Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 2 of IT: Welcome to Derry.
Following the shocking slaughter at the Capitol Theatre that took place at the end of the IT: Welcome to Derry premiere, the second installment of the HBO prequel series offered some insight into where the show seems to be headed in its first season.
Titled “The Thing in the Dark,” Episode 2, which debuted Friday on HBO Max, two days early in celebration of Halloween, saw the children of early 1960s Derry continue to be haunted by some of the most terrifying iterations of It to date. Meanwhile, over at the Derry Air Force Base, town newcomer and Korean War veteran Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo)—a.k.a. the future grandfather of Losers Club member Mike Hanlon—was brought in on Operation Precept, a classified DOD crash program focused on retrieving a weapon long ago buried in Derry that generates debilitating fear. General Shaw (James Remar) told Leroy this supposed weapon could help the U.S. win the Cold War before a single missile is fired and that Leroy himself is uniquely qualified to help the military secure it, as he is a man without fear. Unfortunately, this mission just doesn’t seem likely to go as planned for some reason.
By the end of the hour, Operation Precept had unearthed a car full of skeletal corpses at a rain-soaked dig site that led a soldier named Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) to declare they were “close” to locating their quarry. After catching a few brief glimpses of Dick in the premiere, we were more formally introduced to him midway through Episode 2 during a night out at Derry’s Falcon Tavern for him and two of his airmen buddies. A hungover Dick was also shown the following morning at the same dig site insisting to a seething colonel that he could “feel” they were nearing their goal. To the uninitiated, this mysterious sequence of events may have elicited some mild curiosity. But for Stephen King obsessives, the appearance of such a legendary King mainstay is likely to be one of Welcome to Derry‘s most intriguing plot points thus far.
Known primarily for his role as the Overlook Hotel’s head chef in The Shining—as well as the part he plays in The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep—Dick possesses the same psychic “shine” ability as Danny Torrance, The Shining‘s young protagonist. This allows both characters to see ghosts, communicate telepathically, and demonstrate clairvoyance. In King’s 1986 IT novel, a much younger Dick is referenced in one of the book’s five interlude chapters as an army mess cook who was stationed in Derry at the same time as Mike Hanlon’s father Will. Since Welcome to Derry is operating on the timeline established by Andy Muschietti’s two-part IT film adaptation rather than King’s book, in the show, Dick’s stint in Derry overlaps with Leroy rather than Will (who is a child played by Blake Cameron James) and takes place around 30 years later than it does in the original story.
However, considering Muschietti has said the first season of the anthology series will revolve around the infamous fire at Derry’s Black Spot nightclub, the tragic burning of a Black servicemen safe haven by a white supremacist group known as the Legion of White Decency that coincides with one of It’s periodic awakenings, it seems the show is taking Dick’s character arc in a relatively similar direction as the book. In the novel, Dick is not only one of the few sane adults in Derry who is capable of seeing It in its varying forms, but he also uses his shine abilities to save the lives of several people trapped in the flame-engulfed Black Spot on that fateful night, including Will Hanlon. While we’re guessing the Hanlon he’ll be rescuing this time around will be Leroy, it seems as though Dick’s bravery will still ensure the chain of events that ultimately allows the Losers Club to defeat It over 50 years later is set in motion.
As for how Dick’s storyline will unfold leading up to that point, Chalk has said his character is going to be coming up against his greatest fear as the eight-episode season goes on. “What I think Dick fears the most is being trapped, whether that be in his mind or in a physical space,” he told ScreenRant. “And the beauty of this show is he gets both of those. He gets fully trapped in his mind and in a place that he just does not belong, and that’s what he has to struggle through.”
Seems pretty par for the course in Derry.
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