RECAP: ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Episode 5 — “Neibolt Street”

IT: Welcome to Derry, HBO’s prequel series to Andy Muschietti’s IT duology, based on Stephen King’s book of the same name, is finding its footing. It may not be the best footing, but it has found a solid voice. In IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5, “Neibolt Street,” the military enters the house on Neibolt and the sewers through the well inside, but they aren’t alone. With mommy’s little helpers in hand, the new version of the Losers’ Club is also heading to the sewers, but hoping to save their friend.  

In typical IT fashion, nothing goes as planned, and everyone is worse for wear, inside and out. Like the episodes before it, there are three key plots running throughout Welcome to Derry Episode 5. The first is around Lilly (Clara Stack), Will (Blake Cameron James), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), and Rich (Arian S. Cartaya); only now, Marge (Matilda Lawler) has joined them. The military is continuing its push to capture it and turn it into a Cold War-ending weapon. And finally, Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) is on a bus to Shawshank and is almost killed in the process. 

With how much the series has jumped between core plot points, it can be a dizzying experience to try to sort it all out for a recap, let alone track the paths of the story itself. But we try. 

IT: Welcome to Derry. Episode 5 opens with forgiveness and makes the new Losers’ Club larger.

Welcome to Derry Episode 5 opens just where the last one left off, with Hallorann and Taniel in the interrogation room. Having gotten the information that he needs, Taniel begins to have a seizure. It’s a moment that showcases the military’s cruelty and just how far Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is dishonoring his gift. 

But the reality is that the military doesn’t care. Ultimately, Hallorann is a private, following orders, even as his grandmother’s spirit routinely appears to ask him not to. And in this episode, he pays the price. 

After opening with the military’s decision to enter the house on Neibolt, the episode shifts to the kids and two big additions to their group. The first is that Lilly visits Marge in the hospital. With the entirety of Derry thinking that Lilly is the one who blinded Marge, it’s hard to see where our protagonist will head. But Marge understands the situation, and in her hospital bed, asks Lilly if it will come back again. It’s a moment that shows how far it is spreading across Derry, but in this case, the injury unites two former friends.

But Marge isn’t the only person joining the group. As the kids talk on the rooftop, they see something moving in a tent. As the flaps open, a gaunt and pale Matty (Miles Ekhardt) comes out. He’s terrified and recounts the horrible ways that Teddy and Susie died. But Phil, he just might be alive and still in the sewers. What do they do now that their friend has returned?

Lilly meets with Nurse Ingrid (Madeleine Stowe) from Jupiter Hills again, this time in her home. Where Lilly wants support and approval to head down below, Ingrid only tells her to take Matty to the police. But having already fled an abusive home, Lilly doesn’t want to send him back.

Not to be discouraged, Lilly convinces the other kids to agree to go to the sewers. With Marge also coming to their hideout, having experienced it as well, she’s not immediately welcomed. But when Lilly, who has clearly become the kids’ leader, gives a speech about people being an anchor or a lifeboat, everyone agrees. It’s here where the kids make the decision to go to the sewers and rescue Phil with mommy’s little helpers in hand. 

The next chunk of the story shows the audience how the military is handling the information it tortured Taniel (Joshua Odjick) for. When Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) finds out that Taniel didn’t come home, she heads to the base. While this cycle may not be as bloody as the last ones, it still has time to ramp up. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 pulls Taniel to its center, only to cast him off before everything hits the fan. 

We all know that the pillars trap Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård), or it, as the characters continue to call it. Derry is the hunting ground, General Shaw (James Remar) knew, and now Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) knows that he brought his family into a feeding ground. Choosing to move his family to the base, the unease that the Major displays doesn’t feel like a man without fear, despite what General Shaw thinks. 

While the Major is angry with the General, he isn’t the only one. After a meeting with her tribe, Rose confronts General Shaw on base. She’s there to protect Taniel, and to do that, she finds the weapon used to harm the Galloo when her ancestors trapped him, and gives it to him.

The General doesn’t know what the weapon is, or that Rose is trying to protect Taniel while also leaving the soldiers defenseless. And who can blame her? It’s clear that Taniel has been tortured, or at the very least abused, while in custody. 

But before we talk about what happens in the sewers that both the kids and the military are heading to, we have to talk about Hank. A subplot for the series, in a way that seems to only focus on highlighting Derry’s racism, Hank Grogan is boarding a bus to Shawshank. In the process, one of the dads of the kids tries to assassinate him. While he survives, that isn’t the end of his worries. 

The most important part of this element is that it’s made clear that Pennywise is affecting everyone. As Charlotte waits for Hank to be loaded onto the bus, and after the attack, he survives, she sees a sweaty cop with a baton over his shoulder. Large and taking up the entire door frame, his smile is terrifying. And then, he’s gone. 

In the same way that we see him at the door watching Charlotte, Welcome to Derry Episode 5 goes one step forward. The bus to Shawshank is attacked by something, and Hank is set free. The only way to survive is to head to the woman he still loves. And it just so happens it’s Ingrid. 

Still, Hank is the most underdeveloped part of IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5. It’s easy to see how his escape is stoking a racist fire in the town, which will ultimately lead to the big moment of bloodshed that marks the end of the cycle. But for now, it all comes off as a set-up, not a substance. 

Hank’s storyline is compelling, but it’s also empty. 

About halfway through “Neibolt Street,” the real focus takes shape. Action first, horror second: the back half of this episode picks up speed and teeth. The military descends into the well in the Neibolt House, and it immediately goes wrong. 

