RECAP: ‘IT: Welcome To Derry’ Episode 2 — “The Thing In The Dark”

Last episode felt like a whole lot of nothing. With a cliffhanger ending that left most of the children murdered by a flying demon baby that is supposed to be terrifying but is laughable instead, and some weird military project on the radar, I don’t know what to say about what It: Welcome to Derry is, or is trying to be. IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2, “The Thing In The Dark,” doesn’t waste any time resetting the stage for the audience. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 picks up where the last episode left off, by showing audiences a quicker version of the demon baby chaos: a red flashing screen light and the children being ripped apart. Lilly (Clara Stack) wakes up from a nightmare, and the audience realizes what we were just in. Only it wasn’t a nightmare, and nothing happened in the real world; instead, Lilly was reliving the moment. 

As you would expect from a small town as known for prejudice as Derry, the next scene after the credits shows two white police officers sitting outside Ronnie’s (Amanda Christine) house. After Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt) went missing, the police had been trying to pin it on Ronnie’s father, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), the owner of the town’s cinema. And now, the cops have even more ammo to throw against him. It’s here that we learn that there were no bodies found, just the bloodied mess. 

I truly don’t know who IT: Welcome to Derry is for. 

While Ronnie’s grandmother (BJ Harrison) tells Hank to put Ronnie back in school and to get her time in reality outside of the movies, he responds with nothing but worry. The police and the town have laid the disappearances on him, with no thought of another possible person of interest.

To him, that means that Ronnie, his child, is in danger as well. But Hank’s worry isn’t met with empathy; his mother wants Ronnie in school and with her head held high. Hank isn’t wrong, and returning to school isn’t going to be easy for Ronnie, with the rumors about her dad, the mean girls in the school already have their anger directed at her the moment she walks back into school.

The family drama we’re seeing in this section of Welcome to Derry, Episode 2, is met with familial hope as Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) sits on the stoop of his new home, and his wife and son make their way up the driveway. Where Derry is hell for one Black family already, the Hanlons are hopeful, but when a white woman neighbor walks by with her dog, the scowl on her face isn’t hiding her bigotry.

Leroy and Charlotte (Taylour Paige) clearly love each other; Leroy and his son, Will (Blake Cameron James), are an adorable duo, even if their awkwardness is palpable. This is a happy family that cares for each other and is just glad to be back under one roof. The sweetness in the home also sets up who Will is as a character: a boy who’s small for his age and is amazed by telescopes, not baseballs, which will just become paperweights. 

Now back at the school, we see that Marge (Matilda Lawler) is still trying hard to fit in with Patty’s mean girl group (called the Pattycakes), and failing. As Pattycakes spreads rumors about Ronnie, Marge tries to push Lilly to stop talking to Ronnie. To which Lilly tells Marge that she saw her friends die, the Pattycakes don’t matter. 

And this is where Will walks into their class as well. Late for class, the teacher is anything but kind to the new student starting his first day. Add in the stares that he gets when he walks in from his white classmates, and the bullying from the student behind him. He’s alone just like his dad. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 2 has a lot to do to right the series’s ship, but it fails. 

Major Hanlon is dealing with the fallout of the assault he faced on his first night in the barracks. As no surprise, it was traced back to Masters, the man in the first episode, who refused to salute Hanlon, who assaulted him. As the racism in Derry begins to escalate, with the Air Force only partially addressing the issue, Welcome to Derry Episode 2 shifts to Charlotte. 

She walks down the Derry streets, gets some kind hellos, gets a lot of stares from white townspeople, and watches a man who throws an egg at the new Paul Bunyan statue. When Charlotte walks into the meat market, she has her first run-in with one of the Grand Dames of Derry. But then she meets Stan Kersch, the butcher who is actually nice to her. 

But as she waits for her roast, she sees a child being beaten by bullies. When no one steps in to do anything, she doesn’t just chalk it up to “boys will be boys,” she runs across the street to save the boy. When she pushed them off, the boys seemed like they were about to hit her next. But when they chase after the boy whom Charlotte helped get away,  every person on the street stares at her.

The people in Derry stare with disgust. The anger they display isn’t just because a woman broke up a “boys will be boys” moment; the racist undertones are made explicit in that moment. But one thing is clear in Welcome to Derry Episode 2: Charlotte isn’t going to be intimidated. At dinner that night, Will hides that he was bullied, pointing out how easy it is for his mom to embarrass him.

That’s followed up by Leroy telling her not to repeat what she did in Shreveport. Which, as we learn, was protesting the racism she and others were subjected to. Where Leroy has tried to handle things in a way that doesn’t bring up the overt racism on the airbase, but still doesn’t strip him of his dignity, his wife isn’t trying to talk around the issue. 

The Black characters in Welcome to Derry Episode 2 are all reduced to their race and being traumatized because of it in one way or another.

