And Derry really is like no place on Earth. Whoever said last episode that Derry was normal clearly did not know what they were talking about.
They really did kill off half the kids. When the episode opened with a POV flashback to what happened, I thought that it would be revealed that the entire thing was all just a dream. A trick. But no. They’re really dead.
Even Derry can’t ignore something like that. I was wondering if there would reach a point where the adults would actually need to act. Police Chief Bowers doesn’t feel like a fundamentally bad person. He’s just spineless.
Maybe that’s actually worse: to know that what you’re doing is wrong, but doing it anyway. I don’t blame Lilly for crumbling under the pressure. She’s just a kid. The sad thing is that she got sent back to Juniper Hill even though she did what Bowers wanted.
And now she’s probably lost whatever friendship she had with Ronnie too. I certainly wouldn’t be forgiving if my father got hauled off to jail for something that they both know that he didn’t do.
While the kids are the ones who are reacting the most to Pennywise, the military base is the one that feels like it's actually engaged in and driving the plot. It’s active, even proactive.
The sketchy and suspicious man that I noticed last episode maybe isn’t so sketchy and suspicious. Instead, it’s Dick Hallorann, a name that you might have recognized from The Shining and Dr. Sleep. It’s an unexpected crossover, but not one that I necessarily hate. I’m slightly more interested in how the military storyline is going to play out, even if the basic premise of it is more than a little groanworthy.
The military wants to weaponize Pennywise in order to terrify the Russians and win the Cold War. Sure. There’s no way that this ends well. At all. Even if this wasn’t a prequel, there’s no way that this plan has any chance of even remotely succeeding. The only question is just how bad the collateral damage is going to be.
I’m glad that I was right about the “Soviet” raid being a test, though. It felt way too weird for it to be anything other than that. Masters truly was just a scapegoat, though. I don’t think Shaw was also trying to test Leroy’s integrity and drive to find the truth. He might have just been waiting for them to actually find something before telling Leroy about why he’s actually there.
Leroy’s inability to feel fear following a traumatic brain injury is interesting, though. It certainly puts some of his actions in a different light. He was stone cold during his meeting with Masters not just because he was convinced that he was innocent, but simply because he truly wasn’t afraid.
Pennywise is theoretically completely powerless against him then, right? So we go back to the idea of collateral damage. Leroy won’t be able to beat or trap Pennywise, not if it is going to be around to terrorize his grandson in 27 years. Will is also safe by that same logic; he needs to grow up and father a child. Who is left without plot immunity? The military base, yes, but I’m also keeping a very close eye on Charlotte.
I liked her a lot in this episode, mainly because of her self-awareness. There is a deepseated, protective fire in her that she has to balance with the fact that she lives and moves in predominantly white spaces. The Hanlons are the only affluent Black family that we’ve seen in Derry. Everyone else either lives on the military base or are in rundown apartments.
They have had bricks thrown through their windows before in other towns. Leroy dismissed it - something that reads differently now that we know that he literally cannot fear that - but she is the one who truly needs to live with and in Derry and its people.
Her walk through town and conversation with the butcher did a great job of illustrating this while still underlining the inherent wrongness of Derry. It’s very easy to read racist undertones in what the butcher said, but it’s also just as easy to take him at face value when he tries to clarify that he didn’t mean that.
Honestly, he seemed like a nice, friendly guy, and I was relieved that we weren’t getting a scene of him refusing to serve her or something like that. After the heavy handedness of the last episode, it didn’t feel out of the question.
Things shifted, though, once Charlotte decided to interfere with the bullies. The entire town turned and glared at her like they were one, interconnected entity. It was incredibly unnerving. Part of me is curious over how long it takes newcomers to get sucked into the apathy that infects the adults, but I don’t want to see that happen to Charlotte.
The episode overall handled dread very well. My favorite scene by far was Lilly in the supermarket. It was so claustrophobic, and then the slightly out of focus figures peering around the corner and then sliding back out of sight was just wonderful. I was also pleased that I was right about seeing body parts in pickle jars. There’s no way that we wouldn’t.
My one criticism is that the subtitles rarely matched up with what the announcements were actually saying. At times drastically. I’m not sure if that was an intentional discrepancy or not, but I didn’t enjoy that. If I have the subtitles on, then they should match what is actually said.
Ronnie’s scare scene was a lot more over the top. There was yet more horrific pregnancy trauma for the second episode in a row. It just felt clunky. The initial panic over not being able to find the edge of a sheet was excellent. It’s a situation that I remember being in when I was younger. And to add in the threat of drowning?
Even the initial appearance of Ronnie’s mother was very creepy. It fell apart when we got the awkward exposition of her dying in childbirth, and I’m not sure if I really want to dissect the metaphorical implications of Ronnie getting dragged back into her mother’s exaggerated, chomping vagina dentata, only to free herself by tearing through her own placenta with her teeth.
Freud would have a field day, I’m sure.
It’s a recurring theme at this point too. Dread, horror, and creeping unease? All done very well. Monsters and creatures? Needs some more refinement.
Random Thoughts
The opening credits were gorgeous.
The school sign mentioned that there’s now a curfew. Understandable, given everything that’s happened.
The Pattycakes acting as the tempo to the fight between Lilly and Ronnie was really fun sound design.
Also, I didn’t really talk about them, but the Pattycakes in general and how they interact with and react to and take cues from each other is amazing. The silent power struggles between female friend groups is just as fraught as any fight with Pennywise.
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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.
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