to elaborate, but that’s enough for anyone to solve the equation. Hank was with a white woman. As it turns out, a married white woman. He wouldn’t survive the perp walk if that came out. Not that the gang at Shawshank will take kindly to a child murderer either.
Leroy remains dubious of Charlotte’s civic engagement. Is she doing any good kicking a hornets’ nest? This and Leroy’s preoccupation with the military work he insists he’s unable to talk about keeps things tense at the dinner table. She suggests he spend some time with Will on his next day off, hoping to at least strengthen that relationship. A day of flyfishing would do them both some good.
Right?
Parasites
Will’s not what you’d consider an outdoorsman, but he’s delighted to hook a fish out there in the Barrens. This one gets away, but when Leroy heads back to the car for extra supplies, the boy spots one whopper of a carp swimming right up to his waders. On closer inspection it looks like an even more invasive species, something otherworldly. Suddenly the pallid fish takes on the appearance of his father, his flesh charred by the wartime plane crash that must haunt Will’s nightmares. The phantom reaches up from the shallows and throttles the boy. The real Leroy hurries back at the sound of Will’s screams. Luckily he gets there just in time to save the kid from drowning.
It’s then that they both see a red balloon lilting over the water.
Creepy. What about the other kids?
A popular boy says hello to Lilly in the cafeteria and Marge encourages her to talk to him. Smitten, Lilly rushes off to powder her nose first. This is sadly a honeypot scheme devised by the Pattycakes, with Marge’s involvement something of an initiation test. Marge follows Lilly to the restroom and is about to confess when she feels an obstruction in her eye.
If you’re sensitive to eye trauma you may want to skip this part. Marge cannot.
Recalling a nature documentary from an earlier biology class, her eyeballs erupt into pulsating stalks like those of a snail infected with a parasite. Screaming, she stumbles out into the hallway and into the empty shop classroom. She grabs for a chisel to help alleviate the pressure in her eye sockets, but it’s not enough. She activates the band saw and attempts to force the eye stalks into the blade. Lilly manages to pry her away from the machinery, sprawling atop the frenzied girl. Other students arrive at the door and from their perspective, this looks like absolute carnage. It’s almost a meme at this point, but I think Lilly’s headed back to Juniper Hill again.
Theater of the Mind
Between Will’s panic, the marks on the boy’s arms, and what happened on the chopper, Leroy is convinced General Shaw has stirred up something nasty. The red balloon reappearing outside their house late one night seals it. He storms into Shaw’s office and demands an explanation. Perfect timing, because Dick is just getting ready to interrogate Taniel (Odjick), a stoic young activist and part of the Children of Maturin. As Shaw and Leroy watch, Dick goes full Charles Xavier, plowing through Taniel’s mental barriers. There in Taniel’s subconscious, he takes the guise of Rose to confront a child Taniel, asking him to recount the story of the Galloo.
The boy narrates the arrival of It on Earth. How the indigenous peoples of the time coexisted with the entity, allowing it to persist in the form of a nightmarish spectral moose. At this stage it was weak enough to contain to the western woods by warding it off with a dagger hewn from its meteorite shell–ala Kryptonite–and keeping it isolated. When white colonists arrived, their incursion into the alien’s hunting ground allowed its presence to strengthen and spread. The champion of the Children of the Maturin, Sesqui (Angeline), fell to the entity when it took on the form of a white missionary with a gnarly baby Jesus erupting from his chest. A group of young proto-proto-Losers led by a girl named Necani (Kiawentiio) then ventured into It's crash site to secure more shards, which were then used to create a sort of WIFI mesh around the land we’ll come to know as Derry.
We’re calling these 13 buried shards “pillars.” Shaw seems to believe collecting these things will allow him to control It and even harness its power.
And now it looks like Dick knows where those pillars are. As for the entity itself, Taniel points to a familiar house…on Neibolt Street.
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