It: Welcome to Derry’s Darkest Twist Yet Ruins 2025’s Best Horror

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Although the sixth episode of It: Welcome to Derry was consistently grim, its ending unfortunately diminished the satisfying conclusion of last year’s blockbuster horror film, Sinners. Right from the start, It: Welcome to Derry signaled it would be more intense and disturbing than the previous It movies.

The prequel started with a shocking twist – the death of its seemingly main character, a young runaway named Matty. The first episode continued this grim trend, ending with the deaths of nearly all the show’s young protagonists. In It: Welcome to Derry, five central characters went to the town’s movie theater, but only two survived, as the rest were brutally killed by Pennywise.

Okay, so I was really prepared for this series to be dark, but episode 6 of It: Welcome to Derry, “In the Name of the Father,” still totally shocked me. I mean, the ending came out of nowhere! It turned out that Lily’s sweet friend, Ingrid, was actually Pennywise’s daughter – Mrs. Kersh! It was a brutal reveal, and honestly, it really hit hard.

It: Welcome to Derry’s Black Spot Massacre Reverses The Ending of Sinners

Lily was shocked to discover that Ingrid Kersh was only assisting her to locate her father. However, things took a darker turn when the episode of “In the Name of the Father” ended on a devastating cliffhanger. Unlike the somewhat hopeful conclusion of the popular 2025 horror film Sinners, this episode ended with a shocking and violent act of racism.

Even within the already grim world of It: Welcome to Derry, a scene showing a heavily armed white militia lynching a group of happy Black people would have been incredibly disturbing. Interestingly, the movie Sinners featured a comparable setup when the main characters turned a white landowner’s barn into a lively juke joint.

The awful man who sold them the barn then gathered a group of Ku Klux Klan members to attack and kill the partygoers the next morning. However, the movie’s newly turned vampire hero cleverly defeated them all. This scene is incredibly satisfying, especially after so many innocent characters had died, and it’s arguably the most enjoyable moment in the film.

As a film fanatic, I immediately thought of the Black Spot massacre when watching this scene. It really reminded me of the partygoers in Sinners – everyone inside is just having a good time, totally oblivious to the danger brewing outside with those white supremacists. It’s heartbreaking, especially when you consider Dick Halloran from The Shining. Poor guy was so out of it, battling his own demons and struggling with his powers, that he couldn’t get a warning out to anyone. It’s a classic setup – people enjoying themselves while something terrible is about to happen, and no one knows it’s coming.

It: Welcome to Derry’s Black Spot Storyline Was Always Going To Be Its Bleakest Plot

For viewers of It: Welcome to Derry hoping the people at the Black Spot might survive, the original Stephen King novel already reveals their fate. Both It and previous adaptations portray the Black Spot massacre as a deeply disturbing event rooted in Derry’s history of racism.

This is perhaps the most disturbing part of the novel’s history, and that’s considering all the terrible things Pennywise has done to Derry over the years. So, it was inevitable that It: Welcome to Derry would show this awful event. However, the story’s lighthearted setting in the Black Spot makes it even more heartbreaking.

Both Sinners and It: Welcome to Derry show a local bar as a safe haven where people of color can freely express themselves and have fun, despite facing hostility in the outside world. Similar to Sinners, the show also hints at dangerous forces lurking nearby, threatening this sense of community and joy.

It: Welcome to Derry Flipping The Ending of Sinners Reinforces The Show’s Shocking Truth

Even if a second season of It: Welcome to Derry doesn’t happen, the first season certainly wasn’t afraid to be dark and challenging. It was relentlessly grim, and each episode only emphasized that feeling.

The series starts with a shocking twist: the kids who initially seem like the heroes are brutally killed off right away. Even the one character who appears to be a survivor is revealed to be Pennywise in disguise, who then cruelly boasts about murdering his victims while their friends watch in horror.

Wow, after that scary scene at 29 Neibolt Street in episode 5, things really took a dark turn at the end of the next one. It’s incredibly upsetting to see most of Derry’s Black community targeted by a racist group – the episode, “In the Name of the Father,” ends with that awful situation unfolding, and it strongly suggests Ronnie’s dad, Hank Grogan, isn’t going to make it. It’s just relentlessly bleak!

Altering Pennywise’s abilities isn’t the biggest change in It: Welcome to Derry; the new series significantly shifts the overall mood of the It story. Many viewers felt that 2019’s It: Chapter 2 was too lighthearted and didn’t feel as suspenseful as it should have been.

The series feels like it went too far in the opposite direction, delivering a relentlessly bleak and traumatic story. While this makes It: Welcome to Derry gripping and intense, certain choices – like subverting the hopeful ending of Sinners – occasionally come across as unnecessarily cruel.

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2025-12-04 00:09