It: Welcome to Derry Season 1, Episode 6
"In the Name of the Father"
Writer: Jason Fuchs, Cord Jefferson, Brad Caleb Kane
Director: Jamie Travis
Cast: Clara Stack, Amanda Christine, Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, Blake Cameron James, Chris Chalk, Stephen Rider, Matilda Lawler, Arian S. Cartaya, Peter Outerbridge, Lazelle Gelias, Madeleine Stowe, Rudy Mancuso, Bill Skarsgård, Dorian Grey, Tyner Rushing, Richard Walters, Shane Marriott
The vibes are less than immaculate this week as the Losers and their loved ones turn spiteful under the toxic influence of the entity. It seems like the “Black Spot,” an out-of-the-way juke joint requisitioned for the Black airmen, is our sole refuge. Now, how long do you think that’ll last? If you guessed the runtime of this week’s episode, you’ve won yourself a wicked little Kewpie doll.
Bad Mood Rising
It goes without saying that long-suffering Lilly Bainbridge bears the brunt of the series’ trauma. Poor Clara Stack’s face must ache from the rictus of anguish she wears throughout. She’s at odds with the other Losers in a scene reminiscent of the first Avengers movie, the ritual dagger she found in the sewers drawing out their mistrust, just like the Tesseract in Loki’s staff. She’s still clutching the artifact when she again sees ol’ Pickle Daddy, this time crammed into her desk at school. This leads to another shrieking outburst, and she’s left with no recourse but to flee.
Of course, Lilly’s not the only one dealing with the entity’s corrupting influence. Will feels the full weight of it in the fallout of the botched sewer expedition. Leroy is understandably distraught at the loss of his best friend, Pauly, who took a bullet meant for Will. When Leroy insinuates this is the children’s fault for going down there in the first place, Will doesn’t take it very well. Leroy lashes out, knocking him to the floor. This is pretty out of character for Leroy, whose main flaw as a father and husband is standard issue emotional distance. He’s immediately apologetic, but the damage is done. By the end of the episode both Will and Charlotte are at odds with him and headed for the door.
In the strongest scene of the week, Leroy confronts Dick about what happened in the sewers. Dick explains the whole deal with the lockbox — not Al Gore’s social security plan for his 2000 presidential run, but Gramma Hallorann’s method for imprisoning ghosts in their minds. The entity prised open the lock last week, and now Dick is seeing dead people, Haley Joel Osment-style. No wonder he’s been hitting the bottle so hard. Sobering moments like this help contextualize his shifting mood. Chris Chalk is doing great work.
The Knight and the Pirate
Meanwhile, Rich and Marge share some tender moments. Ever the rizz master, Rich doesn’t bat an eye when helping redress hers. He even brings her an old eyepatch he found up in his attic, a token of affection that emboldens Marge to finally stand up to Patty Prime. While Cap’n Marge isn’t so ready as Rich to hard launch any kind of romance, she’s certainly warming to his gallant charms. She dubs them the pirate and the knight.
Later, they get boozy at the Black Spot, thanks to a suspiciously friendly bartender and his offer of “Air Force Cokes.” Rich definitely impresses on the drums; big Gene Krupa energy. Marge dances along, breaking out some tipsy Gidget moves. Ah, man, this is going to end horribly, isn’t it?
Periwinkle
If the whole military plot to weaponize It wasn’t enough to send Constant Readers over the edge, the Muschiettis’ further exploration of Pennywise’s origins just might. First teased with old photographs during the Mrs. Kersh sequence in It: Chapter Two, we get a closer look at the man beneath the makeup. Now, as Lilly races to the Kersh house to seek Ingrid’s help, we learn that the longtime Juniper Hill staffer is in fact the daughter of that original carnival clown and even performed as one herself.
An extended black-and-white flashback to the 1930s shows Ingrid take a special interest in a traumatized young girl who swears she’s being haunted by a clown run amuck in the asylum. Together, they journey down to the bowels of the facility in the middle of the night where Pennywise manifests and devours the girl. Ingrid is too entranced by the appearance of her long-lost father to mind the murder. The entity capitalizes on this, shapeshifting into the man’s meek civilian form — honestly kind of a lateral move, horror-wise. Presumably, Ingrid believes her father is possessed by the entity, intermittently lucid after feeding. This is, of course, manipulation of the entity’s part. It’s literally just wearing the man’s image like a Halloween costume.
Cue Lilly’s arrival at the Kersh house where she wanders upstairs to Ingrid’s secret workshop. Their friendship was a lie. Ingrid just wants to sacrifice the girl to spend more time with her father. She’s even sewing a new Periwinkle the Clown costume to draw him out. Ingrid arrives to trigger Lilly’s Final Girl circuit and gets a slash to the palm courtesy of the dagger. She reaches out for the retreating Lilly, resulting in a cool shot of the girl pedaling furiously away, screaming, a bloody handprint on the back of her blouse.
Spot of Bother
Convinced that the dagger is the key to ridding Derry of its evil presence, Lilly and Will are eager to return to the sewers to finish off the entity. Rich and Marge are game, but Ronnie has no desire to confront the creature again. Once she’s reunited with her father, who’s hiding out in the back room of the Spot, her singular focus is getting him safely out of Derry entirely. Now all of the Losers, save for Lilly, converge on the Spot with Will attempting one last time to convince Ronnie to join them on their quest.
Unfortunately, they’re not the only ones to discover the sanctuary. An embittered Chief Bowers, still steaming from Hank Grogan’s escape, decides to take justice into his own hands. He has a tip about the Spot possibly harboring the fugitive, and he leads a rowdy group of angry white townsfolk to smoke him out.
We all know the entity’s circuit is bookended by mass casualty events. This just might be the next one.
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