The other day, I was just thinking of slowing down, simplifying those really tangled trains of thoughts, and maybe starting off with the obvious instead of going through all the worst possibilities first. You can imagine how complicated all that gets while trying to untangle a mess like the final episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, now with a fresh “Chapter One” suffix. Only, it wasn’t complicated at all, and neither was this episode that even Stephen King himself deems “crazy” all that convoluted. The only confusing part is that a whole lot happens. So for you nice people, I’ve slowed down and gone through it with as level a head as I could’ve managed. But then again, that last part wasn’t simple. Because this is the first time I’ve actually been scared of Pennywise. Serves me right for thinking I was above coulrophobia.
Spoiler Alert
Pennywise the Piper
So I did a little digging. Well, technically I didn’t even have to get the shovel out to learn virtually everything about the freaky lights Pennywise blinded his victims with in the 7th episode of IT: Welcome to Derry. The information’s that easily available. And that’s probably the only easy thing about Deadlights in Stephen King’s literary universe. Deadlights are IT. And by that I mean the man-eating eldritch monster is basically made of cosmic energy that radiates as what Stephen King’s universe knows as the Deadlights. By wielding this power in his Pennywise form, IT can do just about anything his heartless heart desires. Now awakened by Shaw’s acutely insane act of removing one of the pillars from the ground, Pennywise is feeling snacky. You can understand that. Hitting his protein goals so early makes Pennywise a big and strong alien clown. He’s now powerful enough to cover the entirety of Derry and its surroundings in an ominous, evil fog, giving him enough cover for a peaceful buffet experience. What better place for lunch than the Derry High School? The kids have got no clue that it’s Pennywise asking them to gather at the auditorium for an exclusive puppet show with the dead Headmaster. And just like that, the Deadlights do to all of them the same thing that they did to Will. Pennywise has caught all the kids from Derry High, including Will, in a freakish trance, and he plans to lead his floating “groceries” right outside the boundaries of Derry. It’s practically wicked of the show to make Patricia and her Pattycakes the face of this grand abduction. It’s almost like the show wants you to see that these are the consequences of some real bad life choices on the parts of the majority of Derry’s population. Because the kind of people who can put native American headgear on the very White mascot for the team that goes by “Trappers”–yeah, they deserve some consequences. So it’s really too bad that some of the kids paying for everything that’s gone wrong with Derry are the very picture of wisdom, goodness, and innocence. Because an unsafe place doesn’t discriminate against who it’s unsafe for, other than the predator, of course. And Pennywise can’t just take the kids and go, right? He’s got his eyes on the fearless Major Leroy Hanlon. And he knows that the only thing that can even beat a man with a dysfunctional amygdala is the possibility of his son being eaten alive. That’s what their phone call is all about. Pennywise wants to hear the fear in Leroy’s voice as he lets him know that he has Will. That’s the clown’s win.
What’s the significance of the dagger?
