Editorials
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: The Many Stephen King Connections & References in Episode One
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for It, It: Chapter Two, and It: Welcome to Derry.
Many Constant Readers believe that, despite publishing more than eighty titles in the last fifty years, Stephen King is actually writing a single, massive novel. His sprawling worlds may twist through a multitude of dimensions, but many of his most famous stories intersect through characters, locations, or events.
A tentpole of this expansive literary universe is Derry, Maine, home of the beloved Losers’ Club. First seen in King’s 1986 novel, It, the picturesque town also hides an ancient evil that emerges from slumber every twenty-seven years to feast on the fear of innocent children. Following the success of It and It: Chapter Two, director Andy Muschietti (along with co-creators Barbara Muschietti and Jason Fuchs) returns to this dangerous hamlet with the HBO series It: Welcome to Derry. Drawn from the novel’s terrifying Interludes, each season will explore an earlier cycle of the shapeshifting monster’s reign of terror while building out King’s frightening world.
Episode 1: “The Pilot” begins in the dead of winter. A down-on-his-luck boy named Matty (Miles Ekhardt) hitches a ride with a charming family, hoping to escape the dreaded town. While Matty’s time in this deceptive sedan will be shocking and brief, a radio announcement touts a more hopeful future. News of President John F. Kennedy positions this chapter in late 1961, two years before a time-traveling teacher will attempt to stop his assassination in King’s 11/22/63. Fans of the surprisingly romantic novel will remember that before Jake Epping tries to alter the future in Dallas, Texas, he will make a pivotal stop in Derry, crossing paths with Losers Richie Tozier and Beverly Marsh.
Unfortunately, we’re not likely to see this emotional cameo due to the altered cinematic timeline. King’s novel begins in 1957 with the adult sections set in 1985. Muschietti moves this timeline up considerably with the adult Losers’ Club reassembling in 2016 to continue battling the deadly clown they first met in 1988. The first season of It: Welcome to Derry is more likely to feature the parents of our favorite Losers than any of the Club members themselves.
But that doesn’t mean we won’t see any familiar faces. While reacquainting ourselves with the dangerous burg, we travel to the Derry Air Force Base to meet its newest airman. Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) has been stationed at DAFB after a tour of duty in the Korean War. Fans of the 2020 miniseries The Stand will recognize Adepo as cavalier musician Larry Underwood, while Constant Readers will see a more It-centric connection. Leroy is the grandfather of Losers’ Club historian Mike Hanlon, who stays behind to keep the watch. We catch a glimpse of an older, disillusioned Leroy (Steven Williams) instructing his grandson on the proper way to slaughter cattle in early scenes of Muschietti’s It. Here, he is an optimistic young husband and father embarking on a new adventure.
As the Major deplanes, his copilot laments their transfer to this tiny town, assuming a lack of nightclubs and decent Chinese restaurants. The latter is a reference to Jade of the Orient, the restaurant in which the adult Losers hold their reunion, while the former nods to the doomed Black Spot. A nightclub created for Black DAFB servicemen, King’s novel describes the fiery destruction of the venue at the hands of Derry’s KKK. Given the racism we see upon Major Hanlon’s arrival at the base, it’s likely we will see this harrowing Interlude play out in later episodes.
No It chapter would be complete without a group of brave kids, and the 1962 cycle does not disappoint. Rather than meet in the overgrown barrens, this generation of Derry teens has built a clubhouse in the abandoned Standpipe. Closed due to a series of tragic deaths, the town’s water tower will become the site of Loser Stan Uris’ encounter with Pennywise disguised as the ghosts of drowned children. In 1962, Terry Uris (Mikkal Karim Fidler) and his best friend Phil (Jack Molloy Legault) discuss their own strange experiences on the building’s upper balcony. We don’t yet know how Terry and Stan are related, but they belong to the same devout Jewish family and are both studying for their upcoming bar mitzvahs when they’re attacked by the sinister entity.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
In the wake of Matty’s disappearance, Terry befriends another outcast. Lilly (Clara Stack) is a Derry High student recovering from time spent in Juniper Hill. This hospital for the mentally ill is known for its barbaric treatments and will be the home of bully-turned-murderer Henry Bowers—along with many more unfortunate souls who populate the pages of King’s Maine novels. We learn that Lilly was sent there after her own father’s tragic death, a horrific accident at the local cannery. While trying to help with a mysterious malfunction, he was pulled into the gears of a powerful machine, where his body was torn apart and packaged into pickle jars. This gruesome ordeal is a direct nod to one of King’s most grisly stories, “The Mangler,” which features an industrial laundry press somehow possessed by a bloodthirsty demon.
Lilly references another of King’s stranger tales when she hears eerie sounds drifting out of her bathroom pipes. Peering into the empty tub, she spies human fingers poking out of the drain. Likely the appendages of Pennywise’s victims, this odd occurrence draws from “The Moving Finger,” an unnerving chapter in the author’s 1993 collection Nightmares & Dreamscapes. While using the bathroom, Howard Mitla is plagued by a gigantic finger poking out of his own sink drain, implying the existence of a gangly giant lurking somewhere in the plumbing of his urban apartment.
