Since It: Welcome to Derry began, we knew that Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) was destined to become the father of Mike Hanlon, a member of the Losers Club in the main It story. The Hanlon family, including Will’s mother, Charlotte (Taylour Paige), and his father, Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), relocates to Maine thanks to Leroy’s new military assignment. Because of what we know about Mike’s story in the future, we knew they’d stick around after Derry. But the way the show handled it in the finale was a little off-putting.
At the very end of the season finale, “Winter Fire,” everyone is recovering from Pennywise’s brutal attack on the town—and his subsequent flame-out into hibernation mode. In an earlier episode, Charlotte made it clear that she and her son would be leaving town; Leroy can join them later once he’s done with his top-secret mission, but safety is her biggest concern.
It’s Charlotte who points out the town of Derry itself is a monster in the wake of the Black Spot tragedy—an event that might have been encouraged by Pennywise’s ambient bad vibes but was very much enacted by human beings. Hateful, racist human beings.
Then, there’s the small matter of Will getting clown-napped along with most of the other kids in Derry. He’s eventually recovered, but the experience and everything surrounding his close encounter with Pennywise is traumatic, to say the least. And as we know, Pennywise always comes back.
So you’d understand completely if the Hanlon family decided Derry—a cursed town on many levels—was not a place they wanted to stay, especially after Leroy gets his honorable discharge in “Winter Fire.” But at the last minute, Charlotte decides they should take Rose (Kimberly Guerrero) up on her offer and buy her farm. It’s an odd choice, especially given all we’d learned about Charlotte throughout the season, and Paige agrees.
“I’m not happy with the way this was written, if I’m being honest,” Paige told Deadline. “I’m like, ‘There’s no fucking way.’ I mean, I guess the lore is that you forget when you’re in Derry, but I don’t buy it. I guess, maybe it makes sense for 1962 that you kind of shut up and you get back to business, you get back to being a homemaker, and you’re the nucleus of the family, I guess.”
But still, “I wanted more for Charlotte and this family, but I think it would have been maybe too radical for Charlotte to leave. And also too radical for women of 1962 to be like, ‘I’m out.’ That was very rare. It just didn’t really happen then, right? Most people stayed in loveless marriages. Most women, I think, were martyrs [who] had to deny themselves to keep the family together.”
It’s true that we often saw Charlotte putting aside her personal feelings to keep her husband happy; earlier in the season, he tells her to keep a low profile rather than give in to her instincts to speak out when she sees something wrong, even though she’s clearly proud of her past work in the civil rights movement. But in “Winter Fire,” she’s the one who suggests staying. Leroy and Will are fine with leaving.
And even knowing that Will’s future family forms an important part of It stories to come, we agree with Paige on this one: Charlotte wanting to stay in Derry? No fucking way.
It: Welcome to Derry is now streaming on HBO and HBO Max.
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