The first person down is Dick Hallorann. Trapped in a hallucination of his childhood bathroom, his grandmother tells him that it is coming. She warns him, but he’s trapped. While the episode switches between Hallorann and the rest of his platoon in the tunnels, when pulled together, Hallorann’s scenes map out who he is. 

While his grandma warns Hallorann about it, his grandfather comes through the door. His presence is intimidating, with a gun in his waistband. With his grandfather looming over him, Hallorann looks up and looks like a child. He looks tiny and scarred. Chris Chalk’s performance here is emotional. 

The hallucination escalates when the vision of the grandfather threatens to open the box he’s holding, a secret that is somehow attached to Hallorann. His grandfather begins to turn into Pennywise, his laugh piercing any peace you thought you had for the situation. 

In the sewers, Pennywise continues to terrorize everyone. For a few of the soldiers that he eats, he appears as Uncle Sam, and for the Major, it is Charlotte, his wife. It’s a moment that shows the Maor isn’t without fears; they’re just focused on their family.

As the apparition of Charlotte gets closer and attempts to lunge at the Major and Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso), Hanlon shoots it. Major Hanlon takes a shot, and then it disappears. The Major gives Paulie a new directive: if you see it in the sewers, shoot it, which wouldn’t be so worrying if the kids weren’t walking through the tunnels at the same time. 

While the adults are being picked off one by one, the children have chosen to enter the tunnels, and to do so by taking three of the anti-anxiety pills that Lilly stole from her mom. The kids’ reasoning is sound, in the way you expect kids to work out a logic problem: If Lilly’s mom is still alive while eating the pills like M&Ms, then they should be fine. 

“Neibold Street” gives us a great scare, and it’s Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise, even everything else.

Of course, they’re wrong. Welcome to Derry Episode 5 takes away any hope the kids had remaining when Matty returned. First, they’ve taken too many pills, obviously. Second, well, every one of their friends is dead. As the kids approach its lair, they begin to see bodies float to the surface. First, Susie, then Teddy, and finally Phil, the one they came down to save. Shaken by the discovery and terrified, Matty prances around a dias, and the last body bubbles up, it’s his. 

As Matty’s head begins to split open with teeth protruding, Welcome to Derry Episode 5 shows its best use of special effects as Matty morphs into Pennywise. While we’ve seen him as a blurry or shadowy figure, this is the first time we’ve seen him clearly. Bill Skarsgård debuts his entire costumed look and uses his terrifying voice to chase after the kids. Skarsgård still has it. And now that we’ve seen him, it’s off to the races, or at least I hope. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 puts everyone over the edge. But it also sets Lilly to take control. With Pennywise close to eating her, she finds the weapon that Rose had given Taniel at her feet. The weapon glows and holds it back. With Taniel somewhere in the tunnels, it’s Lilly’s now, but she has no idea how to use it. 

All of the kids make it out alive, thanks to the Major, but Paulie doesn’t. This leads us to the end of Welcome to Derry Episode 5, with the Major recounting what happened. With so much death in the sewers, the Major doesn’t seem like the same confident man that he has been throughout the series. It’s clear that he’s shaken. 

But the episode doesn’t spend too much time with the Major. Instead, we go back to Dick Hallorann. We know he hasn’t returned to base, but we see him walk through the tunnel’s entrance, the same one that the kids entered through. At first, it seems like all is fine, but then he sees one of the soldiers walking in the distance. As the Soldier turns, you can tell from the profile that it’s Paulie, but when the camera meets him head-on, you see his glassy eyes, and we know that Paulie is dead. 

But even this is more of a teaser for the next episode. The last shot before Welcome to Derry Episode 5 fades to black and rolls credits is the picture of Hallorann’s open box, shining on a grimy bathroom floor. 

Dick Hallorann is a tool of the military, but now, he’s lost. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 is a good step forward for a series that I have hated watching. Some of the large elements of jarring pacing and inconsistency remain across the episode, but the impact from its back half in the sewers and Pennywise reveal finally pays off on the setup we’ve had throughout the other episodes. 

Still, we’re missing depth with an ensemble cast spread so wide. However, with two plot points converging in one space, it feels like IT: Welcome to Derry has found its footing, or at the very least, a foothold of some sort. But if there is one thing that this series has done to distinguish itself from expectation is how evenly dedicated the series is to telling a coming-of-age horror story, and a story around adults. 

While other iterations that we’ve seen have focused on tracking trauma across years, here, we see two generations struggling with the same fear-eating monster. But the dedication to seeing Pennywise’s impact on and obsession with adults feels too much like a gimmick that it begins to lack the terror that we see when a clown is, well, chasing kids. There is a specific fear that comes with focusing on the children in the story that we don’t get when the series switches its focus. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 pulls the story together by bringing everything into the sewers, but it also proves how important the children’s experience is to capturing the terror. Every other scare down in the sewers is shocking but not scary, much like the rest of the series’ scares; bad CGI fuels that. 

As a whole, IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 shows the series’ potential, but it also doubles down on its faults. Scattered storytelling is the hallmark of this series, and it doesn’t look like that will stop anytime soon. The only problem is that the only way to right the ship is something that can not happen. This series has defined itself by the racism of adults and the military; the teens are a footnote, and that’s a shame. 

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 is streaming now, exclusively on HBO Max with new episodes every Sunday. 

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