Welcome to Derry: Reviewing Chapter One

 

 

In a couple of weeks' time I will be doing by annual Top Ten TV shows of the year. I can't state with certainty Welcome to Derry will officially make the list though I have confidence it will be there in some form.

What I can say after witnessing what the creators have now officially labeled as 'Chapter One' I have made three very broad and related judgments about the show.

First Welcome To Derry is officially the best TV adaptation of a Stephen King work in my lifetime, moving ahead of the ABC miniseries adaptations in the 1990s of The Stand and Storm of the Century. Second, this is one of best adaptations of intellectual property that I've seen in that same period for television, up there with such HBO classics as Watchmen and The Penguin. And lastly it is now among the first tier of prequels or origin stories for TV I've seen over the years among such standouts of Bates Motel, many of Greg Berlanti's Arrow-verse and the canceled too soon Dexter: Original Sin. It has a bit to go before it surpasses such masterclasses as Andor and Better Call Saul but its off to a promising start.

That said this won't be a review of what make the first season a masterpiece on  a creative level as a tribute to how the Muschietti siblings and their team of extraordinary writers have been faithful to all of the source material from their own films to the original novel. It will also deal with some of the theories I speculated on a few weeks earlier and some questions that I, in thirty years of reading King, never thought to ask. So let's go.

 

There actually was a Pennywise the Dancing Clown!

I've lost count of how many times I read King's original novel and I know one thing for sure. Never once in all those years did I wonder why Pennywise had the name Robert Gray.  I'm not sure if King himself ever considered why he named that character in that fashion and if he did he hasn't shared that in the forty years since he was published. I certainly in all that time never even considered that Robert Gray might have been as much a victim of IT as all the children that had been eaten by Pennywise over the centuries.

Now it's worth noting that in that book when Bev encounters Mrs. Kersh she will tell us that her father was Robert Gray, aka Pennywise. But since she also says, 'my mother was all my father' and is revealed to be another glamour of IT I assume that every reader took it as just another lie. Certainly neither the TV limited series nor the film version do anything to contradict that possibility.

So imagine my amazement when the penultimate episode of Chapter One told us that not only was there a real Robert Gray but that his daughter actually was Ingrid. (We'll get to that revelation a little below.)  I will grant you the writers had done much to imply that in the previous chapter but considering the source material I genuinely thought it was the delusion of a lunatic. And then we learn that yes Bob Gray existed, he was a clown with a traveling circus and we was a loving father who cared for his daughter very much. Bill Skarsgard must have been delighted when the writers created this part of the character for him; he has done an incredible job as Pennywise for more than eight years but he's never gotten a chance to be anything but the nightmare. By showing that Gray was just another victim of Pennywise – no doubt one of countless ones over the centuries  - it makes you realize that in a larger context  Derry Itself is the monster and the clown just another victim. And that brings me to the next part…

 

Poor Mrs. Kersh!

In my  most recent speculation I theorized two possibilities as to who Ingrid Kersh was: that she was an acolyte of Pennywise or another resident that IT did to do its evil over the years. It turns out it was a bit of both as well a third option: Ingrid was another victim in the long game that IT plays.

Having lost her father in 1908, we learned 27 years later she encountered him while working in Juniper Hill in 1935. Having lived that long she knew what summoned him but she also believed there was a chance she'd see her father again. And so for that reason she called Chief Bowers anonymously and used him to summon the mob to start the fire at the Black Spot.

It's clear Ingrid had been driven partially crazy by her father's disappearance and was no doubt subject to years of abuse by her husband (who absolutely deserved to get killed by Pennywise) So seeing her dressed in the makeup that she had shown to her father the last time they'd spoken fifty-four years earlier was truly sad and at partially explained her horrific actions. And just to be clear to see her become yet another victim of IT at the end of it, driven insane and put in Juniper Hill having seen the deadlights makes her yet another tragic victim.

