News Star Wars The Hunt for Ben Solo: Lucasfilm Reportedly Greenlit Star Wars Script Before Disney CEO Canceled It But somehow, Palpatine returned. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 27, 2025 Credit: Lucasfilm Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lucasfilm Adam Driver recently revealed that he and director Steven Soderbergh wanted to make a Kylo Ren movie called The Hunt for Ben Solo, which would be set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The news got fans excited, even prompting a billboard campaign to bring the movie into existence. Subsequent reporting has revealed, however, that the movie was set to go into production with a completed script, and all of Lucasfilm leadership was reportedly on board until Disney senior executives nixed it. According to The Playlist, The Hunt for Ben Solo had a completed script by Scott Z. Burns, who was paid in the low seven figures for the job. Lucasfilm execs Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, and Carrie Beck were all involved and signed off on the project, and it was entering early prep and staffing while it was on the desk of Disney CEO Bob Iger and Alan Bergman. Iger and Bergman, however, nixed it. “They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that,” Driver told AP News. And somehow, Palpatine returned?! Palpatine??? Returned??? And yet the idea of Ben Solo not dying in The Rise of Skywalker was too much? It doesn’t track with Star Wars logic, but that’s apparently what happened. I dunno. According to The Playlist, Bergman, who Iger is grooming to take over the CEO position, has fallen out of favor internally based on his handling of “several high-profile initiatives” and that “his standing within Disney’s succession plan has reportedly weakened.” Soderbergh also reportedly confirmed via Bluesky (though the account is unverified) that The Hunt for Ben Solo was the first script that was completed and got a greenlight from Lucasfilm that Disney subsequently rejected. Lucasfilm designer Bobby McKenna also posted on X that he worked on a design sprint for the project and that “the movie would have been sick. rip.” RIP indeed. [end-mark] The post <i>The Hunt for Ben Solo</i>: Lucasfilm Reportedly Greenlit <i>Star Wars</i> Script Before Disney CEO Canceled It appeared first on Reactor.

Books book reviews Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz Finds Joy, Community, and Good Food in the Future A cozy near-future story about found family, robophobia… and good food. By Martin Cahill | Published on October 27, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share There are very few writers beyond Annalee Newitz that I trust to write about the future. Not flying cars future, not a transporters-and-laser guns kind of future, no; just the future. Lowercase f. The one that maybe comes tomorrow, maybe in a decade, maybe in eighty years. I know however far into that future Newitz takes us, we, the reader, will be given a vision of the impossible and the predictable, the uncanny and the all-too-human, even when, as in Automatic Noodle, the majority of our characters are all bots. But what makes them so engaging and fascinating is that they want the same things a human protagonist may want: the freedom to make their own choices, the ability to follow their passions, the opportunity to build community, and their tomorrows unshackled from those who would keep them in their awful yesterdays. In Automatic Noodle, Newitz once again builds a vision of a future that feels real in its stakes, but hopeful in what it says about how sentient beings can come together when they recall that what unites them far outweighs that which would tear them apart. It has been some time since the civil war that separated California from the rest of the United States, and while there is tenuous peace between the two countries, many still reel from the aftermath. Among them are a group of robots who work in a ghost kitchen in San Francisco; while bots are granted some tentative rights in California, something outlawed in the United States, our crew of bots are struggling mightily in their day-to-day. One of them is drowning in debt, while another finds herself trapped in an overly gendered body bolted to the floor as the greeter, and still another is trapped in the trauma from his time in the war as a military bot. Coming back online in the wake of the war’s end, the four of them—Staybehind, Hands, Cayenne, and Sweetie—decide to work together to both really give this business a shot and to use that success to launch them into better futures. But since their rights are so limited, Cayenne, a search and rescue octobot who loves to get their tentacles all up in the web, hacks the