Like members of the future Losers’ Club, Terry, Phil, and Lilly are outcasts at Derry High School, home of the jovial Bert the Turtle. Dark Tower fans will recognize Maturin, one of twelve guardians defending the interdimensional Beams supporting the Tower that stands at the nexus of all known worlds. Said to have vomited up our universe, this enormous turtle is a reclusive spectator to the horrors unfolding in Derry, but it provides young Loser Bill Denbrough with the key to the evil clown’s undoing. Throughout King’s worlds, Maturin stands as a virtuous talisman and reminder that even in a town plagued by otherworldly evil, it’s still possible for goodness to prevail.
Of the three films that make up the Diabolical Trinity of classic religious horror films—Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973), and The Omen (1976)—The Omen is the most purely entertaining.
While Rosemary’s Baby digs into the societal shifts of the 60s and The Exorcist explores spiritual tensions between faith and doubt in an ever-shifting world, The Omen seems most interested in just telling a thrilling story. It achieves this by blending two major trends of the 1970s, the devil movie and the paranoid thriller, into one crackling adventure yarn. In the process, The Omen has sparked fear and curiosity about what could happen in the “end times” if such events are to occur.
After seeing The Exorcist, producer Harvey Bernhard contacted writer David Seltzer and said something along the lines of, “Hey, write me one of those.” Seltzer, having never read the Bible, thought it would be an interesting challenge, so, according to various interviews, he read the Bible and several commentaries in search of a story. Then he stumbled upon a passage in the book of Revelation, the image of a great Beast rising out of the sea, that sparked his imagination. In the commentaries, he found that the sea represented politics in some interpretations of the text, and he began building his story on that foundation.
Seltzer has told this story often, and I am inclined to believe him. However, from there, much of the theological-sounding lore of The Omen was created purely by Seltzer. Many of the ideas surrounding The Antichrist in the film appear to be drawn much more from the pop-eschatology sensation of the 1970s, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, than any Biblical source.
Lindsay’s book was the bestselling nonfiction book of the 1970s and re-popularized views of the “last days” that had been dying along with fundamentalism for decades, namely Dispensationalism, Millennialism, and the Pre-Tribulation Rapture. In dispensationalism, history is broken into several epochs of time (or dispensations) that culminate in the return of Christ and his thousand-year (millennial) reign.
Before this return, a seven-year Tribulation will occur in which the Antichrist comes to power and persecutes all who oppose him, culminating in a battle between the forces of good and evil at the valley of Megiddo, usually called Armageddon. Of course, in this worldview, the true believers in Jesus will be lifted out, or raptured, before all this takes place. Since the publication and popularity of The Late Great Planet Earth, this has been the prominent belief in Evangelical and Fundamentalist Christian circles, though Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and mainline Protestant denominations largely reject it.
Lindsay also did something unique that had not been the case even in dispensationalist circles before him—he posited that the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948 started the countdown to Armageddon. Fans of the film will immediately realize where Seltzer ran with this idea in the first line of the poem created for the movie: “When the Jews return to Zion…”
Damien Thorn and the Creation of Horror’s “Innocent Villain”
Seltzer’s next inspiration focused on the idea of the Antichrist as a child, what he would call the film’s “innocent villain.” In watching The Omen, it is readily apparent that Damien Thorn (Harvey Stephens) does not really do anything evil beyond a bit of normal kid mischief. Even the moment in which Damien knocks Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) over a second-floor railing can be read as an accident orchestrated by Damien’s diabolically connected nanny, Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The film takes this idea of the innocent villain a step further by casting Gregory Peck, best known for playing arguably the greatest father in film history, Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), as Damien’s earthly father, an element that greatly satisfied Seltzer.
The New Testament itself says very little about the Antichrist and certainly nothing about his childhood. In fact, the word antichrist is used twice (1 John 2:18 and 2 John 7 for the curious) and refers to groups of people, not a particular person. There is also a passage in 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 in which the writer (usually attributed to Paul) discusses “The Man of Lawlessness” who will “exalt himself over everything that is called God” and “proclaim himself to be God.”
Then there is the Beast of Revelation chapter 13 with “seven heads and ten horns” that Seltzer latched onto, which has been interpreted in a multitude of ways over the centuries. Powerful people throughout history, from Charlemagne, various Popes during the Protestant Reformation era, Napoleon and Hitler, to modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, have all had the label placed on them by various circles. Even religious leaders like Billy Graham have not escaped being called the Antichrist.
Lindsay and modern dispensationalists are certain the Antichrist will be a 21st-century individual as they are equally certain that the Rapture, Tribulation, and return of Christ are imminent, likely within their lifetime. Many scholars and theologians, however, interpret these passages as symbolic representations of the Roman Empire and the first-century Caesars who persecuted, tortured, and murdered Christians and Jews who refused to submit to Imperial rule and worship them as gods. For example, that the Beast from the sea in Revelation has seven heads is symbolic of the famous seven mountains of Rome, with the 10 horns referring to rulers and magistrates of the Empire.