Marge, Lilly, and Ronnie don’t even get to clean up their hang before the fog scares the hell out of them. It’s got to be IT. When countless posters of missing kids, kids they know and go to school with, appear all around them, they’ve got no reason to believe that Pennywise actually took all of them. They would’ve sat this one out. But how do they ignore the horror of what’s happening when they see the missing poster with Will’s face on it. They’re not leaving their friend behind, especially not a friend who risked his own life to be there for them time and time again. So it’s a good thing that Lilly’s got that special dagger, right? Well, only partly. It’s a solid plan for them to take the dagger, try to find Pennywise, and kill him with it. Do you have a better plan? No? Let’s just have some faith in these kids then. Marge’s might should be just enough evidence for us to be convinced that they’re the right people to end this terror. She might not have ever really driven her uncle’s truck. But as long as the milkman is very dead, Marge can remember just enough from having watched her uncle drive stick to take her friends and go on the mission to rescue Will. That’s a warrior right there. With one good eye, that too. And since you’re rooting hard for these adorable, unbelievably awesome kids, it should be reassuring for you to see the right adults grouping up to help them out. It ain’t easy. It’s actually so difficult that Dick Hallorann was almost about to blow his head off. The ghosts haven’t given him a moment of respite from their pain and their wish for him to join them. So when all’s said and done, Hallorann is crazy lucky that a freaked-out Leroy storms in the way he does. I think Leroy absolutely means it when he promises Hallorann that he’ll get “the job done” himself if Hallorann just helps him save his son. You know Hallorann can’t sit on his hands when there’s a kid’s life at stake. Must be something about how helpless he was as a child. It just so happens that Charlotte is at Rose’s when Leroy and Hallorann must darken the room with the awful news. If anybody could know of a way to save Will from the killer clown, it’s Rose. Pretty cool how it’s Maturin roots, crushed and brewed into tea, that are supposed to open up the whole realm for someone with Hallorann’s gifts. Maturin is Pennywise’s cosmic nemesis, the keeper of life, and the god referred to when Rose reminds Hallorann that not everything he’ll see there will be evil. Hallorann’s job is to locate the dagger so that it can replace the pillar that was removed. It’s made from the same comet, so it should work. But since the military won’t let them go anywhere near Sesqui’s burial site, they have to take the dagger to the farthest point of the river, where there’s a dead tree, and bury it in it. That’s the only spot where the dagger’s powers can still connect with the other pillars and close off the cage. Trouble is, the dagger doesn’t want to go where Lilly, Ronnie, and Marge are taking it. So it’s gonna throw a major tantrum on its way to the deadwood, which happens to be where the kids’ truck is headed. It wants to go home like anything and anyone in the history of existence. And home for that dagger is Neibolt House. The tea made from Maturin roots does quieten the ghosts for Hallorann, but at what cost? He’s going through the realm like he’s on a psychic rollercoaster. Thank heavens he pulls the brakes just as Marge does when her truck hits a pothole and crashes. Don’t get all worked up now. The kids are all fine. Well, mostly. The dagger is doing what Rose said it would. It’s telling all sorts of lies to Lilly about herself and her friends to manipulate her into taking it back to the Neibolt House. Not under Marge and Ronnie’s watch! They may not technically be warriors. But Lilly, Marge, and Ronnie are no less fierce than Nekani and her warrior friends when it comes to protecting their people. They’re gonna take turns holding the dagger. See? That’s why girls!
Can Pennywise travel through time?
Yup, you read that right. But here’s where we slow the hell down and get ready for a whole lot of woozy. Locating the kids and the dagger was relatively easy. But what do they do about the fact that Pennywise has stopped his carriage to pick up some more food on the way? The fool, the freak, the failure. Oh how he lies! Because these words can’t be associated with the tiny hero trio of Marge, Ronnie, and Lilly. One dagger can keep about one of them only half-safe though. So Pennywise quickly goes after someone he’s known for a long time, Marge. Margaret Tozier? Where does Tozier come from? Rather simple a connection to make for fans of the IT universe. Turns out, little Marge will grow up, fall in love with Wentworth Tozier, and name her son after the boy who saved her life, Rich. Remember Richie Tozier from the Losers Club in the IT films? That’s Marge’s yet-to-be-born son who, much like his mom and her friends are trying to do right now, fought and killed IT. I know! Loopy! The fact that Pennywise isolates Marge to basically predict her whole entire future–the fact that he’s got Richie Tozier’s missing poster with him–and the fact that he says that Richie and his friends have already killed him, all point to something very alarming about our Eldritch foe. If his death is his birthday, as he says so himself, Pennywise exists through time as if it were a circle. He’s never truly been killed. Because when the Losers Club killed him, he just popped right back in time to be born as the creepy baby, eat Matty, grow big and strong, and eventually get around to killing Marge and undoing Richie’s birth itself. Yikes on bikes! So now Marge is the lucky one that Leroy came up with just the right idea at the right time. They’re headed to the kids in a van with Hallorann in a trance. But they can never get there on time before the clown does enough damage, or worse yet, leaves Derry! They have to pull the brakes on the clown. And the only way to do that is for Hallorann to do something that he really, really shouldn’t do under any other circumstances. He enters Pennywise’s mind. And once again, he’s paused mid chomp. Don’t tell me he doesn’t look goofy as hell like this! Marge is saved for now. That “beep beep, Margie” was super chilling, though. Maybe even more so than “beep beep, Richie.” What would the children of Derry do without Hallorann?
