There’s something profoundly unsettling about watching a carnival from 1908 bleed into the paranoia of 1962 Cold War America. Episode 3 of IT: Welcome to Derry, aptly titled “Now You See It,” does exactly that—it asks us to consider not just what lurks beneath Derry’s surface, but how the sins and fears of the past inevitably shape the terrors of the present. After finishing this episode, I found myself thinking less about the jump scares and more about the weight of memory, trauma, and how easily we convince ourselves we’ve escaped our demons when they’ve simply been waiting.
The Architecture of Memory: Episode Structure and Storytelling
What struck me most about “Now You See It” was its narrative ambition. The episode opens with a flashback to 1908, following young Francis Shaw through a nightmarish carnival fun house. This isn’t just atmospheric window dressing—it’s the show establishing its core thesis about Derry itself. That slingshot Shaw’s father wins him, the one he trades to young Rose for water, becomes a thread connecting past to present, innocence to corruption. By the time we see the adult General Shaw (James Remar) wielding that same slingshot’s significance decades later, the episode has already taught us something crucial: in Derry, nothing is ever truly left behind.
The episode masterfully juggles three distinct storylines without losing coherence. We have General Shaw pushing forward with his increasingly desperate military operation, ordering an aerial search with Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk), Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), and Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso). Simultaneously, Rose attends a tribal meeting about the military’s presence in Derry—a meeting that crackles with tension about sacred grounds being violated. And then there’s our young would-be Losers Club 2.0: Ronnie (Amanda Christine), Lilly (Clara Stack), Will (Blake Cameron James), and Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) attempting to photograph an Orixá in a cemetery.
What makes this juggling act work is that each storyline explores the same thematic territory from different angles: the struggle to make the invisible visible, to prove what everyone else refuses to see.
The Weight of What We Carry: Character Deep Dives
General Francis Shaw: The Military Man Haunted by Childhood
James Remar brings a fascinating brittleness to General Shaw. Here’s a man who left Derry as a boy, whose memories have faded with distance—exactly as IT intends. But something still gnaws at him, some half-remembered terror that’s morphed into military obsession. The show reveals that Shaw’s entire operation isn’t just about winning the Cold War; it’s about unfinished business from his youth, about that moment in the woods when young Rose saved him from something he can barely remember but can’t forget.
Remar plays Shaw with the kind of rigid authority that barely conceals deep uncertainty. When he reconnects with Rose in the present day, you can see the recognition in his eyes—not just of her, but of his own fear. The tragedy of Shaw is that he thinks he’s hunting a weapon, when really he’s hunting the explanation for a trauma he’s spent his whole life trying to rationalize. His character embodies one of the episode’s central questions: What happens when you try to weaponize what should be understood, or better yet, left alone?
Rose: Keeper of Sacred Ground and Memory
Kimberly Guerrero’s Rose serves as the moral and spiritual counterweight to Shaw’s military pragmatism. Through the flashback, we see the young Rose (Violet Sutherland) as someone already connected to the land, to its history and spirits. She saves young Shaw from IT, demonstrating a kind of courage and awareness the boy doesn’t possess.
In the present day, Rose finds herself in an impossible position. The tribal meeting she attends crackles with tension—her community looks to her to solve the problem of military intrusion on sacred grounds, to somehow reason with Shaw. But Rose understands something Shaw doesn’t: some places aren’t meant to be disturbed, some secrets weren’t kept out of ignorance but wisdom. Her confrontation with Shaw later in the episode is heartbreaking because it’s clear they still share affection, perhaps even love, but they’ve chosen fundamentally opposed paths. Shaw fled Derry and forgot; Rose stayed and remembered. That difference makes all the difference.
Dick Hallorann: The Reluctant Psychic
Chris Chalk’s portrayal of Dick Hallorann adds crucial depth to the Stephen King universe. For those familiar with The Shining, seeing Hallorann before his time at the Overlook Hotel provides fascinating context. This Dick is younger, harder, still in the military, and deeply uncomfortable with his abilities. The “shining” his grandmother passed down to him feels like a curse he’d rather ignore.