In that sense the epilogue showing the senior version of Mrs. Kersh now brings her arc full circle and not just with the film. I suspect those who watch the movie will now feel a huge sorrow when they realize who Mrs. Kersh real was: another in a seemingly unending line of children destroyed by Pennywise. On a separate note given the writers plan for the series Mrs. Kersh may very well be the one character who links the entire story together now that we know for certain she is in Derry in all three time periods planned for the series.

 

Welcome to Derry is linked to The Dark Tower

In my previous article I speculated regarding the totems:

…there are even subtler links to The Dark Tower here, most notably when we were told that there are thirteen totems that keep It in place. Now if you've read the series thirteen is a number of significance because there are thirteen 'baubles' that have immense magical power. Roland is told of them in Wizard and Glass by his father: "Twelve for each of the Guardians and one for the Dark Tower itself." And if you try to control them, they will absolutely destroy you."

 

This was made clear in regards to the dagger the closer we got to the end of the season. We were told that the longer you held this totem the more it would drive you mad and we saw this playout with Margie, Ronny and Lilly during that final episode.  I think the clearest parallel is to Black Thirteen the most destructive of the 'baubles' listed, and not just because you could see 13 on it. That bauble is by far considered the one that the longest you have it the more it destroys you and that was definitely clear.

And its worth noting that leading up to that there was a clear picture of where the twelve totems were and if you freeze frame the screen (which all good fans do) you will see that each one is linked to another on the other side much like the 12 beams surrounded the Dark Tower as Roland told us in Waste Land.   The metaphor was extended by saying that the thirteenth totem had to be at a certain place to block the evil that was unfolded after the geniuses at the military base decided to destroy one of them in order to free IT (That may also be a different form of canon as I'll list below.) To be sure in the books it where all the beams intersect and in Welcome to Derry it's on the border but the principle is the same.

By the way the fact that just before everybody in Derry High school became possible victims of Pennywise we saw someone in a Turtle suit. Not a coincidence. Hopefully in future seasons will actually see to see the 'Turtle of enormous girth'.

 

The military operation has to be a Shop plan.

It didn't stun me to learn that General Francis never planned to win the Cold War with the totems but rather to free IT in order to turn America into Derry. The speech he gave in the penultima episode to General Francis is exactly the kind of mindset you would expect from the military that were about to drive us into the Vietnam War.  (Yes, it's also a bit of the conservative ideology but it is the 1960s and the General is a white man.)

And yes it also makes perfect sense that as a literal fog of evil begins to run over the town of Derry no doubt killing countless people and brainwashing others that the military acts as if everything is going to plan.  It also makes complete sense that they would try to stop the only people trying to save America and no doubt the world.

Why? Because this is the work of The Shop.  These are the exact kind of people who would have no problem giving drugs to a group of students and turning them into psychics, then killing the parents to try and track down and use Charlie McGee as a weapon. They are the people who when being told by the top scientist that this six year old girl "could someday  crack the world in two…like a China plate" would not only still take the girl prisoner and utilize her for testing but also kill the scientist who warned them.  And I have little doubt its this kind of mindset that will infiltrate the thinking that will lead to the creation of the superflu in 'other worlds than these' and the mindset of Colonel Kurtz who will try to track down an alien force in this very town decades later in Dreamcatcher.

So to be clear I was rooting for General Francis to get his head torn off by Pennywise when he got to close to it in those final minutes and I was overjoyed when it happened. You play with Winter Fire you deserve to get burned – or eaten by a monstrous clown.

 

Pennywise does know about the threats to him in the future…or the past.

Again I speculated this as early as the fifth episode but I was stunned as to how the writers proved it to me – even though they were hiding it in plain sight the whole time.

