(Don’t) send in the clown

(KTLA) — Just in time for Halloween, HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry” has finally arrived with a spine-tingling premiere that lays out a fresh tapestry of intrigue while also harkening back to what we loved about Andy Muschietti’s adaptations of Stephen King’s “It.” And episode 1 isn’t clowning around with the scares.

The series, which was co-developed by Muschietti, is set in fictional Maine hamlet of Derry, decades before The Losers Club would meet the ancient evil known as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Taking place in the early 1960s, the show explores the origins and development of the evil that hangs over the city.

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Spoilers ahead for “It: Welcome to Derry” episode 1.

Rideshare from Hell

The series’ opening is one you won’t soon forget. We meet tween Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt), who’s just been chased out of a screening of “The Music Man” he snuck into at a local theater. Matty heads out into the winter night before hitching a ride with a normal-looking couple and their two normal-looking kids. They’re probably normal, right?

The ride quickly turns nightmarish as the uncanny family starts acting strange — including ingestion of raw livers and the family playing a spelling game of words like “necrosis” and “strangulation” — prompting Matty to unsuccessfully attempt an escape.

He accidentally hits the pregnant mother’s belly, sending the woman into an immediate and painful (and gory) delivery right in the passenger seat. In the episode’s crowning (no pun intended) most gruesome moment, a baby-headed winged beast plops out of the mother’s body and kills Matty.

RIP Matty.

… And congratulations on the baby, I guess?

Derr-force

Four months after Matty’s disappearance, Korean War vets Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) arrive at the Derry Air Force base for a new assignment. Upon arrival, however, Maj. Hanlon encounters resistance from a white subordinate, who refuses to salute the major, ostensibly because Hanlon is Black.

The airman is reprimanded by General Shaw (James Remar), who asks Hanlon (recognize that last name?) to meet him in his office the next day. There, Shaw explains that Hanlon was brought in to test-fly a brand new (and top secret) B-52 bomber jet amid tensions with the Soviet Union.

Later, Hanlon is attacked in bed by a group of adversaries in gas masks who threaten to kill him if he doesn’t give them the specs for the new aircraft. Hanlon refuses and, as the masked gunman prepares to fire, Russo breaks into the room and helps fight them men off. The intruders escape into the night.

Honestly, this is maybe the episode’s weakest thread, though it has potential to become interesting. After all, what does the Air Force have to do with anything here?

Music from the drain

Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), a misunderstood Derry High School student, finds herself missing Matty, whom she had a somewhat covert friendship with. Through flashback, we learn that Matty took her to the secret hangout spot he shares with friends Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler) and Phil Malkin (Jack Molloy Legault).

At the secret viewing deck in an abandoned tower, Lilly opens up about why she’s called “loony” by her classmates. Her father died in an accident she feels responsible for and she was sent away for mental health treatment. Matty says he thinks she’s different than other girls and makes a move to kiss her, but Lilly isn’t ready and rejects him, despite (I think?) liking him too.

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Lilly reminisces as she prepares a bath but an eerie sound from the tub drain interrupts her reverie. A voice singing “Ya Got Trouble,” from “The Music Man,” which the family that picked up Matty also sang before his death.

Hearing Matty’s voice, she begs him to “come home” but the voice calls out “He won’t let me!” as two bloody fingers emerge from the drain. Lilly decides to share the news with Teddy and Phil, hoping they’ll believe her. They don’t.

Don’t turn on the light

Phil and Teddy are best friends who’ve kept themselves busy since Matty’s disappearance by working on homemade comics and debating conspiracy theories. Though close, the two feel differently about the incident. While’s Teddy’s still sad and searching for answers, Phil urges him to move on because Matty is dead.

The boys tell Lilly they just can’t believe her. Later that night, Teddy’s dad admonishes him at dinner for posing a theory that Matty could be alive in the sewers. Mr. Uris says Teddy should reflect on the real horrors of the world, like family members lost in the Holocaust, where he says Nazis used the skin of Jewish prisoners “for lampshades.”

