Editorials
‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Explained: The Many Stephen King Connections & References in Episode Four
WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for episode four of It: Welcome to Derry.
As we near the midpoint of It: Welcome to Derry season one, the lore deepens and fan favorite characters begin coming together. Episode four, “The Great Swirling Apparatus of Our Planet’s Function,” not only provides an origin story for the titular monster but also marks the appearance of a prominent canon location. The sprawling story of Stephen King‘s 1986 source material, It, is punctuated by a series of Interludes chronicling earlier cycles of the monster’s destruction compiled by librarian, town historian, and Losers’ Club member Mike Hanlon.
It: Welcome to Derry brings these disturbing tales to life, promising future seasons that will explore the grisly Bradley Gang massacre and the Kitchener Ironworks explosions, both depicted in the show’s eerie opening sequence. While it remains to be seen if we’ll get to see the gruesome ax murder at The Sleepy Silver Dollar, series creator Andy Muschietti‘s first season will center the fire at the Black Spot.
As payment for his extraordinary service, airman Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) is granted use of a decommissioned storage building several miles away from the barracks. Unable to relax in the informally segregated town, the base’s Black servicemen hope to turn the place into a nightclub similar to the one seen in Ryan Coogler‘s 2025 film Sinners. For now, the Black Spot is simply a building with a lot of promise, but a Danger sign on the surrounding gate hints at the horrors of King’s second Interlude. Set during the Great Depression (see Muscietti’s altered timeline explained in our recap of episode one), the men of Derry’s all-Black Company E suffer horrific acts of racist abuse, but find refuge in this exclusive club, which eventually features food, liquor, and live music. As the Black Spot grows in popularity, it attracts the attention of local racists who belong to the Derry chapter of The Maine Legion of White Decency, aka the Ku Klux Klan.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
On a busy Saturday night, a handful of hooded men creep out of the woods with gasoline and torches, then set the crowded building ablaze. With music blaring, the two or three hundred patrons don’t immediately notice the fire, and most become trapped inside. While some do manage to escape, including Mike’s father Will Hanlon and fellow serviceman Dick Hallorann, this hate crime kills around eighty people, a final sacrifice that concludes It’s 1930 cycle of death. Considering the racial tensions we’ve seen on the base, we’re likely to see this deadly episode play out in future episodes.
Despite this looming horror, the Black Spot we see in episode four is still just a dusty storage shed in need of renovation. While Dick and his friends begin this work, Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) arrives demanding information about the mysterious Operation Precept. Hours before their angry encounter, Leroy is fishing with his son Will (Blake Cameron James) when he steps away to retrieve supplies. Standing alone in the water, Will notices a strangely friendly fish with orange and white stripes similar to the white clown suit and orange pompoms worn by Pennywise the Dancing Clown (Bill Skarsgård). When Will bends over for a closer look, a hand reaches out of the water and pulls him under. Drifting up from the river’s impossible depths is the charred corpse of his father. With glazed eyes, the ghoul moans an ominous warning: “You’ll burn too.” While obviously a nod to the murderous clown’s chilling catch phrase, “you’ll float too,” this variation hints at Will’s own demise—in Muscietti’s version of the story.
The Will Hanlon we meet in King’s original novel is a successful farmer and loving father who helps his son navigate the treacherous town. In fact, it’s Will who recounts the story of the Black Spot as he lies in a hospital bed dying of cancer. But Muschietti’s 2017 adaptation, It, introduces us to an altogether different Hanlon family. This Leroy (Steven Williams) is a surly cattle farmer, and Mike (Chosen Jacobs) is a lonely orphan, his parents having died in a house fire when he was a child. Not only did Mike witness Will’s horrific death, but he must ignore vicious and racist rumors that the fire was caused by careless drug use. It: Welcome to Derry may provide more information about this tragic event, but for now, Will’s ominous river vision stands as a premonition of his untimely end.
While Leroy struggles to understand the town’s sinister secrets, Dick continues his mission to locate the dangerous entity. This time, he’s tasked with interrogating Taniel (Joshua Odjick), a member of the town’s indigenous community who’s been monitoring the military excavation. Reluctant to proceed, Dick begs the young man to share information, warning that what follows will not be pleasant. When Taniel refuses, Dick uses his telepathic talent to enter Taniel’s mind and finds himself surrounded by a metaphysical circle of backlit doors. He opens one into a memory of the young man’s past and a detailed description of the tribe’s closely guarded secret.
