It: Welcome to Derry co-showrunner Jason Fuchs says one of the most diabolical moments in episode five was an idea scrapped from It: Chapter Two.
Warning: Huge spoilers for Welcome to Derry Episode 5 below!
“He impersonated Matty Clements and hit all the marks on us. It's brutal, unexpected and incredibly clever in terms of using Matty to drag children into the tunnels and throw them into the path of Leroy and the team,” Fuchs tells GamesRadar+. “But I haven’t talked to anyone else about it in terms of where this particular choice came from. I actually played with it in It: Chapter Two.
“When I was working on this, I came in and did some production work, and one of the things I played around with was that, if you remember the film, Mike Hanlon is still in Derry, according to the book. He invites our characters back, “Ritual of Miracle”, they go down into the cistern. All this happens just like in the film. Attention, spoiler for those who have not seen the second chapter. I had a version of this scenario where they went down into the tank. in the tank, and they found a hungry, ragged hostage, Mike Hanlon, and realized that Mike, played by Isaiah Mustafa, whom they encountered throughout the film, was a manifestation of It.”
This is roughly what happens to Matty in Episode 5, “Welcome to Derry”. Lily, Ronnie, Rich and Will, who are desperately trying to prove Pennywise's existence to any person in power who will believe them, are suddenly visited by Matty Clements… who is somehow alive after being killed by Him in the first 10 minutes of the first episode. Matty tells his friends that he survived in the sewers, and that one of their murdered friends, Phil, is in fact still alive there too. With genuine faith in him, the group (with the addition of Marge, who finally believes Ronnie's father is innocent) follows Matty into the sewers in hopes of finding Phil.
However, as soon as they get down there, the bodies of their dead friends float to the surface of the water… including the body of Matty Clements. Matty, standing in front of them, suddenly stretches, deforms and turns into none other than Pennywise.
Perhaps something similar could have worked in It: Chapter Two, in which 27 years later Mike brings the Losers' Club back to Derry to defeat Pennywise once and for all, but Fuchs (and I, for that matter) didn't think it would have done justice to the character of the adult Mike Hanlon, who becomes a librarian dedicated to researching the sordid history of Derry, Maine. In the novel It, Mike's extensive research can be found in the index. It was this research that served as the basis for the book Welcome to Derry.
“For various reasons, I felt like it was the wrong choice,” Fuchs explains. “I think the main thing that Muschietti and I felt when we were considering this option was that it didn’t fit the character of Mike Hanlon, the adult Mike Hanlon character. And if we did that, you'd only really be with the real Mike Hanlon for a few precious moments in the third act of this movie.”
“It was an interesting idea that was wrong because it didn't do Mike justice. And so we abandoned it. And I didn't think about it anymore. Until we started building this show. And that was an early idea: “What if we use this trick here? What if he was a little stronger here? Is there a way this could make sense?” And then when it came to having to arrange for the children to be endangered in the sewers, to be thrown into the path of the military, and for these storylines to come together… that was the moment. I remember talking on the phone with [Brad Caleb Kane] and offered it to him and we just said, “Oh yeah, that's exactly it.”
Ono: Welcome to Derry is currently airing HBO Max. For more information visit our This is: Welcome to Derry Release Scheduleor check out our guide to all Upcoming Stephen King Movies and Shows you need to know about.