The aerial search sequence is where Hallorann truly shines (pun intended). Forced to use his psychic abilities to locate the “weapon” the military seeks, Hallorann experiences IT’s presence in a way that clearly terrifies him. His conversation with Leroy afterward is one of the episode’s highlights—when he mentions that stopping IT requires “a person of will,” he’s not just dropping exposition. He’s recognizing something in Leroy, planting a seed that will presumably bloom throughout the season.
Chalk plays Hallorann with a wry, world-weary irony that creates fascinating dynamics with the Hanlons. This is a man who’s seen things he can’t explain and has chosen isolation over explanation. That dinner table scene with the Hanlons—where so much remains unsaid—is some of the most riveting television in the episode. The show understands that sometimes what characters don’t say is more powerful than what they do.
The Hanlon Family: Bearing the Double Burden
The Hanlons continue to be the emotional heart of Welcome to Derry. Leroy (Jovan Adepo) embodies a particularly painful contradiction: he’s a decorated war hero who served his country with distinction, yet finds himself navigating a Derry that’s deeply hostile to his presence. Adepo brilliantly captures Leroy’s quiet dignity and barely suppressed frustration. The aerial mission forces him into direct confrontation with forces both supernatural and bureaucratic, and Adepo makes us feel every moment of Leroy’s growing awareness that he’s caught in something far larger and stranger than military protocol.
Charlotte (Taylour Paige), though appearing more briefly in this episode, remains sharp and perceptive. The show continues to establish her as someone uniquely attuned to Derry’s wrongness—not because of psychic abilities, but because, as a Black woman in 1962 America, she’s had to develop finely tuned radar for danger. When she walks through Derry’s white neighborhoods, she’s reading every glance, every moment of silence. This hypervigilance, born from racism, ironically makes her more capable of recognizing supernatural threat than those who move through the world with unexamined privilege.
Young Will (Blake Cameron James) is coming into his own as a character. His scientific curiosity about what’s happening in Derry provides a nice contrast to the supernatural explanations everyone else is approaching. When he successfully develops that fuzzy photograph showing Pennywise’s glowing eyes at the episode’s end, it’s a triumphant moment—finally, proof!—but also deeply ominous. What do you do when you prove the monster is real?
The Young Losers: Belief in a World of Doubt
This episode finally solidifies who our new Losers Club will be. After the shocking deaths in Episode 1, Ronnie and Lilly were the clear survivors, but they needed allies. “Now You See It” gives them Will and Rich, and begins to develop the dynamics between them.
Lilly (Clara Stack) carries the burden of being dismissed as crazy. Her time in Juniper following her outburst haunts her—she’s desperate to prove she’s not insane, which of course makes her more vulnerable to taking risks to prove IT’s existence. Stack brings a touching vulnerability to Lilly; you genuinely fear for her because her need to be believed makes her reckless.
Ronnie (Amanda Christine) has her own weight to carry: guilt over her father Hank being suspected in the children’s disappearances, survivor’s guilt from the theater, and the burden of friendship with Lilly when everyone thinks Lilly’s losing her mind. The episode continues to develop the rekindled friendship between Ronnie and Lilly, and Christine makes us feel the genuine care between them.
The developing relationship between Will and Ronnie gets more screen time here, with Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) serving as the charismatic mediator. The show seems to be setting up a romance, though as one reviewer noted, it feels somewhat forced. But what works better is the four of them as a unit—outcasts finding each other, believing each other when no one else will.
The Cemetery Sequence: When Children Hunt Monsters
The cemetery scene where the kids try to photograph an Orixá represents the episode’s most concentrated burst of horror. Richie’s plan involves conjuring something, making the invisible visible, and of course it goes sideways. The messy chase sequence that follows tries to ramp up IT’s threatening aura, though it doesn’t quite achieve the terror it’s reaching for. The CGI occasionally shows its seams, and the sequence has that odd quality of feeling dangerous without feeling genuinely frightening.
