‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ episode 5 recap: Pennywise is here to dance
The military and the kids head down to Neibolt Street to finaly come face-to-face with Pennywise the Dancing Clown
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IT HAPPENED. It finally happened. After weeks of exploring what other forms the entity/the Galloo can conjure up in IT: Welcome to Derry, director Andy Muschietti’s plan paid off, revealing Pennywise the Dancing Clown as a mid-season treat.
We meet the clown as both the military and kids converge in the sewers under Neilbolt Street. Shaw and his troops want to use the star shards to capture and control the entity as a weapon to end the Cold War once and for all. (Scare the socks off those Soviets, they must think.) The kids, on the other hand, are lured down by a friendly face, only for the ultimate betrayal.
On the surface, Charlotte’s efforts to save Hank aren’t looking good after he revealed his affair last episode. Meanwhile, Ingrid is on the list of suspects to be in cahoots with It. But her relationship(s) say otherwise.
Below, we recap this week’s episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, titled “Neibolt Street”.
Spoilers abound! Read our recap on the previous episode here.
How to keep this country safe
It was easy to tell what a 60-year-old general in the ’60s during the height of the Cold War was hoping to do with “the entity”. After Taniel and Hallorann’s mind session – which theorists believe was infiltrated by Pennywise when the Shiner cracked a wide grin – General Shaw lets Leroy in on all the plans. (It seems like every episode there’s an extra layer to it.) It “fell to earth”, the general said incredulously. He wants to use It as a weapon to scare the socks off the Soviets on the battlefield. Leroy, on the other hand, feels utterly betrayed that he was tricked and brought his family to Derry. If the man can’t feel fear, then what is he feeling now?
Later, when Rose confronts Shaw about Taniel, he admits that the Department of Defence (or the Department of War now) gave him a pill 10 years ago that triggered all his memories of Derry to come flooding back, including Rose’s story about the Galloo. His whole life, even as a wee child in his baker boy cap, he’s been plagued with a ridiculous question of “how to keep this country safe”. He appeals to her that the cycle is coming to an end and they’ll miss their chance at capturing It. So, Rose lends Taniel to them with the star shard dagger in hand.
An eye for an eye
It took Marge losing an eye to see what Lilly saw all along, after her gruesome encounter with It turning her eyes into parasitic bug cones. When Lilly visits her, Marge says she told the authorities that it was her spectacles that cut her, so that Lilly doesn’t go back to Juniper Hill. (But charting how things are going after this episode, it’s now a matter of which of the kids survives and when Lilly will be thrown back into the nut house.) Marge is worried something bad will happen again; Lilly reassures her that if she joins her friend group, nothing will happen again. No matter, Rich says point-blank that everyone at school thinks it was still Lilly who blinded Marge.
Matty is back . . . sort of
Matty’s back! Only for a moment – It shapeshifted into the series’ first victim to draw them even closer into its hand. It played a pretty plausible tune too: Matty escaped during the day when It sleeps; he reports back that Teddy’s skull was ripped open and watched as It ate his brains out, Susie had one arm torn off and left screaming and bleeding out. The drawcard was Phil, who was left down there, too stunned to speak but still alive.
Lilly can’t make a decision without consulting Ingrid first, who she visits at her home with her abusive, steak-loving husband, Stan Kersh (the town’s butcher who met Charlotte in episode two, remember?). The going theory as of this episode is that Ingrid is Periwinkle, the young clown girl from Shaw’s flashback at the fair. If you’d remember from IT: Chapter Two, Periwinkle grew up to be Mrs Kersh, the deranged woman who lives alone in Beverly’s old apartment (again, that was just a vision conjured by It).
Not to mention the eerily similar quotes between the two women: “You know what they say about Derry. No one who dies here ever really dies.” But as we’ll get into soon, Ingrid is dealing with very real-world problems for her to be a supernatural entity. Anyway, Lilly brings more of her “Mommy’s Little Helpers” and the group eat them like M&M’s. They’re as high as kites as they descend to the sewers.
