‘It: Welcome to Derry’ episode 2 recap/review: Horror pickles

(KTLA) — The second episode of HBO’s “It: Welcome to Derry” premiered Friday, serving up more “King”-sized scares for Halloween and beyond. The episode, “The Thing in the Dark,” follows the thrilling series premiere earlier this week by delving deeper into the evils at work in the fictional Maine hamlet.

Spoilers ahead for “It: Welcome to Derry” episode 2.

‘It: Welcome to Derry’ episode 1 recap/review: (Don’t) send in the clown

‘This isn’t America. This is Derry’

While episode one, titled “The Pilot,” hinted around at the racial tensions that pervade Derry in the 1960s, episode two dives head first into the real life horrors Black citizens of the town are facing.

We learned last episode that police attempted to pin Matty Clements’ disappearance on theater projectionist Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), and Friday’s episode opens with officers still stalking the Grogan home in hopes of catching him doing anything they can use to arrest him.

Even though both Ronnie (Amanda Christine) and Lilly (Clara Stack) both vouched that Hank wasn’t at the theater when Phil, Teddy and Susie were killed, Derry police are intent on finding someone for the grieving parents to blame. The police chief himself, though under pressure from local council members, acknowledges they don’t have anything on Hank.

“I’ve got no evidence and he’s got an alibi,” says the chief. “This is America.” To which the councilman replies, “This ain’t America. This is Derry. Do your job, or come next election, we’ll find somebody else who will.”

Mean girls of Derry

Back at Derry High School, it’s been days since Ronnie and Lilly have come back. In the meantime, Marge (Matilda Lawler) is still unsuccessfully trying to cement her place in the Pattycakes popular girls’ group. Unfortunately, the way she’s found her way in comes at the expense of Lilly and Ronnie, who Marge starts making fun of to impress the others.

When Ronnie and Lilly finally show for classes, Marge is concerned how close Lilly has become to Ronnie, whom the girls refer to as “the psycho’s daughter.” Marge tries to appeal to Lilly to distance herself from Ronnie and fall back in with the Pattycakes but Lilly, who’s understandably still distraught over the deaths, counters that she doesn’t care about popularity anymore.

“Phil and Teddy are dead,” she says. “Phil’s sister is dead. Who cares about your stupid Pattycakes?”

Whack her again, Lilly!

‘You sure we’re good here?”

Korean War vet Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) is joined by his family after his recent transfer to Derry’s Air Force base to test top-secret bomber jets. This includes wife Charlotte (Taylour Paige) and son Will (Blake Cameron James), who are delighted to find Leroy already waiting at their new home.

But a frosty reception from white neighbors immediately puts Charlotte on edge. Nevertheless, mom and son attempt to acclimate to their new town. Unfortunately for Will, this includes being bullied on his first day at the mostly white Derry High School, where he’s placed in class with Lilly and Marge.

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Mrs. Hanlon, meanwhile, explores town (including passing a familiar-looking alleyway). After Charlotte rushes to help a young boy being beat up by his peers, she’s looked at with suspicion by people in town instead of kindness. Leroy, who’s still working to get to the bottom of who attacked him in episode one, urges her to lay lower, citing hate the family received at their previous home in Shreveport due to her civil rights activism.

Makarov PM

Back at the base, Leroy learns that it wasn’t a Soviet enemy who attacked him last episode but one of the base’s airmen who, Leroy’s told “wanted to put a scare into a colored airman.” Later, Leroy visits the detained Sgt. Masters (Chad Rook), the man accused, and explains that he knows it wasn’t Masters who attacked him. Leroy says he recognized the Makarov PM Soviet gun that was pointed at him as being difficult to use, and that no regular American airman would’ve known how.

Leroy baits Masters into attempting to shoot him with the pistol and Masters proves he can’t cock it properly. Leroy tells General Shaw (James Remar) that Masters didn’t do it, despite his signed confession — prompting Shaw to confess the attack was a “test” that Leroy passed. This leads Shaw to let Leroy in on an even bigger top secret.

‘Come to Momma!’

