RECAP: IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 – “The Great Swimming Apparatus of our Planet’s Function”

Last episode, the kids got the first look at the big bad Pennywise, though they don’t know it yet. As for the adults, well, Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) and Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) are on the same supernatural page for now. IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4, “The Great Swimming Apparatus of our Planet’s Function,” picks up where everything left off, with the kids trying to get people to believe them, and Pennywise’s menace creeping in now that he’s looking back at the people looking for him. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 is doing a lot… once again. In one part of the episode, we see the children understanding what is happening to them, and that fear is the driving force. Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) is trying to save Hank Grogan and keep him from winding up in Shawshank.

The military is trying to figure out how Rose is lying to them and where the location of the “weapon” is. And finally, in what’s probably the series’s best moment, Will experiences it again, only this time his father is there, and he believes him. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 4 is trying too hard all of the time. 

The episode opens by taking the newly developed pictures to the police, where the racist police chief reveals that there is nothing revelatory in the images. The spectres are gone, and blurry gravesites are all that’s left, except for the one that still shows it. Of course, the police don’t see it as anything more than a statue in the cemetery. 

Once back at school, Lilly (Clara Stack), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), and Will (Blake Cameron James) are trying to figure out the next step forward. Ronnie knows that her dad is close to being sent to Shawshank, and that he won’t return from it. In an attempt to get more information and turn the adults in their favor, Lilly reaches out to the kind nurse from Jupiter Hills. Unfortunately, though, like the other adults, she isn’t helpful.

Will also tries to find some sort of understanding from his mom when she tells him about Ronnie’s father, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), and how they were chased through the cemetery. Of course, Charlotte doesn’t take what he’s saying as a supernatural encounter; instead, she takes it as clear evidence that Hank is innocent, and now there is someone else harassing and potentially harming children. 

But when she confronts the racist police chief, she’s met with a brick wall. When she questions if Hank has been able to access an attorney, Chief Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge) snidely says, “This isn’t the South.” But the look on Charlotte’s face says it all. In Louisiana, Charlotte was a history teacher; in Derry, Maine, she is a stay-at-home mom, too qualified to answer phones as a school receptionist, the only job afforded her in Derry. 

And after Charlotte finds out the reality of Hank’s situation, and the fear keeping him from telling the police where he was, Derry isn’t the South, but it sure is racist in an attempt to get Hank to admit where he was that night. Knowing that just giving the police an answer is the easy way to get him out of jail and remanded to house arrest (after establishing that his public defender made an error), Charlotte pushes him. 

That’s when Hank reveals that he was with a woman, a married woman. But more importantly and more frighteningly, a white woman. It’s here where Hank says that if he reveals that he was with her, the people of Derry will just “look for the closest tree,” and her husband would beat her. It’s a somber reminder, but once again pulls into focus the racial elements of IT: Welcome to Derry, even if they are hamfisted. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 4 does extremely well in bridging the generations being affected, even if the characters don’t know it yet. 

But Charlotte isn’t only taking things up with the police; she also tells her husband, the Major, to spend time with Will. It’s this section of Welcome to Derry Episode 4 that sends ripples through the larger narrative. The father-son duo is fishing, having a good time, when the Major heads to the car for more bait. 

Alone and in the water, Will is accosted by something that looks like his father. Only, instead of the Major as he is now, the spectre in the water is burned up, seemingly after a plane crash. Holding him under the water, Will becomes very aware that it can kill him and any of the kids at any time it wants. It just chooses not to. 

When the Major senses something is wrong, he runs back to the creek and saves his son. Will doesn’t hide anything from him and tells him exactly what happened. With bruises and cuts, his dad knows it’s real. And having flown with Hallorann, he knows it’s who the military is looking for. 

This is where the story essentially splits into two areas again. One follows the kids and sets up the next part in their story, while the other follows Major Leroy Hanlon as he confronts General Shaw and Dick Hallorann to get answers. They may not be having an easy time finding it, but it has found its family. 

When it comes to the kids, they’re trying to figure out a way forward when the adults around them don’t believe them. During that time, they start to understand the gravity of the situation and maybe find a way to protect themselves. As Will explains what happened to him, he arrives at a possible conclusion: it is a predator and is trying to scare the kids over and over until they are just the right terrified children to eat. 

But how do you stop from getting scared, especially as children? The answer is in Lilly’s mom’s compact. With an anti-anxiety med for each of their group, Lilly says that “mommy’s little helper” will make their fears and worries disappear and hopefully keep them from coming into an increasingly dangerous situation. But that would be too easy. 

In what is the series’s most gruesome moment so far, Marge (Matilda Lawler) gets her comeuppance. To start, Marge and the Pattycakes have been mostly absent from the last episode of the show. Now, Marge is seemingly trying to make amends after being part of the group that bullied Lilly for her time in Jupiter Hills and her friendship with Ronnie.

When a boy named Tim says hi to Lilly and Marge encourages her “friend” to go talk to him, the truth is out. Marge and the Pattycakes are trying to embarrass Lilly by having her talk to Tim and have him belittle her. Only, it doesn’t go that far because Marge becomes a victim of it. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 4 brings the series’ most gruesome moment yet.

IT: Welcome to Derry continuously sets up the gruesome acts they’re about to show, letting the audience know what fear the kids have that is impacting them. For Marge, it was about a parasitic fungus infecting a snail and causing large cones to grow from its eyes. And then, that happens to Marge. 

She claws at her face, stabs the cones, and then eventually ends up in the woodshop workshop and takes a table saw to them. Blood is everywhere, and the gnarly situation is made worse when Marge won’t snap out of it. She keeps at it, a tool in her hand, trying to cut out her eyes.