system to make it seem like they’re human-owned and run. With the help of a local human in the community, the bots will dedicate themselves to the making of the food, the running of the business, the front of house, and decoration, while all pretending to be working for a human. It is here, as the crew goes all in on their plan toward true freedom, that Newitz hits their stride and the novella shines from there. Each of the bots gets their own storyline and arc, and if that were just the book, I would have been delighted. Hands, the arm robot, is trying to perfect biang biang noodles exclusively; Cayenne, sassy, smart, and squishy, is in love with Hands and trying to keep up their cover; Sweetie not only finds a way to gain mobility after years bolted to the floor, but has the chance to optimize her body in the way she wants, shedding the literal top that she was forced to call her body since she came online; Staybehind, a military bot with trauma, cannot seem to let go of the memory of losing his comrades in the California tunnels years ago. But Newitz never forgets the bigger picture and they won’t let you forget it either: If something good exists in the world, if a community is created of others who never had it before, there will always cruel hearts who wish to call that good bad instead, who see a community and wish to pull it apart rather than let it grow. Buy the Book Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Buy Book Automatic Noodle Annalee Newitz Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget This robophobia emerges as the story continues, with rumors of the bot-run restaurant making their way into the United States and inviting multiple bot hate groups who begin to digitally bombard the noodle restaurant and attempt to get it shut down. While this novella contains cozy moments of joy and care and friendship, Newitz balances all that lightness against a background of true darkness and horror. The United States, historically, has been horrible to anyone who could be considered “the other,” and despite being outside of the purview of the US, our bots are still subject to that hate and horror, especially as California’s own flimsy rights for bots attempt to come into play. Anything more would be spoilers, but Newitz shows through this small crew of bots and the humans who come to know and love their restaurant and food, that community and care are not perfect antidotes, but they are powerful, especially when hands come together at the right time. Newitz writes futures that are plausible and real, while also being idealistic and hopeful, but not overly rose-colored. In Automatic Noodle, capitalism still irradiates society, while the governments of both California and the United States don’t seem all that separate, save for some marginally better rights for bots in the former. The web is still host to hatred, social media is still a breeding ground for mayhem and horror, and there will always be people who become enraged to see others happy. But… people still need to eat. Need to work. Need to laugh, or smile, or build together. Life continues, for humans and bots alike, and Newitz, as always, delivers a story that showcases what that life can look like when all sentient peoples are given care, respect, and the opportunity to live, truly live, free of shackles.[end-mark] The post <i>Automatic Noodle</i> by Annalee Newitz Finds Joy, Community, and Good Food in the Future appeared first on Reactor.

News Something Is Killing the Children Blumhouse to Adapt Hit Horror Comic Something Is Killing the Children Into Film and TV Series The story about monster-hunting kids will receive a live-action movie while the show an adult animated affair. By Vanessa Armstrong | Published on October 27, 2025 James Tynion IV Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons Comment 0 Share New Share James Tynion IV Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons The comic book series Something Is Killing the Children from James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera is set to be made into both a movie and an animated television series. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Blumhouse has won the rights to the BOOM! Studios comic, with Jason Blum producing a live-action film, while Tynion will oversee the development of an adult animated TV show.   