It Welcome to Derry Episode 4 – “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function”

Warning: This review contains spoilers for It – Welcome to Derry episode 4.

We’ve reached the halfway point of It – Welcome to Derry, and there is nary a Pennywise to be found. If you can get past that, the series is off to a mostly good start. After the big twist at the end of the first episode, the true protagonists and antagonists of the series have been established, and the main storylines have congealed.

Episode 4 mostly lacks the major developments of the previous episodes. We’re solidly into the middle of the season now, and that’s often when a show is least interesting.

As I mentioned before, this is another non-Pennywise episode, although his infamous red balloon does finally make a couple of appearances. The kids learn more about the entity and it continues to use psychological warfare against them.

This episode’s standout scene occurs when the entity decides yet again to make life miserable for Lilly (Clara Stack). Her shallow former friend, Marge, is part of a plot to play a cruel trick on her involving a boy that Lilly has a crush on. Marge has a last minute crisis of conscience and decides to confess the truth to Lilly in the bathroom. It, of course, can’t have that.

In a bizarre and deliciously twisted sequence, Marge’s eyes gradually pop out of her head like Jim Carrey in The Mask. Lilly’s desperate attempts to save her are futile and, of course, the sequence ends with a crowd of people bursting in to witness Lilly on top of Marge with a knife in her hand. It’s safe to say Lilly will be spending more time in the sanitarium in the next episode.

Charlotte (Taylour Paige) receives some decent character development this time. She tries to help the wrongly arrested Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), who confesses the truth about where he was on the night of the murders. Charlotte was an activist in the south before moving to Maine and now finds herself becoming inextricably involved with a case that’s dangerous for her on multiple levels.

This is Paige’s best performance of the series so far. We see Charlotte’s grit and determination against the corrupt local police. Of course, she doesn’t know that an even greater evil force is also involved.

We also get an interesting flashback sequence framed as a telepathic vision by Dick Halloran (Chris Chalk). This sequence reveals that It has been lurking in the Derry area since pre-colonial times. The Native American tribes knew of its existence and tried to warn the settlers about it.

There’s been talk about future Welcome to Derry seasons taking place in other time periods. Could we get a season set centuries ago with Native American main characters, similar to the Predator installment Prey? I’d be interested in watching that.