IT: WELCOME TO DERRY’S Black Spot Fire, Explained

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The sixth episode of It: Welcome to Derry sets the stage for what promises to be one of the show’s most disturbing moments: the Black Spot fire. This tragic event, a hate crime that resulted in the deaths of around forty people in Derry’s Black community, has been alluded to in both the films and Stephen King’s original novel. While the novel and films only briefly mention the fire, the series offers enough detail to suggest what viewers can expect in the remaining episodes.

The timeline in Stephen King’s novel It differs significantly from the movie and TV adaptations, even though they all cover the same basic story. In the book, the Losers Club first confronted Pennywise in 1958, following a previous encounter in 1929-1930. However, the films and the Welcome to Derry series changed things, setting the Losers Club’s initial meeting in 1989 and the previous cycle of events in 1962. This meant the series moved a key event, the Black Spot fire, from 1930 to 1962.

As depicted in the series and the book, the Black Spot was a well-known gathering place for Black soldiers from the nearby Derry Air Force Base. Back in 1930, when the fire occurred in the novel, the military was rigidly segregated. This meant Black officers weren’t allowed to socialize with white soldiers on base, at least not in official spaces. They had to create their own safe environment, though occasionally more progressive white officers would join them.

During the 1930s, the Ku Klux Klan experienced a revival, leading to widespread racial violence throughout the United States, not just in the South. Events like the fire at the Black Spot in King’s stories were unfortunately common at the time. According to the lore, a white supremacist group known as the Maine Legion of White Decency trapped people inside the building and set it on fire. Dick Halloran, a cook at the Black Spot, narrowly escaped. Years later, he would become a cook at the Overlook Hotel, as depicted in The Shining. The series Welcome to Derry reimagines Halloran as a military member who founded the group at the location of the original facility. Those who survived the fire reported seeing a large black bird with red balloons – a clear sign of Pennywise’s presence.

During the early 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum across the United States, and the Ku Klux Klan was experiencing a resurgence of violent hate crimes – a pattern that had previously peaked in the 1930s. The show’s setting during this period is historically accurate, reflecting the real events of the time, including infamous incidents like the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. The horrors depicted in the show don’t need much exaggeration to feel realistic. While Maine was relatively progressive in terms of desegregation, a racially integrated nightclub in a small town like Derry would have been considered highly unusual and controversial.

As a longtime fan of Stephen King’s It, I was really paying attention to the details in Welcome to Derry, and I noticed some interesting shifts from both the book and the first movie. Remember young Mike Hanlon’s terrifying vision in the first film? He sees people burning in the old meatpacking building while making deliveries for his grandpa. Well, the second movie hinted that building was the site of a past tragedy back in 1962, but the series actually changes things up. Welcome to Derry reveals the real location of that dark event wasn’t the meatpacking plant at all – it was an abandoned Air Force storage facility on the edge of town. It’s a subtle change, but it definitely adds another layer to Derry’s already creepy history.

It’s tempting to dismiss this as a simple mistake in the story. But the novel It demonstrated that Pennywise can change what people believe to be true. Perhaps Pennywise deliberately made Mike think the Black Spot fire was happening, as he often went there. Plus, the image itself doesn’t definitively show that the Black Spot is the building we’re looking at. The smoke we see in the distance could be coming from the Black Spot, and not the building right in front of us. So, it’s not hard to come up with a reasonable explanation if you want to.

The show will eventually reveal that Will Hanlon, Mike’s father (played by Blake Cameron James), dies in a house fire in the late 1970s or early 1980s. After his death, young Mike is raised by his grandfather, Leroy. The Leroy we see in the first It movie is much harsher and more cynical than the younger version played by Jovan Adepo in Welcome to Derry. This change in personality is likely due to Leroy having survived both Pennywise and the loss of his son. With only three episodes remaining in Welcome to Derry, we can expect to learn more about how all these events connect.

It: Welcome to Derry drops new episodes every Sunday on HBO Max.

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2025-12-01 06:05