It: Welcome to Derry Season 1 Episode 5: The One Weapon That Might Finally Kill Pennywise

Five episodes in, It: Welcome to Derry finally lets Bill Skarsgard put on the greasepaint and go full Pennywise. And just when the clown shows up in all his nightmare glory, the show slips in something else: a very old, very weird weapon that might actually stop him. Mild spoilers ahead.

The one thing Pennywise is scared of

Episode 5, 'Neibolt Street', pays off last week’s origin lore and then some. The quick version: a meteor crashed ages ago, and that fallen star acted like a cage for the thing that would become Pennywise. The local Shokopiwah tribe figured out the metal from that meteorite was the only stuff It truly fears. They forged a blade out of it to keep themselves safe and stayed away from the Western Wood, where the creature hunted. They called it the Galloo.

Then European settlers showed up, ignored the warnings, and fed the monster with their fear. One dagger wasn’t enough anymore. So the Shokopiwah split the meteorite into thirteen pieces and buried them as pillars around the area. Those stones formed a fence line that boxed the entity inside what would become Derry’s city limits.

Everyone goes underground

The hour sends two groups into the sewers with wildly different plans: the kids who are on their way to becoming the Losers Club, and the military. Of course the Army goes into the sewer. What could go wrong.

Episode 5 at a glance

• Pennywise steps out in full: Skarsgard finally appears in complete clown form after earlier posing as Matty.
• The star dagger turns up: Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack) stumbles across the meteor-forged weapon.
• The military drops in: armed troops descend into the tunnels and get chewed up by their worst fears.
• Dick Hallorann’s mind gets cracked: Pennywise forces open his psychic lockbox, compromising his defenses.
• Lilly’s close call: the blade creates a boundary the clown cannot cross, giving her a sliver of safety.

The sewer standoff that changes the rules

The most brutal sequence belongs to Lilly. Pennywise corners her in ankle-deep water, mouth blossoming into that rows-of-razor-teeth nightmare. He lunges... and stops cold. At her feet sits the star dagger that Taniel (Joshua Odjick) dropped earlier. The clown won’t step over it. When Lilly picks it up, he backs off. The catch: the protection is limited. The blade keeps Pennywise from coming at whoever is holding it, but he can still target everyone around them to force a mistake.

Why this is a big swing from the book

In Stephen King’s novel, the big counter to Pennywise is the Ritual of Chud, which is strange, cosmic, and very internal. The show swaps that out (for now) for something tactile and ancient: a weapon tied directly to the Shokopiwah myth. On television, giving the characters an object with rules you can see makes sense. It also plugs cleanly into the series’ lore-heavy flashbacks.

Where this leaves Derry

Three episodes left in Season 1, and Lilly’s now carrying the one thing the clown won’t cross. Is that enough to break Pennywise’s feeding cycle in 1962, or are we just buying time before the horror resets, as the films’ timeline suggests? Either way, the show just put a very sharp, very inconvenient variable in Pennywise’s way.

It: Welcome to Derry drops new episodes Sundays at 9:00 PM ET/PT on HBO and Max.