While none of King’s works show Dick wielding this invasive skill, it’s a curious facet of the psychic ability known as the shining, most prominently seen in Doctor Sleep. This 2013 sequel to King’s 1977 novel follows a similarly gifted girl named Abra Stone who is hunted by a team of energy vampires led by the sinister Rose the Hat. Using her own shine, Rose mentally travels across the country to infiltrate Abra’s consciousness and search through metaphysical file cabinets, each filled with the girl’s accumulated memories.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Though reluctant to enter Taniel’s mind, Dick’s mission is ultimately successful. In a conversation with his aunt Rose (Kimberly Guerrero), a young Taniel (Tres Garcia) explains Its origins. We learn that long before the dawn of man, a falling star crashed into the land that would eventually be known as Derry. Cracking open, this fallen star released a dangerous monster capable of taking the shape of its prey’s greatest fear. Remnants of the meteoroid formed the stalagmite-like nest at the center of Pennywise’s lair, and pieces of its jagged shards can be used to subdue the beast. While King’s source material describes a cataclysmic asteroid crashing into the rural landscape, possibly coming from Todash Space (described in our recap of episode three), most of this origin stems from Muschietti’s 2019 conclusion, It: Chapter Two. In order to defeat this otherworldly beast, Mike gathers information from local tribal leaders about the dangerous Ritual of Chüd, said to counteract Its manipulative power.
Along with this secret revelation, Dick also forces Taniel to reveal the location of the entity’s nest: the dreaded house on Neibolt Street. We first encounter this rundown structure when Loser Eddie Kaspbrak is menaced by a lecherous leper who slowly transforms into the sinister clown. Muschietti makes extensive use of the terrifying locale, known as the Well House, in his adaptations, positioning it as a gateway into the realm of It. Terrifying visions and unsuspecting monsters litter the dilapidated rooms, protecting the monster’s inner sanctum. This ominous cliffhanger all but guarantees we’ll soon return to the nightmarish house on Neibolt Street.
Photograph by Brooke Palmer/HBO
Editorials
Before ‘The Odyssey’ There Was ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ and Ray Harryhausen’s Legendary Monsters
Greek mythology is the talk of the town, or at least of the internet at the moment, and with good reason. Christopher Nolan’s retelling of Homer’s The Odyssey opened this weekend in theaters and, as of this writing, is on track to rake in $120 million in the U.S. and $250 million worldwide.
That’s quite a feat for an R-rated sword and sandal epic based on a story that was first put to papyrus over 3,000 years ago. Of course, mythology has been a film standard practically since the beginning of the medium and has proven to be fertile ground for storytellers. One of the great tellers of these tales is not a writer or director but an innovative special effects master and producer, Ray Harryhausen, and among his greatest achievements is Jason and the Argonauts (1963).
The story of Jason and the quest for the golden fleece predates the Homeric period by a generation or two, and there are certainly similarities to the later works, specifically The Odyssey. Both are seafaring adventures captained by men of both strength and wit. Their crews are filled with colorful characters as well, including Hercules and Argos in the Jason tales and Eurylochus and Polites among Odysseus’s men. Both encounter the beautiful and bizarre on their journeys. The major differences are in tone and theme. The Odyssey is a more contemplative piece about men of war finding it is practically impossible to truly return home.
Jason and the Argonauts, especially in the hands of Harryhausen, producer Charles H. Schneer, director Don Chaffey, and writers Beverly Cross and Jan Read, is a tale of adventure, romance, betrayal, gods, and perhaps above all—monsters.
Strictly speaking, nearly all the Harryhausen films are fantasy films, but all are filled with some of the most incredible monster creations in all of cinema. Telling mythological stories was a way of making monster movies that parents would not object to their children seeing. That whiff of the movie-going experience being educational gave him license to bring to life dozens of indelible creations, starting with The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958 all the way to Clash of the Titans in 1981. So, rather than spoil the story of Jason and the Argonauts, I will be focusing on its main attraction, its unforgettable monstrosities.
Talos: The Bronze Giant That Changed Movie Monsters
After Jason (Todd Armstrong) and his crew set off on their quest aboard the Argo, they quickly find themselves running out of food and water. Calling upon the help of his protector Hera, Queen of the Gods (Honor Blackman), Jason is guided to the Island of Bronze but warned not to take anything from the island but food and water. While chasing a herd of goats, unlikely pals Hercules (Nigel Green) and Hylas (John Cairney) discover the gargantuan bronze statues of the gods and Titans created by the long-departed Hephaestus.
In the base of the statue of Talos, they discover the treasure trove of the gods, and Hercules decides to take a giant golden needle that he intends to use as a javelin. Of course, this awakens Talos, who pursues them back to the Argo.
Talos was one of Harryhausen’s favorite creations, and he reveled in giving life to the stiff movements of the man of bronze. In one sequence, Talos blocks the narrow waterway that is the only means of escape and plucks the Argo out of the sea as though it were a toy, shaking the crew overboard and breaking the mast in two. Jason once again asks Hera for help, and she advises him to “look to the ankles” of the statue. He spots a kind of hatch on the heel of the giant and, after much struggle, removes it, releasing a flow of steaming liquid that is apparently the driving force of Talos, who weakens, cracks, and falls to the beach, breaking into pieces.
