Spoilers follow for It: Welcome to Derry Episodes 1-6.
After two back-to-back blockbuster episodes, It: Welcome to Derry slows considerably with “In the Name of the Father,” taking time to check in with most of the major players left on the board as the fast-approaching Augery begins to take shape.
As the episode’s name would suggest, “In the Name of the Father” interrogates what lengths kids will go to for their parents’ love, and at what point it’s time to take a stand. For a series that hasn’t been consistently scary, “In the Name of the Father” kicks off with some of Welcome to Derry’s most potent terror yet. Leroy (Jovan Adepo) blames Will (Blake Cameron James) for Pauly’s death-by-friendly-fire in the sewers after telling him not to leave the base, and that fury spills out when Will moves to immediately disobey him again. Leroy snaps and hits Will, knocking him to the ground, giving way to Will’s heartbreaking cries that “It’s got to you, too.”
That’s probably not true for the simple reason that it’d be a lot easier for Leroy as a character if it were, and whether or to what degree Pennywise is exerting active control over Leroy isn’t the point: it’s that this act of violence has turned Leroy into a monster in Will’s eyes, and the move gives us our clearest look yet at the much-colder Leroy we meet briefly in IT: Chapter One. It’s heartwrenching stuff, performed with confidence by Adepo and especially James, who balances Will’s vulnerability, shock, fear, and defiance perfectly. Charlotte (Taylour Paige) can’t do much to intervene, but Paige carries the momentum of the encounter through the rest of the episode as Charlotte breaks from Leroy and refocuses on finding justice for Hank Grogan. “Humans are the real monsters” is by no means the only King truism that Welcome to Derry traffics in, but it’s dramatized to excellent effect in this scene.
Will’s railing against the idea that he not be allowed to leave his bedroom (much less the air base) hits especially hard because the kids’ close call with Pennywise has them closing ranks around Ronnie (Amanda Christine) and Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), whose emotional reunion at the Black Spot serves as a good counterpoint to how Leroy and Will part ways. Hank has a much better idea of how dire his situation is than the kids do, which gives his inquisitory “what’s your favorite movie?” litmus test of Will and his subsequent approval of the boy for answering “War of the Worlds” (seconded) added weight.
For all the big, scary emotions that It’s famous for, love often gets lost in the shuffle, and Marge and Rich's mutual crushing throughout “In the Name of the Father” adds a sense of sweetness Welcome to Derry hasn't really prioritized. Matilda Lawler has had her share of standout moments as Marge, so it was nice to see Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya) get some time in the spotlight as he starts to more freely demonstrate his feelings for her. Rich has been the least developed of the core group of kids, but both his genuine appreciation for Marge’s gross eye injury and his impromptu sit-in drum performance at the Black Spot underline his easy-going and brave nature, and with all that positive, happy energy he carries through the end of this episode, I shudder to think what the next two have in store for him. Happiness has a short half-life in Derry. Will, Ronnie, Rich, and Marge may all be united, but Lilly (Clara Stack) isn’t seeming quite herself after being in possession of the ceremonial dagger forged from Pennywise’s comet. She’s much quicker to aggression, and unwilling to let go of the blade… first, the blade worked like Sting from Lord of the Rings, lighting up around Pennywise, and now it’s driving people crazy like the One Ring itself!
But of everyone who ran into Pennywise down in the sewers, it’s Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) who’s most affected, wandering back to the base and pounding spirits immediately to keep spirits from pounding him... as Hallorann tells Leroy, “They pissed It off.” Encumbered by encroaching ghosts, Dick’s quickly detaching from both his mission and his own conscience, refusing to get involved with concealing Hank at the Black Spot. Welcome to Derry repeats itself by having Leroy angrily confront Hallorann about holding back information, and Hallorann responding in kind by impressing upon him that he doesn’t understand the forces at play. It seems like Leroy and Hallorann’s relationship may have run its course, but there’s still room for calamity to shake something loose there.
As Welcome to Derry is coming into its final two episodes, setup for the Augery is feeling increasingly rushed. The series has done a pretty fantastic job of establishing the cosmological levers at play in the mass violence events that close out Pennywise cycles, but the roiling aggression that’s building among Derry’s citizens feels more driven at this point by the needs of the plot. We’ve heard competing ideas from characters like Clint Bowers, Charlotte Hanlon, and Hank Grogan about Derry’s stance on race relations, but the town pretty much instantly abandons all pretense about its dark heart the second reports hit that Hank has escaped custody.
Welcome to Derry has a pretty huge cast of characters to keep pushing forward, but less-central characters often serve as an observing Greek chorus to the ongoing calamities in King stories, and that perspective can go a long way to explaining why things start going to hell in a manner that still feels emotionally true - we’ve seen this bear out with how well Welcome to Derry has handled its Pennywise mythology through Rose and her tribe. But as Derry’s “good ol’ boys” assemble a lynch mob to hunt down Hank, it starts to feel in retrospect like we’ve been told too much about all this festering hate by more prominent characters secondhand, and had it shown directly too infrequently. Bowers walks into the town bar, in which the lynch mob’s making their plans, with news that he’s been fired (offscreen) by the town council for a lack of progress in stopping the crimes happening in Derry, which felt incongruous to his having actually arrested Hank, the prime suspect in those crimes. Welcome to Derry needs a match to light the fuse at this point, and Bowers is an obvious choice, but the rushed way the show moves him into that role doesn’t land.
So the pieces are all falling into place: there’s a group of kids banded together to fight Pennywise, there’s a ticking clock of a mass-casualty event on the horizon, there’s even a military cleanup plan being teased out… but “In the Name of the Father” has one more wild card to throw down, as Lilly discovers one more child vying for their parent’s love: Periwinkle. The episode is punctuated by flashbacks to Juniper Hill in 1935, as Ingrid Kersh (Madeline Stowe) is revealed not only to be the daughter of Bob Gray (think of him as the human proto-Pennywise), but a child-killer in her own right, tossing kids into the path of her dear old dad to lure him out in hopes of a reunion.
This is all a significant extrapolation on Mrs. Kersh’s tossed-off mention of being Bob Gray’s daughter in It: Chapter Two where, it’s important to remember, she’s an illusion created by Pennywise. Ingrid monologues a boilerplate “I’d do anything for daddy’s love” at Lilly before Lilly’s able to escape her house, which leaves us with a loose thread that will have to compete with both the Augery and Shaw’s cleanup plan over the next two episodes. Having a human antagonist not bound to the same rules of Pennywise does open interesting possibilities going forward, calling to mind how Pennywise ends up using Henry Bowers to similar ends, but Periwinkle has a lot of proving herself to do before she feels worthy of the family legacy. On that note, how bizarre was it to see Bill Skarsgård as the human Bob Gray with a voice that has its Pennywise dial turned up to 65%. There’s more Bob Gray to come, to be sure, and so more opportunity for Skarsgård to establish Gray as a sinister force all his own, but as it stands, there’s more work to be done for the Gray Family Circus to feel like an organic part of this story.
Connexion