It isn’t that Derry isn’t filled with moments to explore the prejudices in Derry. Andy Muschietti‘s first two films did that. Still, in Welcome to Derry Episode 2, much like the Holocaust jumpscare, Muschietti and crew aren’t trying to be subtle with everything. And that makes the series start to warp into something much more targeted than the supernatural clown story I’m sure audiences expected.

It isn’t that explicitly saying things is bad, horror that confronts race makes sense. However, the hamfisted nature that the Welcome to Derry writers’ room has leaned on is too much spectacle and not enough substance, much like the rest of the series. 

Continuing the Welcome to Derry showrunners’ aversion to subtext, the episode has one of its jarring jump cuts to Ronnie’s room. The camera takes enough time to hover over a picture of her mother just so that you can understand what’s about to happen to Ronnie. 

As Ronnie lies in bed, the covers over her head, it begins to transform into a womb. With Ronnie drowning, she erupts from the end of the bed in a way that is so disgusting without adding any weight to the episode. But this is where Welcome to Derry Episode 2 tries its worst scare of the season so far. 

Ronnie looks up at her bed. She sees a veiled woman pop up behind the bump in the bed. When the head moves the veil backward, we see Ronnie’s mom, her head mounted on the pillow at the top of Ronnie’s bed. She tells Ronnie that she ripped her apart when she was born. Ronnie’s mother blames Ronnie for her death.

This nightmare version of her mother says that Ronnie killed her, those kids, and is going to get her father killed, too. As Ronnie tries to escape what has become a pregnancy belly with teeth pulling her into it with an umbilical cord, we see Pennywise for the first time in the series, or his eyes at least.

IT: Welcome to Derry Season 2 is really trying to put race at the center of its narrative for Derry, but it’s all insincere and hamfisted at best.

It’s one of the weirdest moments in Welcome to Derry Episode 2 and could have been scary if not for being both distasteful and so ridiculously constructed (especially the CGI) that it loses all horror weight. For a series trying so hard to bang the “Derry is racist” drum so that no Black character on screen feels any peace, it’s insane that this scare was written into the series. 

You can maybe map on the reality that Black women die in childbirth at a three-to-one rate as white women, but when you do that, the scare gets even more offensive. There is something about the showrunner’s approach that feels incredibly detached from the characters on screen, leaving almost no life to any of it. After Hank saves his daughter by walking into the room when she hears her screaming the episode jarringly shifts again. 

Now, the series Leroy is in a bar with two other Black servicemen. They’re discussing the assault on Leroy and the questioning that happened afterward to try to find the last two accomplices that Masters had. 

The chief walks into the bar and is met by two white men, one of whom is a councilman, instructing him to arrest Hank. When the Chief says that there is no evidence to bring him in and waxes poetic about “This is America,” the councilman responds with, “This isn’t America. It’s Derry.”

The audience quickly understands what that means and how Welcome to Derry Season 2 is setting up the town’s dynamic. When the Chief tells the bartender to throw the Black airmen out, we’re seeing yet another scene where the Black characters in this series can’t just live. 

When the airmen make it back to the base, the man who was at General Shaw’s (James Remar) side in the last episode makes it clear that he is Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk). While he goes to get into the airbase, the name repetition assures any audience member who missed the The Shining reference doesn’t miss it again. 

Dick Hallorann is in Welcome to Derry Episode 2 much more, and it feels like nothing more than an MCU-ification of IT. 

What follows next brings us to the next day. Halloran is supervising at a digsite, and on the ridge, we see three brown men, one of whom is played by Native actor Joshua Odjick (who just gave a phenomenal performance in another Stephen King work, The Long Walk). 

Because, sure, why not throw in more characters to face racism from Derry? Let’s make sure we throw in the “digging up sacred ground” trope for good measure in this show that we all thought was about expanding Pennywise’s lore. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 continues by heading back to the school, this time to the cafeteria, and Marge is, of course, talking behind Lilly’s back to fit in with the Pattycakes. However, while the girls continue their mean girl streak, Ronnie and Lilly are talking to each other.

Ronnie tells Lilly that it came back last night, driving home how scared she is that her father will be taken away. While Lilly assures Ronnie that she told the police that her dad wasn’t there, Lilly also makes it clear that she didn’t tell the police that a monster came out of the screen. 

Ronnie is scared that not telling the truth will send her father to the electric chair, and Lilly is scared that telling the truth will have her recommitted. The two girls continue to talk and argue with each other while the Pattycakes in the background play their weird and very loud version of Pattycake at the table behind them, only for Ronnie to cuss and then get taken to the principal’s office. 

Ronnie and Lilly are a central focus of Welcome to Derry Episode 2, but they’re still mishandled.

After the cafeteria, we finally get back to Will. Eating lunch alone in front of the lockers on the floor, Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) jokes with him. The only kid who was nice to him on the first day, Rich and Will immediately emerge as future friends, and Rich reveals his crush on Marge. Then, the bullying picks up again, and, in no surprise, Will is reprimanded for something that isn’t his fault. 

