The ending of IT: Welcome to Derry episode 6 was largely about Lilly learning the reason behind Ingrid’s obsession with Pennywise, and it also set up an altercation between a rabid section of the townsfolk and the army. After last week’s altercation with Pennywise, everyone was afraid to venture into the sewers again. But since Lilly had seen the clown retreat after taking one look at the shard from the meteor that had brought him to Earth, she was confident it could be used to defeat him. That got on Ronnie’s nerves, and she had a massive falling out with Lilly, especially because none of this was helping her clear her father’s name. Now, while Will, Rich, and Marge focused on getting the gang back together so they could take one more swing at Pennywise, Lilly went off to seek help from Ingrid, as they had formed an amicable bond during Lilly’s time at Juniper Hill. Speaking of Hank, after his mysterious escape from the bus that was transporting him to Shawshank, Charlotte and Ingrid had helped him hide in the shack near the town’s borders, which Dick and his comrades, Reggie and Jax, had turned into a pub. Dick wasn’t entirely okay with it, and neither was Leroy, but they both chose to kind of ignore that messy situation because Dick had to figure out how to stop seeing dead people all the time, while Leroy had to mend his relationship with Charlotte and Will. Those who weren’t willing to let that slide were Clint, Stan, and several other upstanding citizens of Derry. Why? Well, let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Ingrid Thinks Pennywise Is Her Father
After essentially being isolated by her friends, Lilly suffered another one of her visions where Pennywise showed up as her dad in that sliced-up tentacle-monster form while she was in class. At her wits’ end, Lilly chose to meet Ingrid at her house because, at that point, she felt that that lady was the only person in town she could trust. Since nobody answered the door, Lilly showed herself in and made her way to the attic. She spotted a photo album, which mostly had photos of Ingrid and Stan. But the one that caught her eye was that of little Ingrid and her father, Bob Gray, and that’s because Bob looked exactly like Pennywise (well, both characters are being played by Bill Skarsgard). This isn’t the first time that this connection has been touched upon. In IT: Chapter Two, when Beverly met an elderly Ingrid, we got a glimpse of these photos, and Bob himself transforming into Pennywise. Did that mean that Bob was Pennywise? No, not at all. Bob worked at a traveling carnival show, the same one that Francis went to with his dad in 1908, and his stage name was Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Now, the circumstances under which Bob got separated from Ingrid remain a big question mark. If I have to make a grand assumption, I think IT took a liking to Bob’s Pennywise persona and killed him so that he could assume that identity. I mean, IT was already at the carnival in the form of that large, old dude. So, it’s possible that he saw “Pennywise” being a major attraction, especially for kids, and he decided to partake in some good old plagiarism. Of course, Ingrid had no idea of all this. She must have thought that her daddy had abandoned her, and she hoped that one day he’d return to her. Hence, she stayed at Derry and took up a job at Juniper Hill. That’s where she heard about Pennywise, and she stupidly assumed that that was her dad.
Well, IT took the form of Pennywise and Bob, so I can’t totally blame Ingrid for believing that her dad was back. That said, didn’t the fact that Pennywise literally ate kids and went in and out of hibernation for decades set off any alarm bells in her head? I guess it did, but she chose to ignore them because, as a woman who was being abused by her husband and was in love with a Black man in the ‘60s, vehement optimism was the only thing keeping her alive. She believed that something was keeping her father from truly being with her, and she needed to free him from this “shadow” (which I believe are the pillars that are used to limit Pennywise’s reach). Hence, she followed Lilly and her friends, whilst wearing her Periwinkle costume, in the hopes that when the kids would free him, she’d be reunited with her dad and they’d relive their carnival days. As Lilly’s friends were not ready to go into the sewers, Ingrid offered to accompany her so that they could break his shackles. Lilly knew that Ingrid had gone off her rocker a long time ago, and she refused to entertain her delusions. So, she attacked Ingrid with the meteor shard and ran out of her house. Did that dissuade Ingrid from venturing into Pennywise’s lair? Nope. She donned her Periwinkle costume and decided to meet Pennywise on her own.
