Note: The following story contains spoilers from “It: Welcome to Derry” Season 1 Episode 4.
“It: Welcome to Derry” Episode 4 started cracking open the whys of Pennywise’s chosen haunting grounds – but the only way to do that was for Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) to break one of his cardinal rules and go deep into someone’s head.
The latest episode of the HBO prequel series put Dick in a room with Taniel (Joshua Odjick) – a descendent of the people to first find Pennywise, fight the creature, and ultimately trap them in the area that would become Derry. Dick’s continued task from the military and General Shaw (James Remar) is to find the monster so they can weaponize it.
“He hates what he does to Taniel,” Chalk tells TheWrap. “If his grandmother’s Cardinal Rule is ‘never open the box,’ Part Two is ‘don’t be going in people’s heads and messing around.’ Like, don’t mess people up unless you’re in danger. And so to do that for the worst person that he’s met means he’s really in a bad place.”
Unfortunately, Dick does break the rule. The two are sat in a room together and Taniel refuses to give up any information despite Dick asking for what he wants the easy way. Using The Shining is a painful experience for the person it’s focused on but also the one wielding it. When Taniel doesn’t cooperate, Dick has to force his way into the boy’s mind but Chalk wanted to make sure the whys of this happening made sense.
“Respectfully, these two dudes are powerless,” Chalk said. “They don’t care about each other. They are props to each other’s game. They’re not going to work together because their plight’s not the same. I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t like this black guy who hates this indigenous guy for this white guy. That seems bats–t, that seems absurd. What I wanted it to be was I asked him to just tell me and he didn’t take me seriously. It’s not mean as much as it’s like, ‘I know you don’t think I can do what I can do, and I know you don’t understand how much pain this is going to cause both of us. But my man, like, we could be best friends or we can be enemies.’”
What Dick sees has a doubling effect on him. In Episode 3, he came face-to-faceish with Pennywise as the monster felt the man using The Shine to seek him out. Now, Dick is confronted by just how old, how powerful, how long, and how violently this thing has been roaming Derry and the only thing keeping it somewhat penned in are these “beacons” made from parts of the vessel It fell to Earth in initially. Chalk said this Pennywise lore dump alongside having seen the creature for the first time – albeit briefly – will affect him going into the back half of the season.
“It’s like, what becomes of a man who thinks he’s the most powerful person in his universe and then realizes he’s just a cog in the wheel,” Chalk said. “He discovers he’s not powerful in his military posts, because I mean how long is the general going to let this little black dude come around like ‘f–k you guys.’”
He finished: “I think Dick is faced with the many different things that are worse than death as the series continues. Because Pennywise is worse than death.”
