Pennywise's Transformation In It: Welcome To Derry Episode 2 Is The Grossest Yet
Contains spoilers for "It: Welcome to Derry" Season 1, Episode 2 — "The Thing in the Dark"
"It: Welcome to Derry" features an abundance of horrifying scenes, but Pennywise's (Bill Skarsgård) transformation in the second episode titled "The Thing in the Dark" delivers in both the gruesome and gross departments. You can't help but feel sorry for Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack) as she experiences the cruelness of this malevolent entity once again.
In the first episode of the show, Lilly revealed that her father worked at a jarring plant. After she visited him at work one day, she lost her mood ring, so her father went back to get it for her. A work colleague's machine jammed up, so Lilly's father offered his assistance. He climbed into the gears, but the power didn't turn off properly. While Lilly doesn't explicitly say what happened, one can imagine his death was brutal.
Some cruel kids at school taunt Lilly by putting pickle jars in her locker, mocking how each one contains parts of her father. It's this vulnerability that It uses as bleak inspiration after Lilly heads to the grocery store in "The Thing in the Dark." The aisles turn into a maze as Lilly finds herself trapped in the pickle jar corner. One of the jars speaks to her, as Lilly recognizes it holds a piece of her father (voiced here by Andrew Morgado). Eventually, the jars fall to the floor and break, as parts of Lilly's father merge together into an octopus-like creature. The thing scurries over to Lilly's face, begging for a kiss. Eventually, Lilly frees herself from this It-created hallucination, only to be blamed for the real broken jars in the store.
Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise doesn't feature much yet, but his various forms do
Anyone who has watched the first two episodes of "It: Welcome to Derry" might be asking the big question: Where is that horrid clown? Bill Skarsgård's Pennywise doesn't physically feature, but the presence of the evil entity remains felt throughout. All the fear-induced hallucinations are a result of It, who can take many forms and isn't relegated to only playing Bozo the Clown's creepy, balloon-loving cousin.
"It is a shapeshifting creature, and in the movies there's only so much space to see those non-Pennywise manifestations," series co-creator Jason Fuchs told Entertainment Weekly. In other words, hang on tight to see Pennywise in later episodes.
Fuchs is right, though. "It: Welcome to Derry" is supposed to be about the origins and dark history of Pennywise, aka It, so the show should be more about what It can do. It offers the chance for viewers to experience more of these ghastly transformations, such as the weird bat baby or the remains of Lilly's father. These manifestations add another level of fear to It beyond the creature becoming the worst nightmare of anyone who has coulrophobia (yup, that's the phobia of clowns). So, while Skarsgård's Pennywise is It's most popular form, the clown is far from the scariest manifestation in this era of Derry.