Later, Teddy’s trying to read a comic before bed but his lamp keeps clicking off. Teddy pulls the string to turn it on again and the light illuminates a skin-lake mass of horrifying faces. The lamp rolls across the room, cornering a screaming Teddy, before his older brother comes in and turns the lights on. In the light, everything has vanished and lamp is back in place.

Time to switch to overhead lighting only.

Matty on the microfiche

Teddy’s experience is enough to convince the boys that Lilly’s telling the truth, so they all start investigating. At the local library, the trio review microfilmed newspaper articles about Matty, where they learn a classmate, Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christine), was the last person known to have seen Teddy.

When they arrive at Ronnie’s apartment building, suggested to be located in a poorer part of town, they find her unwilling to discuss Matty, however. Ronnie says police tried to “pin it” on her dad Hank, a Black theater employee, despite having no evidence. She orders them to go but as they leave, she overhears them talking about a song in the drains and she tells them she’s heard it too.

Who knew “Ya Got Trouble” by Robert Preston was charting in Derry, huh?

Immersive cinema

Ronnie tells the group the song comes from “The Music Man,” and she sneaks them into the theater to see if the film might contain a clue about Matty or else, context for the song.

Ronnie rolls the projector as Lilly, Teddy, Phil, and Phil’s little sister Susie (Matilda Legault) watch below. As the film begins, the kids share how sad they actually are about what happened to Matty and how responsible they feel for not being able to stop it. A crying Phil consoles Teddy and Lilly, telling them it’s not their fault and that all that matters is they’re trying to do something about it.

The movie arrives at the “Ya Got Trouble” scene, and the group spot an inexplicable new addition to the crowd of people in the frame: Matty. Standing in front of the creepy family from earlier, their friend is holding a swaddled baby.

They shout for him to follow their voices out of the movie and Matty, baby in arms, moves closer and closer toward the center of the screen.

“You’re the reason I’m in here. Because you weren’t there!” says the image of Matty, whose face transforms into a devilishly grinning visage resembling Pennywise. “Matty” tosses the crying baby through the screen and the winged monster seen earlier — now much larger — flies out, killing Susie, Phil and Teddy.

A blood-soaked Lilly is rescued by Ronnie and the girls lock the creature inside the theater. They stare at each other in terror as Lilly realizes she’s still holding Susie’s dismembered hand and credits roll.

Not exactly a night at the Alamo Drafthouse.

Final thoughts

The first episode of “It: Welcome to Derry” likely isn’t what many viewers expected or perhaps hoped for from a “Pennywise TV show” — and that’s actually a good thing. Though I wasn’t expecting much, I came away from the premiere impressed by how much it surprised me.

Showrunner and executive producer Jason Fuchs previously said the series will focus on the origins of the shapeshifting evil entity but it will also focus on the town’s origins. “Derry is the entity in many ways,” Fuchs told Entertainment Weekly this month. This concept is well-established in episode one.

Though we don’t see Pennywise the Dancing Clown, we do see the entity in new and frightening forms. Even when “It” isn’t on screen, its presence pervades. In episode one’s portrait of Derry, we find mothers icing out grieving daughters, fathers lashing out at heartbroken sons, visible racial tensions and inequities, and deadly political animus

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There’s no escaping the horrors of real life, and the show seems interested in attempting to explore these, in addition to the intergalactic, demonic ones.

I’m delighted the Fuchs-written episode pulled a small-screen bait-and-switch by having us get to know Phil and Teddy right before their deaths. The “Psycho shower scene” twist has been replicated countless times and sometimes, now, you can see it coming. But I didn’t here, and I’m happy with who we’re left with. Finally, the episode opening was also a delight, as Fuchs and Muschietti (who directed) turn the heat up in continuously unexpected ways. There may be no clown here yet but this one’s still a party.

Grade: A.

The next episode of “It: Welcome to Derry” airs Halloween night.

Nexstar’s Russell Falcon can be found on Instagram, X and TikTok.

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