When Welcome to Derry Episode 2 switches to detention, Ronnie and Will meet each other for the first time. It’s a moment that reveals more about who Will is as a character. The science book he’s been carrying around with him isn’t for school, it’s for fun. He leans on science to explain things and is even able to reframe the stink bomb that was thrown at him. 

Then, once again, It: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 cuts to a new scene. Lilly is talking to the Police Chief after being picked up from school. The talk is intimidating, as the Chief brings up that Lilly’s time at Juniper Hill is a well-known fact, making her an easy target to blame for the town’s problems. But if she were to name Hank Grogan, well, she won’t be committed again, and they won’t take her away. 

After bullying Lilly into naming Hank, the next scene is Hank being put into a cop car with Ronnie screaming after him. Of course, she runs to Lilly’s house, and of course, crying, she says it isn’t her fault, and Lilly’s mother slams the door in Ronnie’s face. 

It’s at this point in IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 that I am very thoroughly tired of this storytelling. The choice to make every single Black character’s role deal with racism and also traumatize them or subject them to pain in some way is too much. While it doesn’t have a disgusting angle like Prime Video’s Them Season 1, it is just entirely reductive. 

Yes, everyone in Welcome to Derry is bound to be put through the wringer, but the fact that every Black character is seemingly having racism be central to their character arcs is just disappointing. There may be depth to be had, as IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 seems just to be more setting up for the town, but right now, this story is as deep as a puddle.

IT: Welcome to Derry’s set design is one of its best aspects.

Despite my dissatisfaction with this episode, there are still two more large moments that drive the narrative. The first is Lilly. After another jarring cut to a new sequence, Lilly is walking in Derry and then enters a pastel nightmare of a grocery store. After being greeted by one of the workers, Lilly starts shopping. 

The one thing I will give to the set design, insofar as Derry is concerned, is that turning a pastel palette into something threatening is done exceptionally well. And as people stare at Lilly pushing her cart, the grocery store set starts to move. Aisle after aisle, Lilly looks for everything on her list, and the paths out of the aisles begin to shut behind her. 

As the tension builds, the speaker switches from repeating the same instructions for finding items to calling out Lilly’s guilt. A man menacingly moves behind her, and he gives Welcome to Derry Episode 2 it’s one real scare. The people in Welcome to Derry Episode 2 are its scariest elements, but the showrunners apparently can’t just stick to those strengths. 

Instead, we wind up with Lilly boxed in, grocery store shelves filled with pickle jars, the same ones the bullies stuffed in her locker during the last episode. Then, in the most subtle way possible, we see that his dad was put into jars as his head reveals itself. When she smashes that jar, the others, filled with different body parts, shake themselves off the shelf. 

Crashed onto the floor, the different body parts congealed into a head, a foot, with some tentacles coming off of it. And then, because of course, it heads toward Lilly, tongue out, with one tentacle on her mouth. It’s uncomfortable, but in a way I’m not sure the showrunners intended.

Then she wakes up, curled up in an aisle with a broken pickle jar at her feet, and crying. Karmic justice is at work, as she names Hank to stay away from being committed, but with this grocery store incident, she winds up in Jupiter Hill Asylum anyway. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 is even worse than the first episode. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 2 ends by undoing all of the work that it did to build up the weight that Major Hanlon has been carrying. Masters is a racist, that much is overtly confirmed, but he wasn’t the one who broke into his barracks and beat him.  That honor went to people whom General Shaw hired. 

After Major Leroy Hanlon discovers that Masters wasn’t to blame, he goes to the General and learns everything was just a test. Apparently, Leroy suffered a damaged amygdala in combat while in Korea, only to lose all of his fear. Yes, the Major is apparently fearless, and the top-secret airbase project needs him and only him. 

Titled Operation Precept, the Air Force is digging up Pennywise to turn it into a weapon to end the Cold War without firing a bomb. Yes. The overall series is hinging on turning Pennywise into a weapon to use against the Soviet Union, and because Major Hanlon has no fear (apparently), he can control it. The digging from earlier in the episode begins to make sense, and Dick Hollorann’s relevance is that he is apparently using “the shine.” 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 just makes this entire series even messier. This episode concludes by pulling a car from the ground, which contains skeletons, seemingly the same car Matty got into in the last episode. At this point, the showrunners have revealed their hand, and it’s not particularly interesting. 

Had the synopsis for this show called out a “militarized Pennywise,” I would have just ignored this series. Instead, I came into IT: Welcome to Derry, expecting to see a thoughtful expansion of Pennywise’s lore given the showrunners’ involvement with the overall pretty good IT adaptation. 

Instead, IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 feels like it’s both already jumped the shark and taken the series down a reductive and boring road, to say the least. This is a messy series, and I’m unsure how it will improve. However, if it doesn’t come all the way out of the shooter, I at least hope it will return to what the original story was intended to be. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 is streaming now on HBO MAX with new episodes every Sunday. 

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