Spoilers below for anyone who hasn’t yet watched the third episode of IT: Welcome to Derry on HBO or via HBO Max subscription, so be warned!
More IT: Welcome To Derry Easter Eggs
After giving fans an early streaming release for Halloween, IT: Welcome to Derry reverted back to its regular Sunday-night schedule for Episode 3, titled “Now You See It” In this time-jumping doozy of an installment, the story veers into the shared histories of James Remar’s Francis Shaw and Kimberly Norris Guerrero’s Rose, which will no doubt have ramifications on the show’s current-day timeline. Predictably, the episode delivered a variety of easter eggs referencing both this fictional universe and Stephen King’s overall oeuvre.
As we’ve done in past weeks, we’re rounding up all the coolest, weirdest, and most interesting nods and callbacks to the King of Horror’s fictional creations. So without any further 27-year-long delays, let’s jump back to 1908.
1908 Will Theoretically Be When Season 3 Is Set
Though the live-action timeline differs from Stephen King’s novel in many ways, I’m assuming this Derry’s 1908 cycle of evil will be when viewers see the horrifying Easter events that go down (or up?) at Kitchener Ironworks, as hinted at in the animated opening. This point in the town’s history would presumably be when Season 3 would be set in the co-creators’ three-season plan to go backwards in time.
A Traveling Carnival Of King-Centric Concepts
The episode opens with the kind of traveling sideshow that has been all but eradicated over time, and it’s the kind of reality-skewing entertainment spectacle that Stephen King has showcased in works such as Revival, Bag of Bones, Thinner, The Dead Zone and more, with Joyland being the epitome of the author’s amusement park fiction. But there are some other familiar tropes and ideas on display as well, such as:
- Twins – Though the Lee Twins depicted here aren’t a specific reference, The Shining’s Grady Twins are among the most famous identical siblings in horror, and King has featured twin characters and references to twins in a slew of his stories and novels. More to this point, Black House features the conjoined Neary twins as two of that universe’s villains.
- Bujok The Mystical Wonder – This isn’t a narrative-based nod, but is very likely a reference to IT: Welcome to Derry’s camera tech Matt Bujok, who previously worked with Andy Muschietti & Co. on It: Chapter Two.
- Clowns And Turtle Targets – Clowns are quite often the knock-down targets for carnival games, but the addition of turtle targets is right in line with this world.
- Clown holding red balloons – Francis sees an initially ominous female clown with white facepaint who looks slightly Pennywise-esque, but doesn’t seem to be a harbinger of evil, even if she’s holding something mysterious.
The Almighty Slingshot
One of the key weapons within the IT universe that has successfully been utilized to harm the ancient entity, the slingshot is most commonly associated with silver and the Loser’s Club battles. Here, though, it’s first brought into the story as a point-of-focus carnival prize that Francis Shaw trades to Rose for water, and one she later uses to attack the monster before it feasts on Francis.
Van Helden Rubbing Alcohol
Lilly brings Ronnie a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nurse’s office to help get the locker paint off of her hands, and there’s a specific insert shot of the bottle, revealing it to be “Van Helden” branded. Within this very series, Danielle Van Helden is an 8-year-old girl who disappeared in May 1961, which can’t be a coincidence, right? Right. Because it’s also the name of the show’s art director, without the surname spacing.
The Bradley Gang’s Cadillac
The military confirmed that the unearthed vehicle was indeed from the Bradley Gang Massacre that went down in Derry’s streets back in 1935. As hinted at in the perfecto opening titles, Derry’s residents weren’t the only ones who filled the car and gang with bullets. According to Col. Fuller:
“Eyewitness reports at the time suggest sightings of the entity in one of its forms.”
It’s not a good enough finding for General Shaw, though, indicating there are even bigger connections to the evil out there below the ground.
Dick Hallorann’s Shine Shows Him The Deadlights And Pennywise’s Wagon
A variant of the character in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Chris Chalk’s Dick Hallorann’s first full-blown shine took him into the sewers where Derry’s evil keeps his many victims floating. There, he caught sight of Pennywise the Dancing Clown’s traveling wagon, which opened up to reveal a pair of haunting deadlights, as Bill Skarsgärd’s voice can finally be heard saying: “Who are you?”
Dick Sees His Grandmother Rose Hallorann (Sorta)
As Dick is looking up in shock at all of the bodies floating around in the standpipe, one floats down to give him a freaky warning. Because he calls her “Grandma,” it seems clear that he’s seeing his shine-addled grandmother Rose Hallorann, whom he talked to Danny about his history with in Doctor Sleep.
More Pop Culture Hints About Alien Threats
Similar to other sci-fi movie posters that have popped up on this show, the poster for 1954’s Killers From Space on the side of the desk in Secondhand Rose seems to be another winking nod to Derry’s extraterrestrial threat.
Derry’s Preternatural Effect On Memories
For all that Francis Shaw was lying to his childhood friend Rose about why the military is so interested in Derry, he did seem to be telling the truth about not remembering her or Derry in the many years that he was away from it. Of course, we know all about how Derry only manages to stick around in the minds of those who remain anchored there, while those lucky enough to escape are no longer haunted by their experiences. At least until they come back.
Escaping IT Via Bicycle
The episode’s cemetery-set climax for its younger characters, which li’l loverboy Rich set up under false pretenses, culminated with the four students racing away from a variety of limp-popping ghouls that appear to be the friends who were attacked in the movie theater in the premiere. It’s a weird-looking scene that appears to have been filmed entirely via green-screen, and I can’t properbly believe anything that happened with that camera. But the point here is that protagonists hauling ass on bikes away from Derry’s evil mirrors the way Bill saved Richie from almost certain death biking away from the house on Niebolt St. None of the kids bikes seem to have names, but at least ONE of them needs to be revealed as Bill’s eventual bike Silver.
“It’s A Clown”
The last line of this IT: Welcome to Derry episode is another tantalizing breadcrumb for viewers to nibble on as we wait for our first all-out reveal of Bill Skarsgärd’s Pennywise. After hearing him in Dick’s vision, viewers can catch sight of the spooky entity in the photo that Will took inside of the crypt.
Did I miss anything in tonight’s episode? Let us know, and don’t forget to tune in next week when IT: Welcome to Derry‘s fourth episode hits HBO and HBO Max at 9:00 p.m. ET, and get pumped about all the other upcoming horror TV shows on the way.