Something Is Killing the Children debuted in 2019 and has become a major title in the comic book world. It’s based on the premise that only children can see monsters (and these monsters eat children) and centers on Erica Slaughter, a woman who is part of a secret society of monster hunters who, in the first story arc of the series, heads to a town to battle the eldritch beings consuming the young folks there. “It’s easy to see why audiences and critics alike have praised Something is Killing the Children,” Blum said in a statement. “James and Werther’s comic book series taps into our most primal fears, luring us into a fascinating world and introducing Erica Slaughter, the ass-kicking hero we all wish we had to fight the monsters that lurk in the dark.” “Something is Killing the Children is the comic book that changed my life and career forever,” Tynion added. “Finding a partner who understood the potential of Erica Slaughter and the world Werther Dell’Edera and I have built was crucial, and we have found that partner in Jason Blum. Nobody understands horror better than Blumhouse, and I can’t wait for the world to see what we all have planned together.” The deal is in its early days, so no news yet on casting or if/when the projects will go into production. [end-mark] The post Blumhouse to Adapt Hit Horror Comic <i>Something Is Killing the Children</i> Into Film and TV Series appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV Gen V Gen V Brings It All Together and Teases Final Season of The Boys in Season 2 Wrap-Up It’s an exciting season finale… apart from the endless tie-ins to that other supes series. By Ben Francisco | Published on October 27, 2025 Image: Jasper Savage/Prime Video Comment 0 Share New Share Image: Jasper Savage/Prime Video [Spoilers for season two finale, “Trojan”] The episode begins in 1967 at the burning “Odessa Project” laboratory, continuing the flashback that opened the season. Dr. Godolkin (Ethan Slater) desperately injects himself with compound V, hoping he might attain powers to extricate himself from the flames. He screams as the fire starts to burn him alive. Cut to the present, to “Doug,” the ordinary human that Godolkin (a.k.a. Dean Cipher) has been using as a puppet ever since his own body was burned to the point of incapacitation. “I’m so sorry about the carpet,” Doug says after vomiting, in a meek tone that is jarringly different from the casual cruelty that Cipher has been giving all season. Still recovering from the battle of the prior episode, our heroes learn that Doug was one of several puppets Godolkin had manipulated with his mind-control abilities—and that his plan all along was to manipulate Marie (Jaz Sinclair) into healing his scorched body. Meanwhile, Godolkin is savoring the full use of his own body and all its sensory pleasures: drinking wine, touching high-threadcount sheets, urinating for himself, and enjoying his love affair with Sister Sage (Susan Heyward), the super-genius mastermind behind Homelander’s effective takeover of the U.S.—and Godolkin’s own recovery. Sister Sage is surprised when Godolkin says he has more work to do at the university named for him, and it’s clear there are some hitches coming for both their romantic relationship and their partnership in evil scheming. Doug gets a ride from Polarity to the doctor, telling him that his son had died heroically, sacrificing himself for his friends. Their touching moment is interrupted by an attack by Noir, who kills Doug and captures Polarity. Back at the dorm, Emma, Cate, and Marie regroup. Emma reminds them that they’ve become a chosen family, and Marie restores Cate’s telepathy using her increasingly powerful blood-control ability.   On a social media video, Godolkin announces his “resurrection,” his super-abled identity, and open enrollment in his advanced seminar to anyone seeking a spot in the top student rankings. Marie responds with her own video warning students the “seminar” is a life-threatening trap. Even so, many of the university’s less discerning students show up for the seminar. Godolkin takes control of multiple young supes at once—pitting them in combat against each other in a violent bloodbath.  On the way to stop Godolkin, Marie and Jordan have a quick romantic check-in. Jordan forgives Marie but says they can’t be together—but hopes they can stay friends. Before they have a chance to process, the other heroes catch up to them. They have a plan to stop Godolkin.  Godolkin brags to Sister Sage that his powers are growing—he’s never been able to control so many people at once. His hope is to hone his own power to the point where he can control even the most powerful heroes, like Marie and Homelander. Sister Sage reminds him that he’s straying from “phase two” of their plan. When they fail to find common ground, Godolkin summons a dozen semi-conscious bloody bodies to life for a choreographed dance routine. Sister Sage leaves and goes to free Polarity—one of the few supes able to block Godolkin’s mind-control abilities. Marie arrives at the seminar combat room to confront Godolkin, who weaponizes several of her super-powered classmates against her. The odds seem to overwhelm Marie, until Black Hole (a secondary frat bro character) reveals that he is the episode’s eponymous Trojan horse: his super-powered rectum is hiding the rest of our heroes. After they’ve emerged, they use their various powers to take Godolkin by surprise, and Harper uses her mimicry powers to take control of Godolkin and all the other students.  