Echoes of this scene can be found in all kinds of stories from Achilles’ heel to the small vulnerable spot on Smaug’s belly in The Hobbit, to tangling the legs of the Imperial AT-AT’s in The Empire Strikes Back. Even the Death Star has a touch of Talos to it.
Harryhausen’s Harpies and Hydra Bring Ancient Myth to Life
Next, the Argonauts encounter the old man Phineas, played by Patrick Troughton of Dr. Who (he played the Second Doctor) and The Omen (1976) fame. As punishment for sins that go unnamed in the film, Zeus torments Phineas day and night with harpies who steal his food and leave him only scraps.
The harpies are flying, blue, rather demonic-looking creatures complete with bat wings and horns. They look something like living gargoyles and are masterworks by Harryhausen. The crew lures them into the ruins of a temple and covers the entire structure with a net before releasing the top and snaring the harpies. The stop-motion work in this sequence is some of the best Harryhausen ever created and is seamlessly placed into frame with the live-action elements, as was among Harryhausen’s greatest strengths.
The special effects of the film use every tool available at the time, as demonstrated by the next major effects sequence, “the clashing rocks.” The sequence utilizes stop motion, miniatures, rear projection, location and stage work with the actors all blended together, sometimes into a single shot. The clashing rocks are more-or-less a rock slide, but combined with the destruction of a different ship that tries to make passage between the rocks and the knowledge that Hera is now forbidden to interfere with Jason’s fate, real stakes are afforded to the scene. Hera pulls a fast one on Zeus (Niall MacGinnis), however, which allows Triton, king of the Mer-people, to rise from the sea and stabilize the rocks, giving the Argo safe passage.
The crew then rescues Medea (Nancy Kovack) and heads to their final destination, Colchis at the end of the world, where Jason and the Argonauts are welcomed by King Aeetes (Jack Gwillim). Eventually, after a betrayal and turn of events, Jason finds the golden fleece, which is guarded by another great Harryhausen monster, the Hydra, a multi-headed serpent. The most famous aspect of the Hydra, growing back two heads for every one cut off, is not depicted here, but the sequence is still harrowing.
Jason fights the dragon with his sword and at one point is wrapped in its tail, depicting Harryhausen’s love of intercutting and interrelating his stop-motion creations with actors and other live-action elements. The sequence also demonstrates that the artistry of Harryhausen and the craftspeople in his workshop was not limited to fantasy creatures; they were also masters of recreating believable human figures.
Why Harryhausen’s Monsters Still Feel Alive
Perhaps the most famous Harryhausen creation, the one that has had the greatest lasting influence, is what is called in the film the “children of the hydra’s teeth” and the “children of the night” by Aeetes, who calls on the goddess of darkness Hecate to bring them to him. Fire rains down from the sky and reduces the hydra to a skeleton. Aeetes orders his men to gather its teeth, which he collects in a helmet and, cornering Jason and his men, sows on the ground like seeds. Reanimated skeletons of dead soldiers rise up out of the ground and attack the Argonauts in what is certainly one of the most iconic sequences in all of fantasy cinema.
It is an expansion of a similar scene in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in which the fearless sailor fights a single skeleton, but this time there are more than half a dozen reanimated warriors complete with the famous “Harryhausen brow,” in which the empty eye sockets are given a sinister frown. Even today, the sequence is thrilling. Though our technology has given us tools that look more realistic, there is a magic in stop-motion that remains unmatched despite all our advances in CGI.
This sequence has directly influenced many movies over the years, but for the horror crowd, the clearest examples are Freddy’s skeleton fighting Donald Thompson (John Saxon) in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987) and the deadite army in Army of Darkness (1992). The animators even included the slouch of the “children of the hydra’s teeth” in the Nightmare 3 scene, and Sam Raimi insisted the Army of Darkness skeletons all have the Harryhausen brow.
Beyond these films, Harryhausen’s work has had a massive influence on horror, fantasy, and science fiction films for decades, while also making an indelible mark on popular culture at large. Among his acolytes are stop motion genius Phil Tippett, and filmmakers including Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, Peter Jackson, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, John Milius, Don Coscarelli, and many others. The fingerprints of Harryhausen can in many ways be seen even in Nolan’s The Odyssey, which relies on tricks from throughout film history rather than only more recent innovations like CGI.
Above all, Harryhausen was a storyteller who sought to make audiences fall in love with the great adventure stories that have been with us for thousands of years. These stories speak to the heart of our humanity in ways that will always feel fresh when told in innovative ways. Harryhausen also always had in him the true joy of creation. Bringing his monsters to life was a long, sometimes tedious, process, but Harryhausen clearly understood that all that time and attention to detail would imbue every creation with humanity that cannot be replicated by taking the easy way around.
Despite the limitations of budget, star power, and other resources that his films often lacked, that love of storytelling always shone through. Perhaps that is why his creations endure along with the kinds of ancient stories he so loved to tell.
At their heart, they are one thing above all—deeply and undeniably human.
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