How 'It: Welcome to Derry' pulled off TV's biggest plot twist of the year!
This article contains spoilers for the first episode of “It: Welcome to Derry”
If you thought you knew where “It: Welcome to Derry” was going in its first episode, you were mistaken! Nothing is predictable in a town inhabited by Pennywise the Clown.
Episode one of the prequel series, based on Stephen King’s classic novel and recent film adaptations, seemed to be heading in a direction most audiences thought they understood.
The opening scene featured the terrifying disappearance of Matty (Miles Ekhardt) a lonely 12-year-old trying to hitchhike his way out of town when he gets picked up by the wrong car.
His friends, Lilly (Clara Stack), Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Susie (Matilda Legault) work together to try to find him, especially after Lilly experiences a disturbing message that he’s stuck in the sewers of Derry.
If you want to avoid spoilers, this is a good place to stop in the article.
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The adorable gang of kids seem like they’re going to the show’s main protagonists, like The Losers Club from the movies and book, as they search for Matty.
But after we spend the whole first episode really getting to know them, we lose about half of them to a flying demon-monster baby in a movie theater.
It was a shocking and brutal scene, taking out Teddy, Phil, and Phil’s little sister Susie, who wasn’t even supposed to be there, but had to tag along because her big brother was babysitting her.
Before the carnage, the kids watch a scene from the movie “The Music Man” on the big screen, featuring the song “Ya Got Trouble,” where they see Matty trapped in the film. After accusing his so-called friends of abandoning him, Matty gives a Pennywise-like smile and unleashes the flying demon-monster baby, the same creature that attacked him in the opening scene.
After the absolutely terrifying rampage from the creature, only Lilly and Ronnie are left standing.
It’s a huge bait and switch because we thought we were going to be watching these kids for all eight episodes.
"This is strategically a devastating event to set the audience into that sense of 'nothing is safe in this world.' We kind of trick the audience into thinking that these are the new Losers. Well, guess what? I guess they're all dead,” director Andy Muschietti told Entertainment Weekly.
Are Lilly and Ronnie our final girls for the rest of the episodes? It seems like more kids will unfortunately be pulled into the world, like Lilly’s friend Marge, a popularity-seeker, and Will Hanlon, son of Air Force Pilot Leroy Hanlon, who we meet in the first episode as well.
But who knows what other horrors Derry and “It” have in store over the coming weeks!