But then Godolkin gets back control of his own body and finally manages to take control of Marie. Through Marie, he creates a whirlwind of blood that sweeps across the room, fulfilling her sister Annabel’s precognitive visions. He presses all the heroes to the ground like helpless bags of blood. Speaking in unison through both his own mouth and Marie’s, he proclaims that they’re all mediocre supes and traitors to their own kind. Godolkin seems poised for total victory—until Polarity arrives and disrupts his powers. Back to herself, Marie uses her ability to pop the blood vessels of his head in one gory explosion. “That was for Andre,” she says. “Thanks for the level up, asshole.” Recognizing that the Vought corporate oligarchs will come after them again soon, our crew of young heroes takes to the road. But before they make it far, Starlighter literally swoops in to officially enlist them in the resistance. Image: Jasper Savage/Prime Video This season’s big reveal that Godolkin and Cipher are one and the same was expected by many fans, but it still worked well for me thanks to its strong execution and a few details that went beyond the expected. It’s interesting that Godolkin didn’t already have powers before the fire, and the scene of him desperately injecting himself with V as the flames consume him is powerfully unsettling. Hamish Linklater completes his season-stealing performance with his deft transition from casually evil mastermind Dean Cipher to hapless VCR-repairman Doug. After seven episodes of callousness, it’s chilling to see the same person suddenly sympathetic and helpless. Linklater’s portrayal of Doug’s suffering is poignant, and you really do feel like this character is recovering from two decades of trauma, having to watch helpless from inside his own mind as Godolkin used his body to torture and kill people. I loved Linklater’s interpretation of Cipher so much that I was almost sad to see him revert to Doug, but Ethan Slater skillfully picks up the villain baton. Slater demonstrates impressive range portraying Godolkin, a total departure from his previous roles. He looks so different here compared to Boq in Wicked that my partner didn’t believe the two parts were played by the same person until I submitted internet evidence. The final confrontation with Godolkin is an excellent and satisfying climax to the season. In an ensemble show like this, it’s fun when multiple characters get to play a part in taking down the big bad—even secondary ones. Harper’s use of her mimicry power in particular was nicely done. The Trojan horse gambit using Black Hole’s anus felt a little silly, but certainly brought home the point that even the oddest of powers can be valuable when deployed strategically. The motley group of young heroes taking down Godolkin is an apt counterpoint to his eugenicist philosophy of supe supremacy. Jaz Sinclair has given a strong performance as Marie throughout the season and shines in the finale in particular. When Godolkin possesses Marie, it’s genuinely terrifying for a few moments, largely thanks to Sinclair’s skillful depiction.  With the focus on the final confrontation between Godolkin and Marie, there’s little time for closure of this season’s other subplots. Emma easily grows to giant size in the big battle—without having to eat anything—giving the sense that she has a stronger handle on both her powers and self-esteem. She also has a brief but sweet farewell with Polarity, closing out the unexpectedly fun pairing between the two of them this season.  The arc that suffered the most from the rushed pace was Marie’s sister Annabeth. At the end, she joins our heroes to run off with the resistance, and she overcomes her anger at Marie over the death of their parents. But it’s an abrupt shift after years of not speaking to her sister, and that evolution could have been more impactful if we’d gotten the chance to see more of it on screen. I also craved more than just a few minutes of screentime for Marie and Jordan’s romance, though I can understand that the showrunners didn’t want to shoehorn too much of it in when the heroes had to fight for their lives. We also get a couple of more grace notes of honoring Andre’s legacy, which ended up being a central theme for the entire season much more than I’d expected. Image: Prime Video The weakest moments in the finale and throughout the season were some of the tie-ins with The Boys. Starlighter’s appearance as deus ex machina in both the opening and closing of the season felt like an afterthought, more at the service of commercial interests than the story.  