Episode two delivered the second of two disturbing supernatural birth illusions created by the malevolent entity known as “It.” Though it’s been a few days (or weeks) since Ronnie last encountered the entity in the theater, It comes back to play as Ronnie’s lying under her bed sheets trying to sleep.

In the dark room, her bed starts beating like a heart before the sheets — which she can’t break out of — transmogrify into a veiny skin-like sac resembling an amniotic sac. A hysterical Ronnie finally breaks out and onto the floor before turning to find the sheets connecting to a monstrous looking female genitalia atop her bed. Connected to the “body” is the image of Ronnie’s dead mother.

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“You tore me apart, Ronnie,” says the creature. “You came out of me and ripped me right open. All I wanted was to hold my baby and you killed me.” The creature screams that Ronnie’s dad is going to be taken away and he’ll “fry,” prompting Ronnie to try to escape before realizing a disgusting-looking umbilical chord tethers her to the monster.

Just as the monster moves in closer to a screaming Ronnie, Hank and her grandmother walk in, causing the whole scene to vanish.

By the rule of threes, we must have at least one more disgusting birth scene before season’s end.

Pennywise’s Corn Flakes

Despite having already given her statement to police, Lilly is again brought in by Derry police and questioned by the chief, who threatens her with a return to Juniper Hill Asylum if she doesn’t tell him “the truth.” Lilly assures him she is but the chief continues pressing her, asking if she could be 100% sure that Hank hadn’t been at the theater. Under pressure, Lilly apparently says she can’t be and later that night Hank is arrested.

Though Lilly tells Ronnie her words were twisted, Hank’s arrest drives a wedge between the two recent friends. Unfortunately for Lilly, she ends up back at Juniper Hill by episode’s end anyway after the entity scares her at the grocery store by closing her in an aisle of pickle jars (a callback to her father’s death at the pickle jarring factory) containing her father’s head and other body parts that congeal into a “The Thing”-like monster of pickles and body parts.

Later, Mrs. Bainbridge drives her daughter back to the facility as Lilly sobs.

P.S. Did you catch the glimpse of the imaginary Pennywise’s Corn Flakes cereal boxes? He’s definitely clowning around, even if we’re not seeing the clown just yet.

Operation Precept

Back at the base, Shaw introduces Leroy to “Operation Precept,” a program aimed at finding a weapon buried beneath Derry that “generates debilitating fear in anyone who comes near it. In theory, it could scare a man badly enough to kill him where he stands,” says Shaw.

The base has been searching for this “thing,” by excavating in a wooded area of Derry, thanks to help from telepathic airman Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) — a name that any King fan will remember from his integral role in “The Shining.” Dick’s been using his abilities to locate the “weapon,” to little success but by episode’s end, the location of “something” is finally pinpointed and excavated.

A crane pulls up the mysterious object from the ground to reveal a vintage-looking vehicle filled with skeletons. “We’re close,” someone says, as credits roll.

Final thoughts

This week’s episode really helps viewers settle into the show’s rhythm, which feels not solely concerned with the whereabouts and shenanigans of the “It” entity. In fact, episode two might contain even fewer scares than the premiere, and yet, I didn’t find myself missing them as much as I thought I might.

The Austin Guzman-written/Andy Muschietti-directed episode does a great job of giving us more reasons to care about the characters we’ve already met while also introducing us to new faces and concepts. On its face, the idea of the U.S. military using the ancient evil beneath Derry as a “weapon” could be somewhat silly, but the execution makes it work. In last episode’s recap, I opined that the Air Force base plot was uninteresting but episode two now has me ready for more.

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Acting-wise, a special shoutout is due to Taylour Paige, Amanda Christine and Clara Stack, all three of whom add so much gravity and feeling to their characters. Paige’s uncertain and tentative Charlotte feels already knowable, while the younger girls, Christine and Stack, lead their scenes with wonderfully calibrated emotion, even in scenes requiring bigger performances.

I’m excited to see where episode three, and the rest of “It: Welcome to Derry” takes us, and for all the scares along the way.

Grade: A.

The next episode of “It: Welcome to Derry” airs November 9.

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

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