[Spoiler Alert] IT: Welcome To Derry Episode 1’s ending was a bloodbath where the titular creature, who famously takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown in the movies, absolutely slaughtered Teddy, Phil, and Susie. The narrative was divided into 2 halves. The first subplot was centered around the disappearance of a kid called Matty. He was trying to get out of Derry, and he hitched a ride with a family of four, soon to be five because the wife was pregnant. The woman went into labor in the car and gave birth to a flying baby demon that kidnapped Matty and took him into the sewers. Since Teddy, Phil, Lilly, and Ronnie knew Matty—which he interpreted as genuine friendship—they felt guilty that they didn’t do enough to stop him from disappearing. As IT was out of hibernation and on the prowl, it began beckoning to Teddy, Phil, Lilly, and Ronnie by playing a song from The Music Man, because that’s the last movie that Matty had watched before disappearing. So, all four of them and Susie (Phil’s sister) went over to the Capitol Theater to play the movie and look for clues. The second subplot was about Leroy and Pauly arriving at the airbase at Derry for the next chapter of their careers, only to get hints of the fact that the US Armed Forces were working on a project that they had kept under wraps. Did the concluding moments of these subplots give us any idea about what we can expect in the next episode? Let’s find out.
Teddy, Phil, and Susie Are Dead
Since Ronnie had experience working as a projectionist at the Capitol Theater, she set up the reels for The Music Man and pressed play. She sat in the projection room while Teddy, Phil, Lilly, and Susie took their seats in the auditorium. When “Ya Got Trouble” began playing, the kids surprisingly spotted Matty, holding a baby, in the crowd within the movie. Hence, they began calling out to him. As he got closer to the screen, the family that had abducted him also emerged behind him. But that didn’t dissuade the kids from beckoning to Matty, hoping that he’d jump out of the screen and join them. However, anyone who had read the books or watched the sequels knew that the whole thing was just an illusion created by IT—as well as an homage to the projector-in-the-garage scene in IT: Chapter One—in order to make the kids hopeful and then inject fear into their hearts. Much like how Pennywise leaped out of the screen in that movie, a gigantic version of the winged demon baby (because IT’s size depends on the space it’s currently inhabiting) tore through the canvas and began attacking the kids. Ronnie tried to get to them, but the door of the projection room slammed shut and trapped her in there. By the time she could get to her new friends, the winged demon baby had killed Teddy, Phil, and Susie. Lilly had managed to make it out of the auditorium in one piece, probably because she was protected by the turtle charm (a reference to Maturin, IT’s nemesis) that Matty had given her, and she joined Ronnie to let out a scream of horror.
Now, I think I must address 2 things. First of all, as someone who hasn’t watched any of the promotional material, I did not expect the characters we were following from the beginning of the episode to just die so mercilessly! Matty was a goner, and I wasn’t surprised when he died. But it seemed like they were building up Teddy, Phil, Lilly, and Ronnie to be the kid protagonists of the show, and they just killed 2 of them? That’s bold. Secondly, how did IT just appear in a theater and kill 3 kids? I think the creature’s powers are flexible and mainly depend on how afraid his victims are. The more afraid they are, the easier it becomes for him to materialize somewhere in Derry. He can undoubtedly create illusions anywhere he likes, and he’s known to even make a physical appearance in places other than the sewers. However, I didn’t know that it could go to these lengths to get to its victims. So, was the creature holding back in the ‘80s and the 2010s, or was he much stronger in the ‘60s? I guess we’ll know more about it in the upcoming episodes of Welcome to Derry.
Pauly Saves Leroy’s Life
Right after landing in Derry, Leroy was faced with some racial discrimination from an airman, Masters, but General Shaw assured Leroy that his airfield had no room for such bigotry. When Leroy retired to his quarters, though, he was hounded by a trio of masked men. They began beating up Leroy pretty brutally, and my first thought was that the racist Masters was behind one of the masks, and he and his other bigoted colleagues probably wanted to teach Leroy a lesson. But when the masked men began asking questions about the B-52 planes that Leroy and Pauly had been brought in to fly, I assumed that it was an endurance test conducted by Shaw to see if he’d crack under pressure. In addition to that, I thought that maybe this whole thing was an illusion created by IT to feed into Leroy’s fears about being racially discriminated against, or maybe IT was exacerbating the racist feelings of those airmen and compelling them to attack Leroy. However, when Pauly arrived to save Leroy, leading to a 2-versus-3 fight in that small room, and then those masked men fled like cowards, I came to the conclusion that maybe they were spies who were trying to get their hands on whatever confidential information Leroy had at his disposal. And since there’s a cosmic being in Derry, I am guessing that those spies didn’t just want to learn about the planes and the artillery that the US Air Force had in its arsenal; they wanted to know if Leroy had any info on IT.
Now, why would the US Armed Forces want to try to irk an ancient supernatural alien creature? Well, while normal people run away from things that they don’t understand, I guess the US government has decided to jump headfirst into the mystery surrounding IT in the name of science. Whereas, in reality, they probably want to harness the power of the creature and bend it to their will (yes, this seems to be heavily inspired by Stranger Things, which in turn was heavily inspired by Stephen King’s novels). Of course, this is going to backfire pretty badly and lead to a massive cover-up, which would explain why Derry continues to be a habitable place despite all these mishaps and disappearances. Leroy will be at the center of it all. No, don’t worry, he’s not going to die anytime soon, because the aged version of this character showed up in the ‘80s in IT: Chapter One as a sheep farmer. How did he go from being this decorated officer to being a man killing sheep? I suppose we’ll find out in the forthcoming episodes. Additionally, if you found the jeep driver non-verbally signaling something to Leroy to be a little odd, well, that’s because he’s another major character in the Stephen King canon: Dick Hallorann. How will he get out of Derry and end up in the Overlook Hotel? It’s a big question mark for now. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on the ending of IT: Welcome to Derry episode 1. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