I also had trouble believing that Sister Sage, literally the smartest person in the world, would fail to predict that Godolkin was never going to stay neatly within the lines of their scheme. That said, she adapts quickly with an alternate plan to neutralize him, and Susan Heyward’s performance is so impeccable that it easily papers over any questions. While the plugs for The Boys sometimes felt forced, they did succeed in getting me excited for that show’s forthcoming final season. My ears pricked up when Sister Sage mentioned “phase two”—who can resist a multi-phase diabolical plot? It’s also fun that we’ll get to see more of Marie and her friends as members of the resistance in Gen V’s parent show—though they’ll undoubtedly be tertiary at best as things build to a big showdown between Homelander and Butcher. I also was hoping for some more exploration of the theme of rising fascism in this finale—though I suspect we’ll get much more of that in the final season of The Boys as well.[end-mark] The post <i>Gen V</i> Brings It All Together and Teases Final Season of <i>The Boys</i> in Season 2 Wrap-Up appeared first on Reactor.

Movies & TV It: Welcome to Derry It: Welcome To Derry’s Premiere Episode Ends Strong After a Bumpy Start If IT keeps this up, IT might be one of my favorITe things this year. By Leah Schnelbach | Published on October 27, 2025 Credit: HBO Max Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: HBO Max Welcome to It: Welcome to Derry! I’m going to be reviewing the latest Stephen King adaptation each week (I mean, latest as of this writing—I’m sure there will be at least five more adaptations before the show’s finale on December 14th) and I’ll give you a brief plot summary, point out any Easter eggs I catch, and sum up my thoughts. First things first: It: Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the two-part IT adaptation that came out in 2017 and 2019 respectively. The show is set in 1962 to reflect the updated timelines of the film, but it is drawing on events from the original novel, mostly stuff that took place in the mid-to-late 1950s by the novel’s timeline. The series has been developed by Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti, and Jason Fuchs; Bill Skarsgård, who plays Pennywise in the films, is on as an executive producer in addition to reprising his role as the best clown ever. I am attempting to watch this show week-by-week without knowing anything beyond my memories of the book and films—but there is one character whose identity I already figured out—I’ll be coy about it below in case you’re also going in cold, and don’t want to be spoiled. As Brief a Recap as a King Adaptation Will Allow We open with the sad tale of Matty Clements (Miles Ekhardt). We meet the kid at the Capitol Theater, where he’s watching The Music Man and sucking on a pacifier. A strange thing for an older kid to do. The other thing to notice is the shiner fading around his right eye. A bully? Or a standard-issue Stephen King Terrible Father? A few minutes it’s suggested that his family situation is not great, so I’m guessing it’s the latter, and that they don’t care a bit that people might see evidence of their abuse. A weirdly vigilant usher catches Matty, who hasn’t paid for a movie ticket, and chases him over the objections of kindly projectionist Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider) and his daughter Veronica (Amanda Christine). Matty escapes into the snow of a January in Maine, and, to really drive home how sad and isolated this kid is, attempts to hitch a ride. The people who pick him up seem normal at first—a dad, a very pregnant mom, an older sister, a younger brother. But alarm bells ring pretty quickly when they ask Matty where home is, and he asks to be dropped “anywhere but there”—and they offer to bring him with them all the way to PORTLAND. Which is a whole-ass other town than Derry. But Matty’s fine with that. This turns out to be a mistake. Elder daughter takes out a Tupperware full of… organ meat? I think? dips her fingers into the blood the meat is swimming in, and then sticks her fingers in Matty’s face in a gruesome take on “I’m not touching you!” Mom encourages younger brother to practice his spelling with increasingly weird vocabulary. And soon enough Dad has driven the car back past the Welcome to Derry sign, rather than heading out toward Portland as promised. Matty begs to be let out, finally resorting to sucking his