Editorials
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: The Many Stephen King Connections & References in Episode Six
WARNING: The Following contains major spoilers for It: Welcome to Derry episode six.
As we near the first season finale of It: Welcome to Derry, classic references to Stephen King’s 1986 novel abound. Episode 6, “In the Name of the Father,” sees the 1962 version of the Losers’ Club begin to solidify, placing these likeable characters in imminent danger.
While chatting with Marge (Matilda Lawler) at their Standpipe clubhouse, Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) launches a Balso Wood Glider from the observation deck, hoping to land it on Main Street. Though the toy aircraft does manage to catch the breeze, it coasts into an open sewer hole, alluding to the horrific death of young Georgie Denbrough. It begins with the doomed young child playing in the rain as his own paper sailboat careens through the bars of a sewer grate. Moments later, he’s murdered by a subterranean clown while negotiating for the toy’s return. Does this loss mean Rich is marked for death, or is it just another example of Derry’s curse?
While Marge and Rich commiserate in the lunchroom, we learn that they’ve both been hearing voices drifting out of their bathroom drains, similar to those heard by future Loser Beverly Marsh. This encounter will also see Marge firmly reject a place in the popular crowd and embrace her status as a “freak” … or Loser. As the cruel Patty Cakes mock a table full of students, Marge rips off the bandage covering her gruesome eye injury and insists that she is one of them. Just moments before, an auspicious gift has aligned her with one of King’s most beloved protagonists. After their touching Standpipe conversation, Rich has brought Marge an eyepatch to cover her extensive scars.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Wearing it, she resembles Nick Andros, a founding member of the Boulder Free Zone in King’s apocalyptic novel The Stand. As the world falls to a deadly virus, Nick is attacked by a bully hailing from Shoyo, Arkansas. Angry and frightened, Ray Booth attempts to gouge out his eye, leaving the already deaf and mute man nearly blind as well. Nick wears an eye patch for the remainder of the novel, somehow adding to his understated charisma. By donning this iconic accessory, Marge seems to adopt his air of unexpected leadership.
As the children become more connected, Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) moves in the opposite direction. Still reeling from his time in the sewers, he’s uncharacteristically surly and cruel. When Leroy (Jovan Adepo) consults the airman about the dangerous mission, Hallorann explains his recent malaise, detailing his childhood experiences with the Shining and his grandmother’s trick for locking bad spirits away. He explains that Pennywise was able to somehow pry the lid off of his mental lockbox, releasing decades of frightening ghosts.
What’s more, Hallorann is now plagued with visions of the dead and worries that they will notice him, mentioning the dreadful things they know. (This unnerving tidbit nods to disturbing information weaponized by those resurrected in the burial ground beyond the dreaded Pet Sematary, detailed in King’s nerve-shattering novel.) Jaime Conklin, the teen protagonist of King’s 2021 supernatural crime thriller Later, also struggles with the terrible affliction, but Hallorann’s current pain foreshadows the Danny Torrance we see in the 2013 novel Doctor Sleep.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Hallorran first meets the psychically gifted boy while serving as head chef of the infamous Overlook Hotel, months before the child is nearly killed by his possessed father, Jack. As an adult, Danny struggles to overcome this acute trauma while contending with constant visions of the dead. He’s particularly haunted by the ghost of a little boy he left unsupervised in a drug-filled apartment, a shameful memory he tries to suppress with substance abuse. Surrounded by his own disturbing specters, Hallorann seems similarly poised to erase his terror with alcohol.
This tension arises as Charlotte (Taylour Paige) attempts to hide the fugitive Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) in a back room of the Black Spot lounge. Now open to Black servicemen stationed at the Derry Air Force Base and their invited guests, this makeshift speakeasy has attracted the attention of local racists thanks to an anonymous tip as to Hank’s location. While discussing their search, these dangerous men mention scouring the local railroad tracks where future Losers’ Club member Eddie Kaspbrak will one day encounter a solicitous leper. Pennywise later uses this frightening apparition to terrorize the boy outside the infamous house on Neibolt Street. They gather at the Derry Public Library, where the adult Losers will strategize after reuniting in the modern cycle.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Though we don’t yet know who placed the anonymous tip, all signs point to Ingrid Kersh (Madeleine Stowe), who takes a decidedly villainous turn. Desperate for kindness, Lilly (Clara Stack) enters the woman’s home and wanders up to her cluttered attic. A familiar clown suit sits by a sewing machine, and a framed photograph of Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) leans against the wall. But most damning is a book of family Memories, similar to those mentioned in King’s source material. While flipping through a photo album, Loser Bill Denbrough watches images suddenly jump to life, the jagged paper slicing into his fingers. Lilly’s digits remain intact, but the pages she turns contain a series of damning revelations.
As Ingrid approaches behind her, we recognize a black and white photo of a man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Pennywise himself, posing with a younger Ingrid. Eagle-eyed viewers will remember this photo from Andy Muschietti’s It: Chapter Two and a harrowing interaction with the elderly Mrs. Kersh (Joan Gregson). Fleeing the monstrous woman, Beverly walks in on the strangely sinister man removing his heavy clown makeup. King’s novel identifies him as Robert Gray, “fadder” to the monstrous Mrs. Kersh, but remains vague about his position in the story.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Muschietti adds crucial information to this shadowy character as Ingrid explains her father’s disappearance. While she stops short of identifying him as Robert Gray, we learn that he was a circus performer who disappeared during the 1908 cycle, and she has spent decades trying to bring him home. Flashbacks to 1935 bookend the episode as a younger Mrs. Kersh leads a little girl to a clandestine meeting with the sinister entity. Sensing an opportunity, It appears as Gray, recreating Bev’s disturbing intrusion. Ingrid falls for this dangerous trick, though the results of their meeting remain unclear.
Spying a familiar costume and wig, we learn that Mrs. Kersh was once part of her father’s act, a clown performer known as Periwinkle. We first noticed her near the freak show tent in episode three, and she’s the clown photographed near the shadowy crypt in episode four. Determined to connect with her long-lost “fadder,” Ingrid has been donning her Periwinkle costume and terrorizing the town’s children. But this revelation raises further questions about Ingrid’s age and humanity. Had she been old enough to perform in 1908, she would have been nearing seventy years old in the 1962 cycle. Perhaps it’s more likely that she now exists as a supernatural element of Pennywise’s arsenal, infiltrating the town to procure future prey. The episode ends with the mysterious woman donning her sinister costume, promising answers to these questions in the next chapter.
For more on It:Welcome to Derry, check out episode by episode coverage from Bloody FM’s The Losers’ Club: A Stephen King Podcast.
Photograph by HBO
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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