Previously on the HBO Max series IT: Welcome To Derry, Leroy Hanlon’s (Jovan Adepo) wife, Charlotte (Taylour Paige), and son, Will (Blake Cameron James), moved into their new home in Derry. Ronnie Grogan’s (Amanda Christine) father gets taken by the police, and they believe he’s guilty of killing the kids who have gone missing. Meanwhile, after having a moment in the grocery store, Lily Bainbridge (Clara Stack) gets sent to the mental asylum. The Air Force crew for the secret mission —Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk), General Shaw (James Remar), and Leroy —find the same truck that the strange family took Matty in the very first episode, underground at the dig site.
The episode begins in the past, during the 1930s, with a boy named Francis visiting the circus fair. He enters a showroom and immediately feels uncomfortable seeing the strange individuals. One of them, the skeleton man, stops and asks him to come closer, only to frighten Francis with his one eye. Francis leaves the showroom and runs into his father. After scolding him for being afraid, he gifts Francis a slingshot.
Later, Francis meets an Indigenous American girl, and they play in the woods. But playtime is cut short when Francis wanders too far off and encounters the one-eyed man from the circus. The man chases Francis, morphing into a different creature. Luckily, his new friend uses the slingshot to slow the beast down, allowing them to escape.
Back in the present day, Sheriff Bowers visits Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) in his cell, telling him that there’s an eyewitness who saw him at the theater the night the three kids went missing. He also shows Hank his pack of cigarettes that were at the scene of the crime, letting him know that he has now been found guilty.
Ronnie goes to school, and everyone’s staring at her as she walks through the hallway. Lily finds Ronnie in the bathroom to apologize and tell her it came back at the grocery store. Lily reassures Ronnie that she will tell the truth and has a plan to show proof.
At the base, General Shaw orders Dick, Leroy, and Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) to go up in the air for a surveillance flight for anything mysterious at their next digsite. As they’re in the air, Dick touches his token that gives him his psychic abilities —Francis’s slingshot. Dick begins to walk through the plane, his mind taking him somewhere else. He walks into a sewer, looking around and seeing a sign that says ‘Pennywise’. The stage opens, and Pennywise’s (Bill Skarsgard) eyes light up, asking who Dick is. Dick begins to have visions of what happened to him in Korea and other killings. He notices other bodies and people Pennywise has taken, including his Grandma. She tells him that Pennywise is coming. Leroy knocks him out of his trance before he can jump off the plane. They go back to base, and Dick tells General Shaw about what happened, saying, “It saw me.”
Elsewhere, Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) and her nephew Taniel (Joshua Odjick) attend a tribe meeting to discuss what’s been going on in Derry. Taniel tells her about the truck from the digsite and that he wants to get to it before anyone else does. Rose tells him not to get involved. Rose is revealed to be the young girl who helped Francis from the ‘skeleton man’.
General Shaw visits Rose at her antique shop —General Shaw is Francis. He tells her that before he came back to Derry, he didn’t remember her or anything that happened when they were kids. She finds out that he’s in charge of the digsites, but he lies about why the Air Force is doing so. He informs her that she can trust him.
Later, Dick has dinner with the Hanlons. He asks about Will, but Leroy tells him he never told him about having a son. Dick confirms his psychic abilities, as Leroy figures out he was one of the masked men who attacked him. Leroy warns him not to invade his mind again, which Dick reassures him he won’t.
That night, Ronnie, Lily, Will, and Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) go to Matty’s and the boys’ hangout spot. Will and Rich learn about the mysterious things that have been occurring. Rich believes it’s an evil spirit that his family from Cuba told him about. He convinces them that he can conjure a spell to make the spirit appear. Once it appears, they will take a picture of it for proof.
At the cemetery, Rich performs the ritual, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Realizing Rich lied, the girls decide to leave, with Will and Rich in pursuit. As they ride their bikes, they notice the exit is getting farther and farther. Suddenly, the ground breaks apart, as ghosts chase them through the cemetery. The four frantically try flashing photos as they are all split apart. Will grabs the camera, but is stuck alone in a crypt when he hears someone. The figure confronts him, and he takes a picture out of fear, before finally making it back to his friends.
The four of them break into the school to develop the photos from the camera. The photos reveal Matty, Teddy, and Susie as ghosts. When they look at the picture Will took in the crypt, Rich asks what it is and Will says, “It’s a clown.”
Overall, this episode was overwhelming with a lot of twists and easter eggs, one of them being that Dick Halloran is also in the famous film The Shining. It’s wild to find out that General Shaw is related to everything going on with Derry. Chris Chalk was incredibly talented in the episode as Dick, having the psychic ability to find tokens used by Pennywise. Chalk has been really selling the mental capabilities that Dick has been given. It’s interesting to see that Dick and Shaw both know about Pennywise. Did General Shaw give Dick the slingshot? Did Dick see Pennywise when his grandmother was killed?
Rating: 10/10