But this is all really of no matter to Seltzer and the story of The Omen. Instead of being concerned with any historical or theological accuracy, he instead built his own lore, which sends Robert Thorn and photographer Keith Jennings (David Warner) on a globetrotting investigation into the nature of the Antichrist and how to stop him. Some of this lore includes the child being born of a jackal, the reaction of animals, the protective cult that arises around Damien, the daggers of Megiddo, and maybe most interesting of all, the peculiar flaws in Jennings’s photographs that presage the ways certain individuals will die.
All these aspects are where the paranoid thrillers come in, as films like Blow Up (1966), Z (1969), The Conversation (1974), The Parallax View (1974), 3 Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President’s Men (1976) were all the rage at the time. Especially in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the idea of journalists (like Jennings) as ordinary heroes who could bring down the powerful, nefarious forces in the world was exactly what audiences craved. And what greater hidden evil force was there than the Devil? This is also why the device of the daggers of Megiddo is so important to a movie like this. If Damien is indeed the Antichrist, there must be a way to stop him, though in the Biblical text, the only power capable of destroying the Devil is God Himself.
The Mark of the Beast, 666, and the Film’s Most Famous Religious Symbolism
The piece of lore created for the movie with the most solid Biblical grounding is the Mark of the Beast. Revelation describes a mark on the forehead or hand of those who worship the Beast and his image. Again, this is symbolic language differentiating those who belong to the power of the Roman Empire and those who belong to Christ, who have the Mark of the Lamb. In Seltzer’s hands, the mark is very literal, a birthmark that is borne by not only the Antichrist but all his followers, meaning they are marked from before birth as belonging to Satan, and there is no escaping it. This is all rather distressing to the priest Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), who betrays his mark by warning Thorn about Damien and pays the price by memorably being impaled by a spire that falls from a church steeple after being struck by lightning.
Why is the mark three sixes? Again, this is drawn from a passage in Revelation that states that the Beast can be identified by calculating his number. In Biblical scholarship, this is believed to be the sum of the name of a man transferred into Hebrew numerology, a practice in which each Hebrew letter also represents a number. Using this method, the number of the name Caesar Nero, which many believe to be the most logical choice, is six hundred sixty-six. In the film and elsewhere, this number is changed to three individual sixes. According to the film, this represents the Diabolical Trinity (a designation also unique to the film) made up of Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. That Damien carries this unique birthmark under his hair convinces Robert that the child is the Antichrist, and it’s up to him to destroy him.
Part of what makes The Omen great is its ambiguity. Damien could be the Antichrist, or he could be at the center of a series of coincidences. Director Richard Donner stated in interviews that he believed Robert Thorn had gone insane by the end of the film, which, to Donner, is the only explanation for why Thorn would attempt to kill an innocent child. However, that enigmatic smile in the final shot suggests that Damien does embody a spirit of great evil. The sequels, however, all but erase this ambiguity.
In audiences, The Omen sparked a renewed interest in the concept of the Antichrist and the dispensationalist interpretation of the end times that continues to echo throughout the last five decades. Around the time of the film’s release, even Elvis Presley was photographed brandishing a paperback copy of Seltzer’s novelization. Dispensationalist authors like Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and John Hagee have made millions publishing books and giving lectures about the Antichrist and the end of the world.
The Legacy of The Omen, 50 Years Later
Though A Thief in the Night (1972) preceded The Omen in initial release, it gained quite a resurgence (along with the ability to create three sequels) in the wake of the popularity of The Omen and went on to scar the psyches of Evangelical children for decades. Hal Lindsay was also able to release a film version of The Late Great Planet Earth in 1978, complete with narration and a brief onscreen appearance from Orson Welles.
In the 1990s, the Left Behind series became a cultural phenomenon, spawning twelve books in the core series, a YA spinoff series, video games, and a movie series (2000-2005) starring Kirk Cameron. A bigger studio adaptation of the first book was released in 2014, starring Nicolas Cage. 20th Century Fox and The Omen got in on the renewed “end-of-the-world” vigor by releasing a remake of the original film on June 6, 2006. The franchise was revived once again in 2024 with The First Omen, which explores ideas of the Antichrist and the motivations of those in power in our current religious, social, and political context.
But despite all the sequels, spinoffs, rip-offs, remakes, and “end times” money grabs of the last 50 years, the original version of The Omen remains untouchable. Its greatest strength is that it seeks, first and foremost, to entertain. And it does so admirably.
After half a century, its influence can be felt in horror, the culture at large, and even in various faith circles. It is a testament to the power of story and film that, consciously or unconsciously, fans of The Omen and those who have never seen it alike are, to this very day, marked by the Beast.
You must be logged in to post a comment.