pacifier again out of panic, and then Mom gives birth to a mutant demon baby right there in the front seat. After a few minutes of the baby ricocheting around the car while Mom holds onto it by the umbilical cord, it crashes though the car window, taking Matty’s pacifier with it. We follow the pacifier down down down into the river, and into a sewer tunnel, where the title card rises from the water. Nice cold open, show. We cut to four months later, where we meet our season’s main characters. Phil Malkin (Jack Molloy Legault) is obsessed with UFOs and World War III. His BFF Teddy Uris (Mikkal Karim-Fidler) is mourning their friend Matty, and trying to balance his interest with comics with the demands of bar mitzvah studies. Classmate Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack) is an outcast because of her mental breakdown after her dad’s death a year earlier, and her BFF Margie (Matilda Lawler) is desperately trying to get her to act normal so they can get in with the “Patty Cakes”: the high school’s group of popular girls who orbit around a blonde named Patty. Given that someone in the school has decided to fill Lilly’s lockers with jars of pickles for some reason, this seems like a longshot. Meanwhile, Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) and his friend Captain Pauly Russo (Rudy Mancuso) report for duty at Derry’s Strategic Air Command base—an important site for potential Cold War conflicts. The Major is scarred from seeing action in Korea, and he’s eager to start a new life in Maine once his wife arrives. General Shaw (James Remar) tells him and Pauly: “If normal’s what you’re after, you two are going to love Derry.” Nice, show, nice. But Major Hanlon notices a sign that I think said Whites Only, and he and the driver, also a Black man (whom I recognize from somewhere… but where?) share a glance. Naturally, one of the Major’s new reports pulls some racist shit almost immediately, but the General reprimands the man and invites Major Hanlon to his office for a drink. Over the course of a couple afterschool hangouts with Phil and Teddy, we learn that they were the closest thing Matty had to friends. His mom tried to bribe them with candy to come to his birthday party, but they still didn’t go. Lilly’s getting ready to take a bath when she notices the turtle charm on her charm bracelet, which throws us into a flashback. She remembers New Years Eve, when Matty Clements took her up to going up to an abandoned tower over Derry. They each had a box of Cracker Jacks, and he traded her his turtle charm for the rocket ship she got. She opened up to him about the accident that killed her father. He was crushed in the gears of the canning factory where he worked, and Lilly blames herself because she’d asked him to go back into the factory to retrieve the mood ring she’d forgotten when she and her mom picked him up from work. Matty reassures her, and tells her that she’s not like the Patty Cakes and other girls at school. He tries to kiss her but she rebuffs him (not out of any meanness but because she thinks of them as friends) and he runs off in shame—and straight to the Capitol Theater, that horrifying car ride, and either death or something worse. But this is a Stephen King adaptation, and things can always get more awful, never fear. First, Lilly’s mom stands in the doorway to remind her daughter that she needs to have clothes ready to visit her dad’s grave, and when Lilly asks not to go because she’s still too upset, her mother replies: “You’re not the only person who’s had something bad happen to them. The sooner you realize that, the better.” Nice, mom. THEN Lilly hears Matty’s voice in the pipes (singing “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man, no less) and a bloody finger pokes up from the drain. She turns to the boys for help, but only Teddy is even slightly open to it. Phil, despite thinking aliens are infiltrating human society, draws the line at ghosts in sewers. Teddy tentatively tries to ask his father whether someone might kidnap a child and hold them in the sewers, but the man goes ballistic and yells at him about the real-life horrors of the Holocaust, rather than realizing that his son is worrying about the fate of his missing friend. Teddy’s older brother also scoffs at him. Later, Teddy has a waking nightmare that his lampshade is made of screaming human faces, and when he finally ends up cowering and crying on the floor it’s his brother who check on him, not either parent, and his brother looks at him in disgust and says “I can’t believe we’re related.” So, as expected, regular human family is the scariest part of the show so far. The kids meet up again. Phil’s now willing to believe that there’s something Wrong, but