Clint Gathers A Mob To Kill Hank
Capturing Hank and sending him to Shawshank was a major win for Clint. Three kids had died on his watch, that too extremely brutally, and the people of Derry were looking for a suspect they could project all their pent-up hatred and frustration on. So, when he was able to serve up Hank on a platter, even though he of all people knew that Hank was innocent, he probably felt like he was on top of the world. But then, while Hank was being transported to Shawshank, the bus that was taking him there got into some kind of a freak traffic collision, and Hank was set free. He went straight to Ingrid, who then went to Charlotte, and she helped him hide in Dick and his friends’ joint. Since that spot technically belonged to the army, it was the last place anyone would think a wanted criminal was hiding. Hence, Clint neither ordered his men to include that place as a part of their routine check, nor did he get a warrant to search the pub, and that ended up costing him his job. Yeah, Clint was fired by the deputy mayor for fumbling the task of catching a “killer” like Hank, which was quite fitting because Clint made Hank the scapegoat to maintain his reputation, and the deputy mayor made Clint his scapegoat to save his own reputation. As they say, what goes around comes around. Now, Hank could have seen this as a learning lesson and understood that blaming an innocent for a crime was wrong. Sure, majoritarianism welcomed the arrest of people like Hank, but that didn’t mean that it was lawfully correct. Hank could have brought about a change in the mindset of the people by admitting that he was wrong about Hank and asking the townsfolk to focus their energy on finding the real killer. What did he do instead?
Well, in the ending of IT: Welcome to Derry episode 6, after getting an anonymous tip about Hank’s location, he went straight to the people who were baying for Hank’s blood and led them to Dick and his friends’ joint. Because when true justice isn’t served, people resort to mob justice. And the great thing about mob justice is that you can’t single out anybody for breaking the law to get one man. Even if some people are arrested or detained, they are given a free pass because they are seen as victims of “mass frenzy,” “hurt sentiments,” or some other nonsense like that. Mob justice is rarely seen as a failure of the system, but as something that is an extension of the country’s judicial department. When Hank’s relationship with Ingrid was discovered, he said if people found out about it, he’d be found hanging from a tree. Which means that a manhunt like the one that’s happening currently has occurred before, and it’ll keep happening until we get rid of the rot—probably personified by Pennywise in the case of this show—that’s been poisoning our society for generations. Hank isn’t the only one at that abandoned army outpost, though. Dick, Jax, Reggie, Will, Marge, Ronnie, Rich, and several other partygoers are there as well, and they are about to get caught in the crossfire. Who will live and who will die? We have to wait till next week to get the answer to that. However, this much I can say for sure: this clash will further divide the people of Derry, and the more they fear and hate each other, the more powerful Pennywise will become. We know that Pennywise requires one big, messy, bloody event before he goes into hibernation, and the idiots of Derry are giving him that for free.
Episode 7 Theories
Like every episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, episode 6 left us with a few questions. So, allow me to speculate about some of them. For starters, who was the lady that gave Clint that anonymous tip? To be honest, I think the identity of that woman is pointless, because Hank’s presence there was pretty much an open secret. So, it could have been anybody who was passing through that area who spotted him and decided to help out the police. Could the lady be Ingrid? To be honest, that’s the first thought that crossed my mind. I know what you might be thinking: “Why would the woman who is secretly dating Hank give him up to an angry mob or the police?” The answer is: for the same reason that she decided to keep it a secret. I mean, it’s not like Ingrid is brave enough to announce to the world that Hank gave her the love that her abusive husband couldn’t. She knew what she’d have to face if the people of Derry learned about her and Hank’s relationship. Hence, it’s possible that she was low-key happy that he was taking that secret to Shawshank, where it’d have been buried forever. She appeared to be happy when she was reunited with Hank. However, deep down, maybe she wanted him gone. All I am saying is that if, next week, we learn that Ingrid was the one who stabbed Hank in the back, I won’t be surprised at all. Continuing on the topic of Ingrid, is she about to embark on a trip to the sewers dressed as Periwinkle? Seems like it. Is that going to be a roaring success? I don’t think so. Is she going to die, though? No, not yet.
In IT: Chapter Two, Pennywise appeared as a very old Ingrid. That means she’s going to be around for a while, and then maybe Pennywise is going to eat her and take her form while meeting Beverly. Coming back to the subplot about Clint and his men arriving at Dick’s joint, I can see two outcomes. The first one is obviously the violent option, which will conclude with casualties on both sides, and I think Hank is going to die. Yeah, you don’t give such a long speech about your daughter’s safety and future and then live to see it happen. And I have a feeling that the lynch mob is going to accomplish exactly what it has set out to do: kill an innocent man. The second one is the anticlimactic option, where Clint and his men will realize that the place isn’t just somewhere people go to party—it’s a place where the military goes to party—and they are going to take a U-turn and head back to the city. I don’t think anybody would like to attract the ire of the defense forces. There’s a slim chance that the mob might get away after killing a bunch of airmen by claiming that they were harboring a fugitive, but is that a chance that Clint and his men would like to take? I don’t think so. Either way, I just hope that, eventually, everyone comes to their senses, realizes that the real enemy here is Pennywise, and focuses on restraining him. Anyway, those are just my thoughts on this episode. If you have any opinions on the same, feel free to share them in the comments section below.