But what the scene does accomplish is crucial: it bonds these four kids through shared experience. They’ve seen it now. They’ve felt it. And that photograph Will develops—fuzzy, unclear, but unmistakably showing glowing eyes—is their ticket to being taken seriously. Or so they hope.
The Military Operation: Trying to Weaponize What Can’t Be Controlled
The aerial search mission is where the episode’s themes crystallize. Shaw orders Leroy and Pauly to fly Hallorann over the dig sites, hoping his psychic abilities will pinpoint the “weapon” they seek. The scene plays out almost exactly as you’d expect: badly, but not fatally. No one dies, but everyone comes back shaken.
What fascinated me about this sequence is how it literalizes the show’s central metaphor. The military—with all its technology, hierarchy, and rational systems—is trying to map, control, and weaponize something that exists outside those frameworks entirely. It’s the ultimate expression of American Cold War hubris: the belief that anything, even ancient cosmic evil, can be turned into a strategic advantage.
Hallorann’s recounting of what he felt during the flight hits those familiar beats of King-style horror: the wrongness, the hunger, the intelligence behind the chaos. But the conversation he has with Shaw afterward is what stays with me. Shaw wants assurances, certainties, actionable intelligence. Hallorann can only tell him that they’re dealing with something awakening, something dangerous, and that stopping it will require more than military might—it will require will. The kind that Leroy possesses.
The Dinner Table Conversation: What’s Left Unsaid
The post-mission dinner scene at the Hanlon house deserves special mention. Leroy invites Hallorann over, and what unfolds is a masterclass in subtext. Taylour Paige, Jovan Adepo, and Chris Chalk create a fascinating three-way dynamic where you can track exactly what is and isn’t being said.
Hallorann knows things he can’t or won’t explain. Leroy senses something off but maintains his military composure. Charlotte reads the room with her characteristic sharpness, aware that both men are dancing around something important. As one reviewer noted, this scene showcases what often makes the adult cast scenes superior to the children’s scenes: the kids broadcast every thought and feeling, while watching these adults not say things creates riveting tension.
It’s in scenes like this that Welcome to Derry transcends its genre trappings and becomes something richer—a meditation on how people carry secrets, how trauma isolates us from each other, and how difficult it is to speak unspeakable truths.
Police Chief Bowers: Institutional Corruption
Peter Outerbridge’s Chief Clint Bowers gets a powerful sequence this episode. We watch him slowly turn the screws on Hank Grogan, trying to pin the missing children on Derry’s Black projectionist. It’s a scene that requires no supernatural elements to be deeply horrifying. Bowers represents institutional evil, the banal corruption that makes places like Derry function the way they do.
What makes Bowers so effective as a character is that he’s not cackling villain. He’s a man doing his job as he understands it: maintaining order, protecting the “right” people, and ensuring that when something bad happens, the blame falls on someone expendable. That Hank is both Black and conveniently connected to where the children disappeared makes him perfect for Bowers’ purposes. The scene where Bowers applies pressure is nauseating precisely because it’s so familiar, so rooted in American history.
The Past Is Never Past: 1908 and 1962
The opening 1908 flashback is crucial because it establishes the show’s temporal architecture. We’re not just watching a story set in 1962; we’re watching how Derry’s 27-year cycles create ripples across time. Young Shaw’s encounter at the carnival, his trade with Rose, his terror in the woods—all of it echoes forward to the present day storyline.
What I appreciate is how the show uses this structure not just for mythology-building but for thematic resonance. Shaw’s inability to remember his childhood terror clearly becomes his adult compulsion to hunt IT down. Rose’s memory of saving him becomes her present-day understanding of why the military operation is doomed. The past doesn’t just inform the present in Welcome to Derry; it actively shapes it, distorts it, haunts it.
The episode also makes clear that IT’s influence on memory is selective and strategic. Those who leave Derry forget. Those who stay remember too much. And those like Hallorann, with special abilities, remember what they wish they could forget.