Hank is transferred to Shawshank
Charlotte’s efforts to help Hank have come to naught after he revealed he’s been having an affair with a married white woman. And so the day has come: he’s transferred to Shawshank, where he might as well be meeting his end as a “kiddie killer”. One of the angry onlookers breaks through the barricades with a gun, shouting that Hank will fry for what he did to his kids (unconfirmed who his children were). As everyone ducks from the dodged gunshot, Charlotte notices a policeman grinning at her with huge buck teeth. (Aside from shapeshifting and manifestations, can It shift the mood for people to become violent?)
The news of a fear-conjuring, shapeshifting entity is enough for Leroy to uproot his family and move into a cramped apartment on the military base. As Will goes to “explore the base”, Charlotte is left to her own devices when the TV announces that Hank’s bus crashed en route to Shawshank. Lo and behold, Hank ran and hid away in the backseat of Ingrid’s car, driving to a secluded part of the woods to embrace. Again, this is the very real-world problem Ingrid has, which is convincing me that she isn’t in cahoots with Pennywise. Anyway, Hank tells her to reach out to his only friend: Charlotte. What the three have planned together is to be seen.
A bloody end to the cycle
While the military and the kids have their plans going ahead, the Native American community are sitting back, waiting for the bloody end of this cycle to present itself. It’s essentially the climax that marks the ending of It’s Open Season on Derry. Last time, it was the massacre that has been referenced repeatedly throughout the series and films. (And don’t forget, the opening credits show Pennywise in clown form joining in the violence.) There are seven confirmed deaths; the Galloo’s discharge has tainted Derry’s water practically since its founding. The tribe wants to sit this one out, but like Necani, Rose has her plans of sending Taniel to the sewers with the troops, with the dagger in hand.
Neibolt Street
All roads lead back to Neibolt Street. The kids are high as kites when Matty leads them down to find and rescue Phil. But it was all a ruse when Phil, Teddy, and Susie’s bodies floated to the surface of the sewer water. Matty starts to contort as he sings “All the tunnels are under the ground / Where none of the children will be found / Down with the clown”. At last, Pennywise shows himself! Director Andy Muschietti’s plan to showcase the other forms of It has worked, leaving It’s Pennywise form for a sweet mid-season reveal. (That, and Bill Skarsgård might be too expensive to have on a TV set for months of filming.)
The troops, on the other hand, are fighting for their lives in the sewers. They’ve closed that corner of Retta and Neibolt Street off due to a “gas line leak”; they’re brief is to shoot anything that shouldn’t otherwise be down there. Two men come face-to-face with their hilarious fear of a ghoulish Uncle Sam. What are they scared of exactly? A dead democracy?
Pauly dies
As Pauly and Leroy go looking around, It manifests to the Major as Charlotte. Do my eyes deceive me? They do, sir. Reluctant to shoot her, It/Charlotte hits the water, grinning before swimming away. The second time, though, doesn’t work a charm. Will and the kids come running towards them after meeting Pennywise, only for Leroy to take aim at his son. But Pauly sees them too, jumping in the line of fire, sacrificing himself.
Lilly is left behind with It, which takes the form of her dead and pickled father. Rushing towards her in his manic style, he comes to a halt when the dagger reveals itself in the water. (Taniel dropped it when everyone went running scared. He doesn’t reappear in this episode, so I hope he came out of there alive.)
Hallorann opens the box
Dick Hallorann is down there, too, but Pennywise has other plans for him: dragging him down into the water, and then resurfacing in the bathtub in his grandmother’s apartment. He meets his grandmother again, as well as his grandfather, who’s been harbouring resentment for the two Shine users. “Dickie, he’s coming for you again?” his grandmother says. Last episode, she’s been telling him to keep his lid on tight, and now we see it as a Pandora’s box-type mind trick. His toxic grandfather shoots his grandmother in the leg, pressuring Hallorann to open the box. What’s in it isn’t immediately clear, but it’s similar to the eyes Danny has in Doctor Sleep. Perhaps this will be the key for Hallorann to beat Pennywise at its mind games – compartmentalising, if you will.
Coming out of the sewers, Hallorann spots Pauly in the forest. Though a zombie-fied version of the pilot. It’s a similar set-up to It keeping one body fresh to do its bidding in the real world. (However small his part, you can’t kill off Rudy Mancuso.) There may be more zombies on the way.
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