IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 5 Ending Decoded: The Real Story Behind Halloran’s Fate

Episode 5 of It: Welcome to Derry finally drags the clown into the light. It is a gnarly, trippy hour that puts Major Dick Halloran through a psychological woodchipper, pays off weeks of slow-burn teases, and threads the needle straight into Kingverse lore. If you have been waiting for Bill Skarsgard to fully drop in, yeah — this is the one.

Halloran vs. the mind games in the sewer

We pick up after Episode 4, when Halloran squeezed Pennywise's location out of the void and the military moved on the underground tunnels. Down in the grime, Halloran and his team push forward — until he dives into the water, nearly drowns, and then suddenly surfaces in a bathtub. Not normal, obviously.

Waiting for him: his grandmother, the one who has been whispering warnings since the pilot, doubling down that he should not try to 'tame' this thing. Then his grandfather shows with a very Pulp Fiction-ish box, threatening to pop it. Except grandpa is Pennywise in disguise. The clown cracks the lock and blasts open Halloran's worst psychic memories like he is dumping out a filing cabinet.

If that rings a bell: it is a deliberate echo of Doctor Sleep, where Halloran teaches Danny Torrance to stash his monsters in lockboxes. Here, Pennywise flips the trick on Halloran himself. When Halloran finally staggers out of the tunnels, he is staring at the ghost of Pauly Russo — a nasty hint that the clown is going to feast on weaponized memory from here on out.

Pennywise finally shows his face (and a few others)

The episode's big swing is the full reveal of Skarsgard's Pennywise. The team gets lured into the sewers under false pretenses by 'Matty' singing a lullaby — and then Matty's head unfolds like an awful flower, and out steps the Dancing Clown. It is a payoff the show has held and held, sprinkling in little easter eggs until now, and it lands mean. The clown still plays shape-shifter too, slipping into the skins of Lilly's dad, Hanlon's wife, and others whenever it suits him.

'you'll float too'

That line hangs over a brutal beat: the kids follow Matty's breadcrumb about Phil still being alive, realize Matty is just Pennywise puppeteering them, and the bodies from Episode 1's theater massacre begin to float up around them. Subtle, it is not.

The unit gets played — hard

Pennywise spends the hour gaslighting the military unit until they cannot tell real from mirage. It ends in the worst way: Major Hanlon fires at what he thinks is a threat and instead aims at his own kid. Major Russo dives in to take the bullet and does not make it. Ugly, tragic, and exactly the kind of blunt-force cruelty this show leans into.

Lore check, trailer tease, and the cosmic stuff

This episode rides the momentum from Episode 4's Pennywise lore dump and sends two squads into the belly of the beast at once — Halloran's team armed with Taniel's cosmic shard, and the show's Losers Club analog chasing their own lead. On top of the monster-of-it-all, the series keeps tightening the screws on its human horror too, especially the tension around Indigenous characters and the rise of racial violence in town.

The trailer for next week points to a meaty detour into Pennywise's human origin. They have slow-rolled him for a reason; looks like they are ready to empty the vault.

And as one ominous line puts it: remember not to be scared and let him in.

Quick primer if you are catching up

• Title: IT: Welcome to Derry
• Based on: Stephen King's 1986 novel It (prequel to the 2017 and 2019 films)
• Setting: Derry, Maine, in 1962
• Premise: A couple moves to Derry with their son; a boy vanishes almost immediately, and the town's curse starts grinding everyone down. The series digs into Pennywise's origins and Derry's rotten history.
• Season 1: 8 episodes
• Premiere date: October 26, 2025
• Release schedule: Episodes drop weekly on HBO and HBO Max
• Filming locations: Toronto, Hamilton, and Port Hope in Ontario, Canada
• Themes: Fear, childhood trauma, racial tensions, and full-bore supernatural horror

IT: Welcome to Derry is now streaming on HBO Max in the U.S.