What happens to Pennywise in the end?
IT is probably more terrifying when he’s still. The anticipation is always worse. His stone state has freed the abducted children from the thrall of the Deadlights. But what’s Hallorann even doing all the way up there inside the mind of the towering clown? He’s buying time, of course. And that’s done in the process of keeping the monster stuck in a vision. In this vision, where Hallorann is playing all the characters himself, Pennywise is surrounded by Bob Gray’s tent buddies and Ingrid, and all of them insist on treating him like they treated the real Pennywise the Dancing Clown, whose actual name was Bob Gray. Stay off the hooch, Bob! You’re imagining things! Taniel and Leroy are just the right people to try to end the madness by jamming that dagger right into the tree. Since Earth is a conductor of energy, that’s really all they need to do to cage the clown again. But again, there’s nothing easy about anything that’s got to get done. So not only do Leroy and Taniel have to force a piece of a freaking comet to a pretty significant distance, considering how much the artifact is resisting being taken in the direction of the deadwood, but they also have to face Shaw and his men. This is too big. They’re the American military. So it couldn’t have been too difficult for Shaw to find out about this. I’m gonna wait for you to tell me a single difference between Shaw and his men and the White Supremacist mob that burned down The Black Spot. Because if you ask me, the only difference is that Shaw is empowered by the government to pull the trigger on a Black man and a Native American man and stop them from trying to save their land from evil. So you tell me. Is Shaw’s evil really all that different from an Eldritch god? An eater of worlds has got nothing on the human evil that Shaw and his like are capable of. But like I said in my last article, Shaw’s a damn fool. After having his men shoot down Leroy and Taniel’s pursuit, he approaches Pennywise and expects special treatment because he’s an idiot. Simple as that. So Pennywise practically does the world a favor by munching on some guy with an ego so big, he thought it was his place to “allow” a cosmic entity to take over America and more. Taniel’s sacrifice will always haunt Rose. But even with a bullet in his leg, Leroy’s fearless mind helps him think rationally in a moment where only bravery and quick thinking can help. He’s come a long way as a person, and a father. So when he places the dagger in Will’s shaky hands, and tries to get his terrified kid to save everyone and everything, he knows just the right things to say. He’s always kind of made Will feel that he should be like his old man. Bold. Fearless. But Leroy’s recent experiences have opened his eyes to a lot of truth he was blind to before. And one of those truths is the fact that his little boy is the strongest person he knows. Will doesn’t have to lose his softness to be like his dad. He doesn’t have to be like his dad at all. Because when it comes to saving the people he loves, Will takes up the dagger with courage and vulnerability. He needed both to be crazy enough to actually try to put that dagger into the deadwood. Good thing he doesn’t have to do it alone. Ronnie and Marge join in and grab the dagger in a desperate bid to beat the clown in a race. They’re aided by a shotgun-wielding Leroy. What a freakshow! Different versions of Pennywise’s head popping out every time Leroy blows it off may look silly. But it slows him down long enough for the kids to get some momentum. All of their combined efforts are not enough, though. Pennywise is too powerful. And more importantly, he will do just about anything to keep a group of children from beating him again. Don’t forget that Pennywise is actually going backwards in time to kill off the parents of the Losers Club. The whole Shaw thing might or might not have been a part of his plan when he “got born” in the ‘60s after having died at the hands of Richie and his friends. If Pennywise can undo the existence of the Losers Club, he can exist in their timeline and eat his fill. He would’ve almost succeeded this time had it not been for the craziest miracle. It had to be Rich! How could they have pulled it off without him? I told you Sesqui came back for a reason! She’s shown Rich the way to his friends so that he can pull his weight and help them in their impossible mission. And boy does Rich’s spirit