It: Welcome To Derry Finally Adapts The Most Disturbing Moment From Stephen King's Novel

This post contains major spoilers for "It: Welcome to Derry" and its source material.

Stephen King's "It" is chock-full of harrowing moments. Andy Muschietti's "It: Welcome to Derry" preserves this dark tone by leaning into gory gruesomeness, some of which has been really effective at conjuring fear. That said, there are drawbacks to such an unsubtle, no-holds-barred approach. The story has dwelt a bit too much on Pennywise's origins to the point of demystifying him, and an overreliance on gross imagery doesn't always land as intended. But episode 7 adapts one of the most disturbing moments from "It" to chilling effect — The Black Spot fire, which was a targeted hate crime against the bar's Black patrons, who were deliberately locked inside by a white supremacist cult in Derry.

King places the horrific tragedy in 1930s America, which was a time marked by a surge in racial violence and systemic discrimination against people of color. While Muschietti's revamped timeline relocates the Black Spot fire to 1962, the original sociopolitical context, while altered, isn't watered down at all. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing at the time, where the fight to abolish legalized racial segregation/discrimination was being met with orchestrated hate crimes against Black communities. In the show's context, this sociopolitical backdrop bleeds into the bigotry wielded by the likes of Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), whose personal vendetta against Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) directly shapes the tragedy.

After Bowers and his men fail to intimidate Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) and co. into handing over Hank, they pretend to back off, but lock the patrons inside and set the bar on fire. No amount of foreknowledge about the incident prepares us for the disorienting nature of the sequence, where innocent civilians (including children) die painful deaths.

In King's novel, an older Will Hanlon recounts the Black Spot fire in vivid detail, and these descriptions are horrifying. Will talks about "the real ghosts" he saw that night, whose clothes were "blazing" and faces were "runnin'" as they "toppled over" one by one. Episode 7 captures this tragic chaos, where we see a disoriented Will (Blake Cameron) and Ronnie (Amanda Christine) trying to scramble to safety, while most of the adults try and fail to make it to safety. While Hallorann is able to save these kids, the tender-hearted Rich (Arian S. Cartaya) sacrifices himself to protect Marge (Matilda Lawler), which adds to the pathos of it all.

Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) makes an appearance during the fire, gleefully feeding off the helpless fear radiating from the site. But Pennywise's presence doesn't strike fear in our hearts, as the worst has already happened in a town that treats such incidents with insensitive apathy. Even the news reports about the fire use language that is blatantly dehumanizing, and the townsfolk carry on with their lives unbothered. At one point, Charlotte (Taylour Paige) even points out that Derry's bigotry is more monstrous than the flesh-eating clown that has now gone back into hibernation, as these hate crimes don't adhere to cycles and happen all the time.

Moreover, episode 7's big reveal about the military's plan to turn America into It's hunting ground cements the true nature of evil. Pennywise was never supposed to be a Cold War weapon — the military wants to leverage the fear the creature induces to further subjugate marginalized groups fighting for their rights. This sets up an ominous season finale, as we see Pennywise prematurely awaken to continue his reign of terror.