Lilly climbs on top of her in an effort to get it all to stop, but that’s when everyone else comes in. Lilly is left holding the tool, covered in blood, and with a crying Marge beneath her. For a girl who was just released from an asylum, this is the worst thing that could happen. 

The violence the children are enduring is a lot, and the stakes keep rising. However, where no one in power believes them, the Major is coming onto their side. He knows that he and his crew are messing with something dangerous; he saw as much when Halloran almost killed himself walking out of the back of a plane. But he can’t do much to stop it. 

After the close call at the creek, Marjor Hanlon tracks down Dick Hallorann, who is now using a decommissioned shed to make a place for him and other Black soldiers to hang out since they got kicked out of the other bars in the area. But the Major isn’t thinking about that. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 4 continues its story by having the confrontation between Hallorann and the Major result in both men understanding the danger that is waiting for them as they continue their work on Operation Precept. 

Before, when the creature was just looking back at Hallorann, it centered on him. Now, it’s coming for his family. It’s this interaction that makes Will’s second run-in with it more terrifying for his father. As Will looks out his window with his telescope, he sees the clown, still not entirely clear yet, but getting there. He takes the pill and hides in the corner, and that’s the end of it. It’s the calmest situation that we’ve seen when Pennywise shows up, but for the Major, it’s anything but. 

The Major runs outside, ready to beat back anyone who is looking up at his child. But on his way out, he blames his wife, thinking that her attempt to exonerate Hank has immediately led to someone stalking the family. Still, as he runs into the street, the audience knows that the assumption that he doesn’t feel fear is a lie.

The Major isn’t fearless, and that’s the big reveal in “The Great Swimming Apparatus of our Planet’s Function.”

The panicked look on his face and the way that Jovan Adepo moves his body in the scene are terrifying. Then, he looks up into the tree and sees a red balloon, and we all know what that means. And this is where Welcome to Derry Episode 4 decides to add another layer. 

We know that Major Leroy Hanlon is in Operation Precept because he is believed to have no fear, and as a result, cannot be affected by what they’re hunting. But with that up in the air now, seeing him come into General Shaw’s office and demand answers feels like he is revealing his hand. The Major is shaken. 

Only, while the rest of the characters were being terrorized by it in Welcome to Derry Episode 4, the General was exploiting everything he could learn from Rose. And when it yielded nothing, he arrested Taniel (Joshua Odjick), Rose’s nephew, and one of the boys watching the airbase and its excavation. 

It’s here that Welcome to Derry Episode 4 makes the audience watch as Hallorann uses his gift to interrogate Taniel. It’s an awkward scene to watch, especially if you understand how Hallorann has looked at his gift in other King works. But now, he’s a tool for the military and harming a young Native American boy who shouldn’t be detained. 

Welcome to Derry Episode 4 makes Hallorann an antagonist, as he goes into the teen’s mind and takes what he wants from it. In this case, to locate what the General is looking for, he needs to hear a story passed down through the generations of his tribe, one that Rose told him was true. And so, we go through a flashback as a young Taniel narrates it for us. 

We learn that Pennywise is called the Galloo, that he came from a meteorite, and that Taniel and Rose’s tribe has dedicated their lives to keeping the monster caged. I want to say that I liked this part of Welcome to Derry Episode 4, but I just can’t say I do. 

“The Great Swimming Apparatus of our Planet’s Function” is the best episode yet, but the bar is in the sewer.

Pennywise has always been shrouded in more lore, and Stephen King, of course, has incorporated Native American land and sites into his stories, including those about Pennywise. But something is unsettling about how the flashback is presented. In pre-colonial times, the costuming doesn’t come close to looking lived in, worn, or loved. Everything is too prim and proper, like something cut out of a magazine. It’s hard for any of it to feel real, and the cinematography also lets it all down in this way, too. 

Still, despite my issues with this segment and how the series has turned Dick Hallorann into an agent of the state using his gift in a way that feels like it’s the antithesis to the character as a whole, Chris Chalk is a phenomenal actor. There are moments in this last section of the episode where Hallorann just smiles at Taniel, and the camera is tight on his face, and it’s horrifying. Chalk’s propensity to be intimidating is accelerated when you see how close he is to it, even if it is haunting him, and his dead grandmother is trying to save him. 

The takeaway from Welcome to Derry Episode 4’s last moments is that Pennywise is caged by pillars set up around Derry. It keeps him from erupting and leaving and spreading across the land. To find the pillars, Taniel instructs Hallorann to go through the tunnels that connect the old well, and the episode concludes with the dilapidated house from the films at the center of the screen. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 is doing a lot of work to keep setting the foundation for the rest of the season. I feel like, at this point, every episode will be set up with a little bit of reveal, right before going back to the drawing board. The series is frustrating from top to bottom, and more importantly, it’s hard to find any sincerity in how it portrays its characters, which feels even worse with its predominantly non-white cast. 

The series is at its best when it showcases how scared Derry is about being seen as anything bad. Whether it’s the refusal to admit that it’s racist and how Charlotte uses that to her advantage in the police station, or the refusal to say they got the wrong guy, Derry is all about appearances. Its whiteness is central to its identity, but the showrunners are not the best at exploring that with an authentic touch, but rather like it’s looking at something through a piece of glass. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 4 has two of the series’ best moments, where CGI doesn’t look horrendous and tension actually lands extremely well. Between Marge’s time with the table saw, the way that the Major and Will have connected parts of the story, this is the best episode yet.

But the bad thing is that the best of IT: Welcome to Derry is still deeply unfunny when it tries to get a laugh, filled with jarring transitions between scenes, and has more scares that fizzle out instead of sticking with you. Welcome to Derry Episode 4 is the best yet, and still, I wish I didn’t have to watch the series weekly to review it. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Epsidoe 4 is streaming now on HBO Max with new episodes every Sunday. 

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