pull the coolest trick on Pennywise in the coolest way possible! Remember, nothing that dies in Derry is ever really gone. And that’s not always a bad thing. With Rich’s invisible hand on the dagger, the kids achieve a success that they should get to brag about for all eternity. The dagger is placed in the deadwood, and once again, Pennywise is trapped. It’s too bad that he put in all that work and turned into a bat and everything. But it’s a treat watching his cage tame him with more of the same cosmic energy that empowers his evil. I guess that’s why they say that being good is always a choice, huh? Pennywise gets hurt alright! But no. He doesn’t die. He sheds his skins on the ice and takes his Deadlights form, probably to turn up in another timeline, I guess. And I think only Marge gets that. She’s the one who’s worried about the possibility that Pennywise might go back even further in time to kill off their parents so that they cease to exist. But Lilly’s right not to take this on her shoulders. It’s someone else’s fight. It started with Nekani and her friends. And it ended with the Losers Club. So there have to be other groups of friends in between who’ve fought off Pennywise and made sure that the Losers Club exists in the future. And as far as we know, the farthest Pennywise has gone into the future is the timeline of the IT movies.
So the second season of IT: Welcome to Derry will probably take us back to one of those in-between timelines, just in time to watch IT strike. But we’ll also keep an eye on the Hanlon family keeping an eye on Derry. I can understand why Leroy’s eager to get away from Derry. His family’s been through too much. And it’s not like the racists in the town will suddenly grow some brain cells just because Pennywise is gone for now. So I get why Leroy turns down Rose’s offer when she tables the idea. Rose wants Leroy and Charlotte to move into her farm and look after Derry on her behalf. Just the right people for the job. So it’s good to see that Leroy’s started to let go of the idea that Charlotte’s heroism means less because she’s a woman. Charlotte doesn’t want to leave Derry and the few good people in it at the mercy of the majority and the clown who’ll be back in 27 years. We kinda knew that Leroy would give in. This is how he goes from being in the airforce to tending to a farm in the IT movies. Will’s nothing short of thrilled that they’re staying. And why wouldn’t he be? Now he gets to remember Ronnie. And maybe Ronnie will remember just enough of what they had because he’ll keep writing to her. Ronnie and Hank are headed to a fresh start far away from Derry. But even with Derry’s curse, I don’t think Ronnie will forget all this soon. Now, we really gotta talk about that creepy set-up in the ending of the final episode of IT: Welcome to Derry. Deadlights do a lot of things. When Pennywise showed them to Ingrid, he wanted to turn her insane. She’s now a patient at the same mental asylum she once worked at. The music soothes her, because it reminds her of her father. And I think it only takes her 26 long years to get close to finishing that painting of Pennywise because she’s still waiting for him. In 1988, Mrs. Kersh, now that creepy old woman from the IT movies, is only more drawn to her “papa” than ever. That’s why she’s sniffed out his next meal for him. We know Beverly Marsh from the IT movies, and it’s now that we’re witnessing a crucial point in her life. Beverly’s mom, a patient at Juniper Hill, has just killed herself. And the way her dad treats her in the ending of the final episode is not nearly as bad as it gets behind closed doors. The only silver lining? We know Beverly lives long enough for her to be an adult in the movies. But then again, if IT is moving through time, he could mess things up beyond our preconceived notion of Stephen King’s IT universe. I think this is it for Dick Hallorann for a while, though. He’s started to use his gift to help people. The problem is, we know that the hotel he’s about to start working at in London will lead him to the hotel from The Shining. So ghosts are always going to be a part of his life. But not all ghosts are bad. I would never want Rich to take his hands off his parents’ shoulders, who now know that their baby is around thanks to Hallorann. I like how Hallorann sat down beside them, told them a freaky truth to mend their broken heart, and just left. You hear about people like that all the time. No?
