IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 — 29 Neibolt Street: Every Scare and Secret Explained | Spoiler Recap and Review

Welcome to the mid-season gut punch. After the shop class horror show, the kids of Derry want answers and payback, the military wants to turn fear into a weapon, and every trail points to the same busted address: 29 Neibolt Street. The sewers are open. The clown is waiting. Here we go.

The setup: fear as a weapon, kids on a mission

We pick up right after the psychic ambush: Daniel is wrecked and retching, while Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) confirms the job is done.

"It’s done."

General Shaw (James Remar) finally stops being coy and lays out his grand plan. Local tribes once talked about 13 artifacts they called Pillars, all carved from the same otherworldly material that brought the creature to Earth. Those Pillars were used to contain it. That lock broke a long time ago. Daniel comes from a bloodline of protectors, and Hallorann has already yanked the Pillar locations from Daniel’s head, handing Shaw a tidy map. Shaw’s endgame? Retrieve the artifacts, harness the monster, and end the Cold War by literally weaponizing fear. Leroy (Jovan Adepo) clocks that he’s been drafted into a suicide mission and is not thrilled.

The kids regroup (and get their hearts ripped out)

At the hospital, Marge (Matilda Lawler) is alive but bandaged after what she did to her eyes. She apologizes to Lilly (Clara Stack) for not believing her; they make up and promise to watch each other’s backs.

Later on a rooftop, the gang runs into Matty (Miles Ekhardt), who looks like he crawled out of hell but swears he survived by hiding in the sewers where the creature feeds at night. His update is brutal: Teddy died on the spot, Susie bled out, but he says Phil is still alive, paralyzed, and waiting. Matty is terrified to go back underground and seems more scared of his abusive dad than the thing in the pipes. That detail will matter.

Meanwhile around Derry

Native elders warn about an event called the Augury, the bloody culling that hits every 27 years to keep the creature fed for a while. People are getting twitchy.

During a prison transfer, a grieving father attacks the bus transporting Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), causing it to crash near the Neibolt house. Charlotte Hanlon (Taylour Paige) witnesses the chaos and has a fresh nightmare-vision of a very wrong-looking man. Hank takes advantage of the wreck and bolts.

Rose confronts Shaw and figures out the ugly truth: the government drugged him five years ago to drag out buried memories of the summer they spent together. That manipulation twisted his fixer instinct into this obsession with turning the monster into a weapon. Rose then reconnects with Daniel and slips him a secret talisman for protection.

Leroy relocates his family onto the airbase. Charlotte overhears that Hank escaped near Neibolt.

29 Neibolt Street: everyone into the dark

Everything funnels into the same nightmare house and the sewers beneath it. Here’s where the episode locks in:

• The kids — Lilly, Marge, Matty, Will, Ronnie, and Rich — go underground to save Phil.
• At the same time, the military kicks off Operation Precept. It’s a meat grinder. Soldiers vanish into the black. Hallorann keeps getting dragged into memories of his abusive father as he works his Shining. Leroy hallucinates that Charlotte is attacking him.
• Laughing gas starts filling the tunnels (not exactly OSHA compliant), and the kids go woozy. They stumble onto the bodies of Teddy, Susie, and Phil. All dead.
• Then the knife twist: the Matty on the roof was never Matty. In front of them, he peels into Pennywise (Bill Skarsgard). This was a setup the whole time.
• Leroy, out of his mind from the gas and visions, almost shoots his own son, Will. Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) dives in front of the bullet, saves Will, and dies for it.
• Pennywise corners Lilly — and that talisman Rose gave Daniel flares to life, shoving the clown back. Small win in a disaster.

Aftermath

The next day, Hank hijacks a car driven by Ingrid Kirsch — the woman Lilly spoke to earlier — and once they’re deep in the woods, the two embrace. Yep, they’re working together.

Back on base, Leroy files the official report on Pauly’s death, and Shaw offers the kind of condolences that sound like they came off a cue card. Hallorann, shattered, staggers out of the sewer and sees a vision of Pauly walking around despite the fact that Pauly is very much not walking around anymore.

So, is 29 Neibolt Street worth your time?

This is the episode where the show finally lets Bill Skarsgard off the chain. The sewer sequence is the best stretch of the season so far — tight, nasty, and genuinely dangerous. The laughing gas, the cramped tunnels, the hallucinations that feel too close to real — it all works. And the Matty twist is vicious in the best horror way, turning earlier hope into a hammer blow.

The problem is everything wrapped around it. The military subplot is the anchor tied to the show’s leg. Shaw’s Cold War fever dream about bottling fear belongs in a different (and worse) series, and it drags the cosmic, unknowable dread of this world into a bland government-conspiracy box. On top of that, the lore dump hits like homework: Pillars, the Augury, magic talismans — all shoved at us in clumps. Instead of expanding the mystery, it shrinks it.

The new Losers’ Club keeps the heart beating. Marge coming back, patched up and determined, gives their quest real weight, and the kids’ chemistry sells the danger. The adults? Less so. Pauly’s death should crush you, but because it happens inside the dullest part of the show, it lands softer than it should.

Bottom line: great horror, iconic villain, smothered by clunky lore and a military storyline no one asked for. If the show would stop tripping over its own mythology and just trust the scares, it could be special. Right now, it’s merely okay — with flashes of the series it could be.

IT: Welcome to Derry premiered Friday, October 26 on HBO. 29 Neibolt Street aired November 23.