We'd been watching Margie the entire series wondering when she'd become part of the group. Margie had a pair of thick glasses and was clearly crushing on Richie in this season. In the fifth episode her eye nearly destroyed her – which in case you were curious was a nightmare than in the book Richie Tozier had his whole life. Obviously I think our hearts all utterly broke while the Black Spot burned down and Richie went out of his way to sacrifice himself for the girl he clearly loved.

The writers weren't exactly being subtle in this but I was blind side when Pennywise confronted Margie and told her that one day she was going to get married to someone named Tozier and have a son she would name Richie. Now it makes perfect sense not just in keeping with the novel but everything else: of course she would name her son for someone she loved and who sacrificed his life for hers.

And it did confirm in a way I suspected that Pennywise was aware of potential threats to him. Considering Will Hanlon is Mike's father and one of his original victims was Teddy Uris, no doubt a distant relative of Stan, I was on point with that. I didn't suspect that Pennywise Itself might see time differently than humans but it would track with so many of the adversaries we see in King's fiction. Randall Flagg, the villain King wrote the most about in his fiction, notoriously believes he has the ability to see the future and views time differently. And we get a similar sense with the Crimson King as well.

Nor was this the only confirmation of how IT operates. As we saw in that final scene in Juniper Hill Mrs. Kersh had an encounter with Beverly on the worst day of her life: when her mother committed suicide. We already know IT operates on the worst fears of ITS victims and this one was more personal to Bev. (Props to keeping the cameo of Sophia Lillis hidden.)

Margie and Lilly's speculation at the end of the episode confirms how Pennywise is no doubt planning to try and win. In 1935 IT will no doubt try to track down the descendants of the Losers who were still in Derry back then. Perhaps there we will encounter the Denborough family or the Kaspbaraks neither of whom we saw during the current season.  Three of the seven Losers ancestors were accounted for in some form in Chapter One. It would make sense if we saw the other four in the next two seasons.

 

I actually have one more question now that Chapter One is over that I hope the writers answer in the coming seasons.

 

Are the Bowers family being used by Pennywise as a way to get to the Losers?

We can't forget that during Chapter One the Police Chief of Derry was Clint Bowers, the grandfather of Henry who will being their biggest human adversary both in 1989 and 2017. Bowers spent most of Season 1 interacting with this generation of Losers trying to find Hank Grogan's murder and before he was forced out of office he told the mob where Hank was suspected to be. We now know the reason the mob was really sent was as much to kill the threat to Pennywise as to end the cycle.

I want to go on record I don't think this was just an Easter egg.  I think just as IT knows which people can be a threat to IT over the generations, IT knows what they can use for a tool. Yes Ingrid Kersh called in the threat but Chief Bowers was the adversary against everything this group of children were trying to stop for much of Chapter One and that set everything in motion for the fire at the Black Spot. Perhaps we'll see a younger Clint Bowers when it comes to Chapter 2 which will focus on the massacre of the Bradley Gang 27 years ago. Perhaps being in law enforcement isn't the only thing passed down in the Bowers family.(Although he does seem saner than his son and grandson will be.)

 

For the record even thought Welcome to Derry has not officially been renewed for a second season considering that the ratings have been increasingly exponentially with each new episode – 5.1 million viewers just last week – it's a matter of time. So I feel very strongly that we'll be coming back to Derry in 1935 very soon. We'll be in the middle of another major crisis, of course: the Great Depression. An era of great financial precariousness across the globe and countries around the world were looking to strong men to lead us out of the crisis, with the idea that democracy was about to become a failed experiment. So no parallels to today any more than in Chapter One!

 Oh and here's a historical spoiler: Maine was solidly Republican in 1932 and in all four of FDR's elections never once went for him.  So if the residents of Derry talk  about how America's becoming communist or that FDR's a radical leftist who someone should put a bullet in that's not the writers arguing about today's politics. That's how New England genuinely felt about 'That Man'.

Either way I look forward to the next chapter whenever IT comes. And don't worry about Dick Hallorann at the end. Compared to what he went through in Derry the Overlook hotel will be child's play.