Themes That Resonate: Fear as Weapon
One of the showrunners mentioned that while Welcome to Derry touches on the usual King themes—friendship, loss, the power of unified belief—this story focuses particularly on “the use of fear as a weapon.” Episode 3 explores this theme from multiple angles.
Shaw uses fear of Soviet power to justify his operation. Bowers uses fear of the Black projectionist to maintain social order. IT uses fear itself as both sustenance and tool. And our young heroes must overcome their fear to prove what’s happening.
But the episode goes deeper: it examines how fear can be both rational and irrational, protective and paralyzing. Charlotte’s wariness of Derry’s white residents isn’t paranoia—it’s survival instinct in 1962 America. Hallorann’s reluctance to use his abilities comes from justified fear of what he might encounter. The kids’ determination to get proof stems from fear that no one will believe them without it.
The Social Commentary: What’s Scarier Than Pennywise?
A recurring observation about Welcome to Derry is that for its Black characters, the racist reality of 1962 Derry is more immediately dangerous than the supernatural threat. Episode 3 reinforces this powerfully. Ronnie survives a literal monster attack only to watch her father become the target of a corrupt police force. The Hanlons navigate military service and small-town integration while also contending with cosmic horror.
The show deserves credit for not shying away from this nuance. Many recent period horror shows—Stranger Things comes to mind—seem unable to grasp that for marginalized people, the monsters under the bed are often less pressing than the monsters in uniform. Welcome to Derry understands that Charlotte’s inability to tell whether Derry is just racist or supernaturally evil is itself a kind of horror. That Ronnie faces more concrete danger from Police Chief Bowers than from Pennywise says something important about how different communities experience threat.
The tribal meeting Rose attends similarly grounds the supernatural in real-world power dynamics. The military’s dig sites aren’t just dangerous because they might awaken IT—they’re dangerous because they represent another instance of sacred Indigenous land being violated by government authority. The show smartly layers its horrors, making them comment on each other.
What Doesn’t Quite Land
In the interest of honesty, not everything in “Now You See It” works perfectly. The cemetery chase sequence, while ambitious, suffers from some clumsy execution. The CGI occasionally pulls you out of the moment, and the scene has this oddly theme park-esque quality—as one reviewer noted, it looks more like the Haunted Mansion ride at Disney World than a truly terrifying predicament.
The developing romance between Will and Ronnie, mediated through Rich, feels forced in places. The pieces are there, but the chemistry isn’t quite clicking yet. It’s a minor complaint in an otherwise strong episode, but worth noting.
And while I appreciate the show’s ambition in juggling multiple timelines and storylines, there are moments where the pacing suffers. Some sequences linger too long on establishing shots or repetitive dialogue, while others rush through important emotional beats.
The Episode’s Ending: Proof of the Impossible
The episode concludes with Will successfully developing the photograph from the cemetery. It’s fuzzy, unclear, imperfect—but there, unmistakably, are glowing eyes. It’s a moment of triumph and terror combined. They have proof now. The monster is real. The question becomes: what do you do with proof that the impossible is true?
This ending beautifully encapsulates the episode’s themes. The photograph makes the invisible visible, gives form to fear, transforms subjective experience into objective evidence. But will anyone believe them? And more importantly, does having proof actually help them survive what’s coming?
Looking Forward: What Episode 3 Sets Up
“Now You See It” does crucial work positioning pieces for the rest of the season. We now have our young Losers Club solidified. The Hanlon family is deeply embedded in both the military operation and the town’s social dynamics. Hallorann’s abilities and his connection to Leroy have been established. Rose and Shaw’s relationship—and opposition—is clear. And Pennywise’s presence, while still largely offscreen, is becoming increasingly undeniable.
The episode’s title takes on multiple meanings: Now you see the photo. Now you see the pattern connecting past to present. Now you see how personal and political fears intertwine. Now you see that in Derry, nothing stays buried forever.
