HBOIt: Welcome to Derry is all about exploring the history of the titular town just as much as it is about Pennywise’s backstory. Season 1 is all leading to the Black Spot massacre, a devastating incident only referenced in the book, but who started it – and why?
So far, the show has sneakily become a prequel to The Shining through Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk) who has telepathic abilities that allow him to read minds and see the spirits of the dead — which explains why he knows so much about Danny Torrance’s powers when he meets him at the Overlook Hotel.
In Stephen King’s original IT novel, he references the fact that Hallorann was at the Black Spot, a nightclub for Black servicemen who worked on the airbase. In the show, we see that Hallorann was actually one of the ones who started the club along with Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo).
Episode 6 ended with a group of Derry townspeople arriving at the club wearing masks and armed with rifles as they hunted for Hank Grogan (Stephen Rider), and the trailer for the next chapter seemed to show Pennywise also being at the club while it burns down… But who really started the Black Spot fire?
Who starts the Black Spot fire?
HBO Max/YouTubeIn the book, the Maine Legion of White Decency burnt down the Black Spot in a racist attack, and during the inferno, Hallorann uses his abilities to help find survivors who are still trapped. He saves Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) by telling him to climb through a window, instead of running for the door – which was jammed.
While the racist group were the ones who started the fire, the source material implies that Pennywise influenced them to do so. It’s not the first time he’s pushed people to commit horrific acts of brutality, and it wouldn’t be the last.
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In Andy Muschietti’s IT movies, he pushes Henry Bowers to murder his own father, before he tries to attack the Loser’s Club.
We won’t know how the show will handle the fire until It: Welcome to Derry Episode 7 airs, but it seems likely that Pennywise will influence the masked townspeople to burn the Black Spot down with everyone still inside. However, a new theory suggests that someone else was pulling the strings from afar…
Welcome to Derry reveals Mrs. Kersh is to blame
HBOFans on Reddit theorized that Mrs. Kersh (Madeleine Stowe) tips off the mob so that she can sacrifice the Black Spot and the people inside to Pennywise so she can see her father, Bob Gray, again.
The theory explains: “Chief Bowers told the guys that someone left a tip at the police right before taking him away from his police work… what if that means, that’s Ingrid Kersh at work? We even see her suiting up again.
“I’m thinking she called the police specifically so she could cause the black spot and thus… the ultimate sacrifice, including her lover, so she could get to her dad?” Well, fans were correct.
HBOMrs. Kersh might not have intended the place to burn down, but she intended for the mob to commit some kind of atrocious act of violence to lure Pennywise out into the open. After the clown munches on Mr. Kersh’s decapitated head, Ingrid reveals her role in the violence.
“I knew they would come if they thought that he was here, and there would be blood, and pain, and fear, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist it. And you would come back… That you would tell me that I was good,” she tells him.
It: Welcome to Derry Episode 6 revealed that she’s been trying to find Pennywise again for years so that she can see her father, because he was “taken” from her by the creature when she was a young girl. But Mrs. Kersh should’ve been careful what she wished for, because Pennywise then used the deadlights on her, turning her into a comatose husk.
So, yes, Mrs. Kersh might be responsible for the Black Spot fire, but it wasn’t without consequences.
While you wait to see what else the show reveals about Pennywise’s reign of terror, discover why the show is going back in time, learn about which scene scared Stephen King the most, and check out the fear plot hole that could’ve saved the military’s plan to catch Pennywise.