and to top it all off, after watching nameless black bodies burn for 20 minutes, the only death welcome to derry mourns...is of the non-black character. the non-black character gets THREE emotional sendoffs back to back, while the nameless black characters are relegated to jumpscare duty. bleh.

what you end up with is a racially-motivated mass murder with the serial numbers filed off. theoretically based in hatred of black skin but probably not really if such truths make you uncomfies. black pain for a white audience.

and they don't burn down the black spot because they hate darkie soooo much, but because they think the club is harbouring a suspected child murderer the show invents plausible-deniability where there was none before.

the explicitly racist motivations behind the black spot massacre are *removed* in welcome to derry. instead of white hoods they wear halloween masks.

welcome to derry takes such a cowardly, sanitizied approach to racism. it clearly wants the clout of being a narrative that includes hard themes, and yet every time the topic of racism is broached it's only discussed in code and subtext.

and because the black spot literally did not exist until the massacre we had no time to develop a connection with the randoms they filled it with. you're just watching nameless black bodies burn for 20 minutes of screentime.

for starters, despite hinging their climax on the black spot massacre, the show straight up forgets to establish this place as a popular juke joint. it just inexplicably transforms into one between scenes.

otherwise? second least favorite episode so far

this is a pivotal moment in this adaption, as this part of the manga undeniably sucks butt. but depending on how much they're willing to change we could have a generational run on our hands

i wanna believe that the muppet bible (surely exists) says that kermit is always a left hand

the dichotomy between this hard as fuck scene ending in him putting on that goofy ass charllie brown suit

and the framing of the insane asylum at the end of episode 2 made it look SO sinister, but then in episode 3 we find out that the place is completely mundane. okay.

also, and maybe this is an intentional character flaw of pennywise, but the guy struggles to think of a climax to his set-pieces that isn't "a scary guy shows up to kill you" even when he comes up with a genuinely terrifying scenario he has to undercut it by adding a scary guy

ITs premise should lend itself to some creative ass storytelling, but for some reason welcome to derry follows the same boring ass formula as any other prestige tv 8 episode season series. bro...why aren't you having fun on it....