‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Episode 3 Ending Explained: Dick Hallorann’s Vision and Pennywise’s Picture

IT: Welcome to Derry has shown us countless terrifying incarnations of the monstrous cosmic evil known simply as “It,” but have we seen the iconic Stephen King villain in his Pennywise (Bill Skarsgård) form? Does Pennywise haunt IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 “Now You See It” or is the HBO show holding out on us?

**Spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 “Now You See It,” now streaming on HBO Max**

While we haven’t seen Pennywise in all his clownish glory quite yet, two characters come very, very close this week.

Halfway through IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 “Now You See It,” Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) uses his abilities to “shine” to psychically travel to Pennywise’s subterranean lair. He not only sees Pennywise’s clown wagon, his floating victims, and the sewers, but he also appears to see glowing eyes, aka the deadlights.

Later, at the end of the episode, the new “loser’s club” that’s emerged on IT: Welcome to Derry — comprised of Lilly Bainbridge (Clara Stack), Ronnie Grogan (Amanda Christine), Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James), and Rich Santos (Arian S. Cartaya) — attempts to contact their dead friends with a graveyard séance. Their hope is to photograph their ghosts, therefore proving the horrific visions they’ve been seeing are real. The plan works so well they even get a blurry snapshot of what Will saw in a crypt: a clown.

Whether you need to know more about Dick Hallorann’s first use of his “shining” ability or want to know if those child actors had any fun whatsoever shooting that scary graveyard sequence, here’s everything you need to know about the end of IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 “Now You See It”…

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 Ending Explained: Does Will Hanlon Meet Pennywise?

IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 ends with kids’ plan to photograph It in action going a little bit too well. Soon, the ghosts of their friends are chasing them through a graveyard in a montage that evokes some of classic IT scenes. At one point, Will becomes separated from the group. He walks into a crypt and snaps a photograph as a creepy monster leering at him from the shadows.

When the kids finally develop the film, a blurry image pops up in the photo. Lilly asks what it is and Will says, “It’s a clown.” The implication is he got some brief glance at It in his full Pennywise drag, but we have to wait a little longer to see Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise on screen.

Fun fact: the IT: Welcome to Derry production team also kept Bill Skarsgård’s Pennywise away from the young actors for as long as possible in real life, too.

“We couldn’t like really see him,” Amanda Christine said. “They kept it really top secret and everything.”

When DECIDER spoke with the young stars of IT: Welcome to Derry, they all recalled that it took about a week of very late night shoots in a real graveyard to nail that Episode 3 action sequence.

“We were there from like twelve to like three in the morning, rolling over graves. I feel terrible,” Christine said, putting her hands in prayer pose. “But it was fun. It was really fun. We were just silly because, I mean, we were kids and literally were [working] off of no sleep. So we were just running around doing whatever in the graveyard for real.”

“Honestly, it was so much fun,” Clara Stack said. “It’d be 2 AM and we would all go to crafty and get snacks and just hang around.”

“I think we truly discovered who we are as a friend group and as people in that scene, just because the amount of time we spent together,” Arian S. Cartaya said. “We had a lot of fun, but it was also spooky because, like, it’s three in the morning at a cemetery. Like, that’s that’s just weird.” 

Blake Cameron James said that he felt that was the scene the boys’ characters “really clicked up” with the rest of the group.

“Me and Rich didn’t even really believe them that much at first and then it all attacked us at the same time,” James said. “So just like, all right, now we got to get to the bottom of this, you know what I’m saying?”

Does Dick Hallorann Make Contact With Pennywise in IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3?

One of the coolest sequences in IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3 comes when Dick Hallorann uses General Shaw’s (James Remar) old slingshot — which was used to fight off It in 1908 — to hunt Pennywise from the skies. We immediately see how Dick uses his psychic abilities and why he’s terrified of It.

“The way Dick is rolled out in the show is really slow, and then it’s not,” Chris Chalk told DECIDER. “In Episode 3, the second he touches that slingshot, it’s over.”

“Because he thinks, arrogantly, that this is easy. Let me just get this bag real quick. Get the general out of my face! You know I’m talking trash to all these, like, white, elite, military people,” he continued. “And the second I touch that, I go, ‘Oh, no, this is too big. This is too big for me.’ And in that moment, everything changes for Dick.”

Dick’s vision takes him into the sewers beneath Derry, there he sees a painted wagon with the name Pennywise above a clown. The wagon then opens and yellow eyes peer at Dick. “Who are you?” Pennywise asks as a mechanical face emerges. There’s then a super cut of violent war scenes, masked beings, and soon toys are falling from the ceiling.

Dick looks up and sees bodies floating. One of these people? His grandmother, who warns him to get out of there. (Fans of The Shining will remember that Dick’s grandmother also had the gift, which she named “the shine.”)

As Hallorann attempts to escape, he almost leaps to his death from the plane. Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) saves him. Later, when Dick Hallorann is then debriefed by General Shaw, he warns him about the threat Pennywise holds. He notes that It wasn’t supposed to see them, harkening back to Chalk’s warning that “everything changes for Dick” the moment he encounters Pennywise.

So, yes, Dick Hallorann makes contact with Pennywise in IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3, but we still have not see the full Pennywise reveal.