he also needs some kind of definitive proof. Lilly’s grief got her packed off to the Juniper Hill mental health facility, after all, and talking about hearing ghost children in the sewers of Derry isn’t going to go over well with the adults of the town. As Phil says: “I can’t go to the loony bin, Teddy! I couldn’t make it through goddamn sleepaway camp!” The kids go to the library to study microfiche together. Could we be witnessing the birth of a new (old) Losers Club? Phil has to bring kid sister Susie (Matilda Legault) along, and she clearly has an adorable crush on Teddy. The kids work well together, and almost immediately find an article about Matty’s disappearance, with Phil quipping the entire time like a proto-Richie Tozier. They notice the detail that the Capitol Theater’s projectionist’s daughter, Ronnie, was the last person who reported seeing Matty alive. They dutifully troop off to find her—only for Ronnie to tell them off and order them away from her house. Apparently the cops came around constantly at first, and tried to pin Matty’s disappearance on her father—who might have been the only adult who was ever nice to Matty. They start to leave, but then Ronnie overhears them mention voices coming from the sewers. She calls them back, and admits that she, too, has heard kids’ voices. Sometimes they laugh, sometimes they scream. When Lilly mentions the song she heard, Ronnie makes a decision. Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO But first, let’s check in with Major Hanlon. He’s sleeping in the barracks when multiple men in gas masks show up. They beat him, pull a gun on him, and demand the specs for the experimental B-52 he’s meant to test. Just as he tells them to pull the trigger, Pauly bangs on the door. Hanlon manages to fight back, Pauly breaks the door down, and the two men fight the intruders until they flee. “How’s my hair?” Pauly asks. “Still greasy,” Hanlon replies. Meanwhile, across town, Ronnie sneaks the other kids into the Capitol. Maybe they really are our new Losers Club! She threads The Music Man into the projector, while the other four take seats in the theater. The three older kids start to cry as they think about how they’ve let Matty down. Phil insists that none of it was their fault, and that they’re going to fix it now. And then there’s Robert Preston singing “Ya Got Trouble”, and there’s Matty, in the movie, holding a bundle in his arms. He looks up at them, and the kids call him to come through the screen and back to life. They’re going to save him. But, well, no. No, Matty tells them that they’re the REASON he’s trapped now. His death, and his undeath, was their fault—they ignored and rejected him, and that’s what sent him off to the Capitol alone, and then to that demonic car. He drops his head and his face warps into an expression that looks awfully similar to a certain clown I could mention. “Matty” unwraps the bundle, and the Mutant Demon Baby from the cold open flies through the movie screen into the Capitol Theater. And here’s where the show, after some decent scares and bumpy character building, won my heart: the Mutant Demon Baby destroys them. As Ronnie watches in horror from the (now supernaturally locked) projectionist’s booth, it kills both Phil and Teddy. Ronnie breaks out, and gets to Lilly just as Lilly grabs little Susie’s hand—but by the time the girls run out to the lobby, little Susie’s hand is the ONLY part of Susie that Lilly’s still holding. The episode ends on Lilly, screaming and covered in blood. Do We All Float? Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO …huh. Three of our five potential new protagonists are dead, and I’m guessing the fourth is headed back to Juniper Hill. Ronnie Grogan is now set up to be our young lead in the overtly supernatural plot, as I assume Major Leroy Hanlon is set to be our adult lead in whatever the military sci-fi plot turns out to be. I’ll admit that this was a rollercoaster for me. I loved the opening, but I found a lot of the middle of the episode a bit clunky. The actors playing the kids have great chemistry, but the characters themselves felt a bit underbaked, or even just annoying—Richie Tozier is one of my favorite characters in all of literature, because his awkwardness is balanced with the occasional legitimately funny line. Here, Phil was kind of just… irritating. Which is obviously more realistic than giving us an 11-year-old with sparkling wit, but it’s also a bit much to take. On the other hand, I thought the show did a good job of handling Lilly’s relentless depression, and the way none of the people in her life give a shit about it, and want her to move on already. Teddy’s family’s explosion at his questioning seemed a little