The Broader Context: Where This Sits in the King Universe
For Stephen King fans, Episode 3 is a treasure trove of connections and Easter eggs. Hallorann’s presence links this directly to The Shining universe. His grandmother Rose Hallorann appears to him, recalling the conversation he’ll later have with Danny Torrance about “shining.” Hank’s legal troubles threaten to send him to Shawshank State Prison, connecting to one of King’s most beloved stories.
The Bradley Gang car that the military digs up connects to the 1935 cycle, which future seasons will presumably explore. References to the Kitchener Ironworks explosion and other historical Derry tragedies populate the episode, building out the town’s horrific timeline. The show is constructing a universe that feels lived-in, where King’s various stories and references create a cohesive mythology.
What I find most interesting is how the show is adapting the “Interlude” chapters from King’s novel—Mike Hanlon’s historical research into Derry’s past. The showrunners revealed their plan for three seasons covering 1962, 1935, and 1908, telling the story backwards. This means Episode 3’s opening flashback to 1908 isn’t just context for Shaw’s character—it’s a preview of where the series is ultimately heading. That’s ambitious storytelling, asking viewers to invest in a narrative that won’t fully pay off for potentially years.
The Adult vs. Children Divide: A Persistent Pattern
One thing Episode 3 reinforces is a pattern emerging across the season: the show does better when focused on its adult cast. The dinner scene with Hallorann and the Hanlons, the Shaw/Rose confrontation, the Bowers/Hank interrogation—these scenes crackle with tension and nuance. The young cast is talented, but the scripts don’t always serve them as well, giving them dialogue that can feel expository or overly earnest.
This isn’t necessarily a fatal flaw—the IT films had similar dynamics—but it’s noticeable. The show seems to trust its adult actors to do more with subtext and silence, while the kids often have to explicitly state their feelings and intentions. As the season progresses, hopefully the young cast will be given more of that same trust.
Personal Reflection: Why This Episode Resonates
What “Now You See It” does beautifully is explore how we inherit fear. Shaw inherited it from his childhood encounter. Rose inherited it from her community’s history with the land. Leroy and Charlotte are passing awareness of danger to Will, though they’re trying to protect him from the worst of it. Even IT itself is inherited—a cyclical horror passed from generation to generation.
This resonates because it mirrors how trauma actually works. We carry our parents’ fears, our communities’ wounds, our culture’s unprocessed horrors. And like Shaw, we often can’t remember where these fears originated; we just know they’re there, shaping our choices, driving our obsessions.
The episode asks: What happens when we try to face these inherited terrors head-on? Shaw’s military operation is failing because you can’t weaponize what you don’t understand. The kids’ attempt to photograph IT provides evidence but not explanation. Hallorann’s psychic abilities give him awareness without control. Perhaps that’s the point—some things can’t be controlled, only survived.
Final Thoughts: The Shape of Things to Come
“Now You See It” isn’t perfect television, but it’s ambitious television. It’s trying to tell a story about generational trauma, institutional racism, Cold War paranoia, Indigenous land rights, and cosmic horror—all while building toward a payoff that might not come for three full seasons. That’s a lot of weight for any episode to carry.
What it does well, it does very well. The adult performances are uniformly strong. The thematic ambition is admirable. The connections to King’s larger universe feel organic rather than forced. The willingness to make the real-world horror as prominent as the supernatural horror shows genuine courage.
What it struggles with—pacing, some CGI work, occasionally clunky dialogue—are growing pains of a show finding its footing. The question is whether viewers will stick with it long enough for the payoff.
For me, I’m in. Because episodes like this one, with their layered storytelling and thematic richness, suggest that Welcome to Derry is trying to be more than just a horror show. It’s trying to be a meditation on memory, fear, and how the past reaches forward to shape the present. In a television landscape cluttered with IP extensions and lazy prequels, that ambition alone is worth celebrating.
And when the episode ends with that fuzzy photograph of glowing eyes, I felt what the characters feel: proof of the impossible, validation of the unspeakable, and absolute terror about what comes next. Because now we see it. The question is: what do we do now that we can’t look away?
IT: Welcome to Derry airs Sundays on HBO and streams on HBO Max.
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