Spoilers follow for It: Welcome to Derry Episodes 1-4.
So far, I’ve found the scariest thing about It: Welcome to Derry by a significant margin to be the downward trend of the episodes’ quality. “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet's Function” turns things around for the series at the season’s critical midpoint, with some of the best drama and horror we’ve seen from Welcome to Derry yet turning the temperature up to a rolling boil.
Armed with the photos from last week’s odious cemetery setpiece, Welcome to Derry’s core group of kids (assuming no more slate-wipes like the premiere) - Lilly, Ronnie, Will and Rich - march into Chief Bowers’ office to find the dollar store ghoul children they’d captured have disappeared from their pictures. Even though the clown’s still visible, Bowers quickly sends the kids packing, which should come as little surprise given how little this guy seems interested in solving crimes in Derry. Peter Outerbridge has done nice work to this point playing Bowers’ simmering rage in moments like these, far more in control of himself than his grandson (Losers’ Club nemesis Henry Bowers) will go on to be, and the tighter he gets wound by the escalating events in town, the scarier he’s getting.
That tension carries Charlotte’s conversation with him about Hank Grogan’s treatment in custody, which touches on Charlotte’s experiences as a civil rights freedom fighter in the South. Outerbridge and Taylour Paige engage in a polite-but-terse back and forth about the racial dynamics at play here that gives both performers an opportunity to have two conversations at once, and Bowers’ unconvincing insistence that Derry “isn’t the South” and that Hank Grogan’s getting the same fair shake as a white person would only adds to the sinister atmosphere. That’s underlined when Charlotte does get to see Hank, as we learn that he was having an affair with a white woman in town at the time of the murders he’s accused of and terrified he’ll be lynched as a result.
Welcome to Derry has positioned Hank as pure good, so it’s worth us taking that fear to the bank. Stephen Rider turns in his best work of the season so far here, as Hank is overcome with emotion at Charlotte’s suggestion that his refusal to give his alibi is anything but a sacrifice to keep his family and his secret lover safe. With how acutely concerned Hank seems to be about that lover’s identity as it relates to everyone’s safety should the news get out (and it will), the smart money seems to be on that being the spouse of a Derry cop. Seems like the kind of thing that would make Chief Bowers totally snap if that sort of controversy came to his doorstep…
While Charlotte and Leroy are at odds over how much to get involved in Hank’s case, thanks to some smart deductive reasoning on Will’s part, the kids have figured out that It feeds on fear. Here, Welcome to Derry seeds a “Chekov’s gun” bound to backfire on them in later episodes: Lilly gives each of her friends one of “Mommy’s little helpers”, her mom’s anxiety meds which Lilly thinks will keep the kids from feeling fear. Loose pills and Pennywise: a match made in Derry. I’m both excited and full of dread to see how Welcome to Derry’s going to pay this one off. It speaks to the overall narrative efficiency of “Planet’s Function”, both in how it looks back on threads from the first three episodes and provides meaningful updates, and in the dominoes it sets up for itself to knock down in the back half of the season.
As for the back half of this episode, once “Planet’s Function” gets done with its homework laying track for the rest of the season… it’s party time. The second half of “Planet’s Function” goes from strength to strength, starting with Will and Leroy’s encounter on the Kenduskeag River as Leroy puts in some effort to bond with Will as the school year starts to get away from both of them. Jovan Adepo and Blake Cameron James’ easy chemistry shines for what really feels like the first time here, as Leroy needles Will about a crush on Ronnie Grogan and gives him pointers on his fly fishing. As Leroy pops back to the car, Will’s pulled under the water by something wearing Leroy’s burned face, which in his frantic recap to his dad Will likens to how Leroy looked after a plane crash earlier in his career. This was another great example of how Welcome to Derry has been able to use these brushes with Pennywise to shade in details about the characters’ backstories, or fears, in a way that feels natural and satisfying. And Marge’s prank on Lilly gone wrong keeps that ball rolling in an eye-popping, delightfully Raimiesque fashion.
Welcome to Derry’s 1960s setting and heavy emphasis on Americana leaves simpler archetypes and tropes like an unpopular girl who’s sensitive about her coke bottle glasses feeling quite potent, so when the camera lingers on Marge squirming over a nature film in class about parasites that live in the eyes of snails, the math starts to add up and this week, 2+2 = ew, ew, ew, ew. The “Pattycakes vs. Lilly” thread has felt under-cooked up to this point, and while I still don’t buy Marge’s turn on Lilly in exchange for popularity, it has at least led us to Welcome to Derry’s best gross-out moment yet. As Marge decides to back out of the prank and be honest with Lilly about her behavior, her eyes brutally Judge Doom out of her head, sending Marge stumbling into the wood shop to bring this ocular omnishambles to an unforgettable conclusion.
Sure, Marge’s snail eyes have that terrible CG sheen so much of the scary stuff in Welcome to Derry has been the victim of, but the entire sequence is so nightmarish and arch to begin with that the authenticity of Matilda Lawler’s reactions carry the effects through. It is some Evil Dead shit of the highest order, and I’ve always got space in my heart for that. The episode could’ve ended right at that fever pitch, but instead, we’re treated to an extended flashback sequence that adds some intriguing new detail to the legend of Pennywise with a ton of flair, thanks to Dick Hallorann’s “shine.”
With Will’s attack fresh on his mind, Leroy grills both Hallorann and Shaw about the true nature of Operation Precept.. That gives Leroy a front row seat to Hallorann’s psychic interrogation of Taniel, a member of Derry’s Indigenous community and Rose’s nephew, as Hallorann seeks answers on the “beacons” or “pillars” connected to Pennywise buried under Derry. Hallorann finds himself in a dark void of back-lit doors (cool), doors which his grandmother’s ghostly voice has been urging him to keep closed (a nice nod to some Hallorann family history we learn in Doctor Sleep). Hallorann enters a memory of Taniel’s wherein his aunt Rose asks him to recount their tribe’s legend of The Galloo, their name for It. One level deeper in Taniel’s mind, the legend plays out as we see both It’s arrival on earth and how Rose and Taniel’s ancestors were the first to figure out how to counteract it.
Taniel’s story plays out at exciting pace, almost like a snappy, self-contained It short film to end the episode, and with an extra level of danger added by virtue of the fact that this is all being perceived in real-time by Hallorann. Last week’s episode saw Pennywise speak to him while he was shining, so for Hallorann to be bearing witness to such a sensitive chapter of It’s history while being psychically vulnerable gave the sequence a deep sense of unease, which the sound design reinforces nicely. The low-end warbles evoke Stanley Kubrick’s sound mix for The Shining while Hallorann and Danny were having visions. The information Hallorann gets from Taniel’s story also lends the nature of Operation Precept a touch more nuance and logical connection to Pennywise’s cosmological origins than I’d first anticipated. Welcome to Derry still has work to do to convince me that Operation Precept’s going to be worth our time, but at the very least, some of what Hallorann’s vision reveals gives it a stronger foundation.
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