over-the-top even by Stephen King standards, but the lampshade scene was excellent. Leroy Hanlon’s plot is a bit underbaked so far, but obviously we’re just starting out. And, obviously, I’m very interested to see what they do with the Major’s driver, who seems… familiar. (I also love Chris Chalk from the cancelled-too-soon Perry Mason reboot, so I’m glad to see him here on general principle.) As ever, the interesting stuff about King is the moments when supernatural horror intersects with real life horror. I was pleased to see that the show is realistic about the racism of 1962 Maine, about how much parents want their kids to be seen and not heard, about how society as a whole has no sense of trauma needing to be processed, of the way horrific details of the Holocaust are thrown in a kid’s face, and the way nuclear threat hangs over everything. Also, after the way Mike Hanlon got short shrift in the two IT movies, I’m pleased to see the seemingly bigger roles given to Leroy Hanlon, and, so far, Ronnie Grogan. Let’s hope she lasts at least a few more episodes. And, of course, that ending. That ending made the show for me, and if it can keep up that level of unadulterated, no-one-is-safe-no-really-we-MEAN-it horror, it will become one of the highlights of my year. I mean, it ends with eleven-year-old HOLDING THE DISEMBODIED HAND OF A LITTLE GIRL. A thousand heart-shaped red balloons, for you, show. #JustKingThings Credit: HBO Max There is precisely one (1) good parent in this whole first hour. Ronnie Grogan’s dad tries to protect Mattie from the power mad usher, and I have to assume he know Ronnie’s also lying to protect the kid. Once they think Matty’s escaped, the two make their way back up to the projection booth, Hank Grogan quizzing Ronnie on movie trivia on the way. It’s really sweet, and basically the only warm moment this hour gives us. Other than that: Lilly’s mom wants her to hurry up and get over her dad’s death; Teddy’s whole family blows up at the kid for asking about whether there might be a kidnapper in Derry, four months after his friend Matty vanished off the face of the Earth, and the show opens with Matty walking around with a fading black eye and implies it was doled out by his father. The other big King Thing in this opening hour weaves into the one I just mentioned: the extraordinary cruelty of bullies is shown when Lilly opens her locker only to find it full of jars of pickles. We later learn that her dad was crushed to death a jarring factory. Someone was enough of a shithead to spend actual US dollars on a locker’s worth of pickles just for an incredibly hateful prank? That’s King all over. And of course no adult sees this or corrects the behavior. One anti-King Thing I noticed: I didn’t hear a SINGLE over-the-top Maine accent—and this show’s set in the 1960s, when regional accents still roamed the land like megafauna. I’m deducting like 8,000 Maine points, television show. And one last thing: did young teens in 1962 really say “fuck” this often, and so casually? I did (I still do), but I was not around in 1962. Turtles all the Way Down The school’s sign features a message from Bertie the Turtle telling the kids to Duck and Cover, and once we’re inside we see a kid dressed in a Bertie costume handing out leaflets. These are almost immediately knocked out of his hands by a bully. Matty gives Lilly his turtle charm, and she says that “Turtles are lucky” as she adds it to her bracelet. Is that why she survived the massacre at the Capitol? Mike Hanlon’s Photo Album Credit: Brooke Palmer/HBO Someone wrote “Teddy Urine” on Teddy Uris’ locker—this was a common insult hurled at Stanley Uris in the novel. Clearly Teddy Uris in NOT Stan’s dad or grandad—maybe Teddy’s shitty older brother is? Which would explain why the elder Uris is so dead set against Stan’s own dalliances in fantasy a few decades later. We see Leroy Hanlon reading a newspaper with the headline: “City council presses forward with Paul Bunyan statue”—so Richie Tozier’s future nemesis is still on track. Ridiculous Alien Spider, or Generationally Terrifying Clown? A little of both this time. The mutant demon baby was not, in itself, terrifying, but the way the atmosphere in the demonic family’s car gradually curdled into horror was absolutely perfect. The birth scene itself was gross in the best way, and Mutant Demon Baby’s closing scene in the movie theater was amazing. But Mutant Demon Baby looks like a Garbage Pail Kid come to life—I don’t think it would be scary until it was actually eating you. On the other hand, the screaming lampshade was really, really upsetting.[end-mark] The post <em>It: Welcome To Derry</em>’s Premiere Episode Ends Strong After a Bumpy Start appeared first on Reactor.