‘It: Welcome to Derry’ episode 1 recap: who are our heroes?

TO BORROW FROM ANOTHER Warner Bros. IP property: “Fear is the mind killer”. That’s what I’d like to impart to the kids of IT: Welcome to Derry, the new spin-off that takes place 27 years before the events of the first It film (and the Stephen King book). Director Andy Muschietti also returns with more breathing room over the course of eight episodes. What that means: elaborate horror sequences can be evenly paced and deliciously drawn out.

The year is 1962, and it’s the Derry as we know it from the films, only the town looks brand new and wholesome, the “slice of normalcy” put in a brochure that attracted one character. It’s a new cycle for the shapeshifter Pennywise to feast on the town’s children (and their fear), but screenwriter Jason Fuchs hasn’t set out with facsimiles. As the series premiere’s bait and switch finale reveals, this isn’t the Losers Club as we know it.

Below, we recap this week’s episode of IT: Welcome to Derry.

Matty’s in trouble

We can’t start an It story without a child going missing. That’s how we meet 12-year-old Matty Clements, who snuck into the local movie theatre to watch the 1962 musical The Music Man (the song “Ya Got Trouble” a consistent motif), self-soothing with his pacifier. His home life, we learn from empathetic theatre projectionist Dick Halloran, isn’t very pleasant for him to be out this late at night. The usher chases Matty out into the cold, leaving him to fend for himself and hitch a ride. A pleasant-looking family pulls over; Matty wants to be anywhere else but in Derry. To his luck, they’re off to Portland.

This mystery family is your typical ’60s nuclear family: a father, a pregnant housewife, a precocious daughter and a spelling wiz son. But things start taking a turn when Matty notices that they’ve just passed the “Welcome to Derry” sign; the daughter, whom Matty had only met less than five minutes ago, sticks her liver-covered fingers in his face. The mother goes into labour, a gruesome, violent “birth” of a demonic baby with wings. Still attached to the umbilical cord, it flies around the car before flying at Matty at warp speed. The passenger window shatters, his pacifier sent flying into the snowy night.

Welcome (back) to Derry

It’s four months after the cold open, and Matty is presumed dead. He was a bit of a loner at school, so much so that his mother bribed his classmates, Phil and Teddy, with candy to go to his birthday party. The two boys, guilt-stricken, are the only ones who remember him. Phil, the Richie Tozier type cynic and conspiracy nerd, suspects something more sinister is at play, convincing Teddy, the cautious and bookish Stanley Uris type, to start snooping.

Not to say this cast of kids are facsimiles of the OG Losers Clubs, but in true Beverly Marsh fashion, “Looney” Lilly Bainbridge starts to hear voices down the drain. In the series’ first scare scene, Matty’s bloodied fingers are reaching out to her from the pipes on her bathtub. Lilly is a social pariah, who’s still dealing with the traumatic death of her father from an explosion in a pickle factory. (A sore spot, bullies fill her locker with jars and jars of the salty cucumber – which, yum.) She tells this to her socially ambitious friend, Marge, who urges her to keep the incident to herself – she doesn’t want to be made more of a freak than she already is.

Through a backstory, triggered by a rocket bracelet charm, Matty fancied Lilly, so he brought her up to the top of the town’s Standpipe, a kind of treehouse base for him, Jack and Teddy. As the New Year is chimed in with fireworks, Matty goes in for a kiss, to which Lilly backs away with “We’re just friends”. Disheartened, Matty runs home to his scary father; this is presumably the last time Lilly saw him.

The military base in Derry

It’ll be interesting to see how the show entwines the secular horrors of Derry with the wider geopolitical happenings of 1962. New to the town is the Derry Air Force Base, located in a prime spot in Maine that’s only several hours away from Russia, should the US need first responders to send across the Atlantic. While the It universe has mostly concerned itself with coming-of-age narratives, the new series might actually explore adult lives.

Enter Major Leroy Hanlon, a talented pilot who’s been stationed in Derry after, what he feels, the “unfinished” Korean War. Along with his fellow airman, Captain Pauly Russo, Derry offers a “slice of normalcy”, he says. As one of the very few Black servicemen on the base, too, Hanlon receives a chillier introduction when Airman Second Class Masters refuses to salute his superior. Not surprising, given the time period, Masters has already been marked with racist insubordination.

Very Ed Gein of you

Lilly isn’t the only one starting to see things. Teddy brings up the possibility of kidnapped children being held captive underground to his father during Shabbat dinner. To the dismay of his mother and older brother, this isn’t the first time Teddy has brought conspiracy theories to the table. In the tradition of scaring your children, his father regales him with how his grandparents escaped Buchenwald, where prisoners were skinned and turned into lampshades. (Over on Netflix, was this Ed Gein’s inspiration?)

“We are Jews, Theodore,” his father says, “Reality is terrifying enough as it is.” His father rips out The Flash comic book from under his homework. It’s a harrowing image Teddy takes to bed later that night. Reading his comics, his lampshade flickers until the cover is turned into death-camp victims’ faces stitched together, trying to scream.

Masked men attack Major Hanlon

During his meeting with General Shaw, it’s revealed that Hanlon was brought to the air base to start using the military’s impressive new B-52 jet. Later that night, a group of men wearing gas masks attacked Hanlon in bed, demanding the specs to the B-52. Perhaps their Soviet spies? But their American accents make them sound like traitors. Or maybe even Soviet sleeper agents trained with American accents. Anyway, one masked invader stands off in the corner with a similar demeanour to Masters – yet to be seen. Russo comes to the rescue before they can hit Hanlon again.

Who will be our heroes in IT: Welcome to Derry?

When Teddy brings up his lampshade incident to Phil, it makes Lilly’s drain story more plausible. Something’s in the air – neigh, the pipes. The trio, along with Phil’s little sister, Susie, head to the library to skim through the old newspaper headline of Matty’s disappearance. A new development: an unidentified teen girl was the last to see Matty. Enter Ronnie, the daughter of the theatre projectionist who directed the usher away. Ronnie is immediately suspicious when the kids come knocking. The police questioned and tried to pin Matty’s disappearance on her father. But even she’s been hearing things, like Lilly, specifically “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man reverberating through the drains. It was, Ronnie reveals, the movie Matty watched the night he disappeared.

At the empty theatre – simply “entering”, Phil quips – Ronnie fires up the projector to when the River City denizens sing “Ya Got Trouble” with Robert Preston. As the camera pans around, they can’t believe their eyes when Matty appears on screen. He’s wearing the red plaid shirt from that night, holding a baby wrapped in a yellow fabric in his arms. Matty being superimposed isn’t yet in the realm of technological possibility. The kids yell that they’re here to bring him home. Matty breaks the fourth wall, addressing them sinisterly: “You’re the reason I’m in here. ‘Cause you lied. ‘Cause you weren’t there.”

Lilly and Ronnie are left standing

It isn’t Matty, of course, as his smile curves into Pennywise’s signature grin. He throws the “baby” he’s cradling out of the screen. Only for the flying baby demon to burst out of the celluloid. What ensues is revealing for the series going forward. Lilly ducks under the chairs as the other kids are gruesomely killed off one by one. The surprising twist sees Ronnie and Lilly as the two left standing. We’re only getting started as the camera pans to Susie’s severed arm still clutching onto Lilly’s hand.

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