The Loser’s Club 1.0 gain a new ally and something much, much worse. The Air Force make their move and not all of them come back.

There’s a moment early on in this episode where the kids are alright. Marge is on side, having told everyone Lily wasn’t the person who tried to kill her. There’s a sense of them coming together, of the sort of unity that their successors will wield to destroy Pennywise once and for all.

And then Matty, with long hair, climbs out of their tent and the bottom drops out of your stomach.

You know it’s not Matty, but you hope it is. The kids clearly feel the exact same way and as he leads them into the sewers on one of two parallel, equally disastrous missions, the tension only increases. Miles Ekhardt hits the exact right balance between traumatised and uncanny and when he’s finally revealed as the only thing he can be the horror is so thick you can taste it. The transition to Pennywise, in all his fanged, clammy glory is a moment that this show has built towards for four episodes and it doesn’t disappoint. This is It, in every sense and there’s a moment here where you honestly think none of the kids are safe. ‘Duck and cover, kids’ being Pennywise’s first line is especially perfect. Safety is a lie in this time period, for everyone, everywhere.

The only reason they do survive is the military’s catastrophic retrieval mission. On paper it works, but the reality is it’s the result of the same curdled, evil-tainted mindset as every other adult choice. Sending Halloran, Hanlon and Paul in is a recipe for disaster that Pennywise happily embraces. There’s a compelling, and odd, genre switch that makes these scenes really pop. The military’s torches flicker out, automatic fire rings out and suddenly you see the echo of Aliens’ doomed Colonial Marines. It’s weird and it works brilliantly. Because the military know what to expect and it still isn’t enough, leading to a pivotal moment where Hanlon confronts Pennywise as Charlotte and shoots it. The agonising wait before Pennywise reveals itself and swims away, unharmed, at terrifying speed, rattles us and Hanlon both. That leads to the final moments where this rational man sees his son, assumes it’s Pennywise, and doesn’t hear Russo in time to stop. So, Hanlon, his family already retreated onto the base, loses his best friend and traumatises his son all at once. And somewhere, a Clown laughs.

So much of this episode is wrapped up in the long-awaited return to the sewers and the debut of Pennywise that we almost forget what else is here. Chris Chalk’s Dick Halloran is the other primary Pennywise victim; dragged back into a personal hell and apparently literally given he disappears from the sewers. More intriguing still, when he returns at the episode’s end a newly dead, very confused Russo is waiting for him.

Elsewhere in the episode we get confirmation that Madeleine Stowe’s Ingrid Kersh is real, even if we know the movies’ version of her is a shell for Pennywise and confirmation that she and Hank (Stephen Rider) are having an affair! It’s a shocking twist that makes perfect sense and folds these two characters tight into the main plot. We also get a beat with Taniel (Joshua Odjick) losing the shard weapon and it being the only thing that saves Lily. The oil slick of protean murder that is Pennywise stopping because he can’t cross the line of the shard is funny and intentionally so but also horrific. In a town poisoned by Pennywise’s ‘discharge’ (and what a line THAT is), luck is what you can get, or what the Great Turtle can give you. Whether or not we get a look at that other cosmic power remains to be seen but Lily’s turtle necklace is very visible when Pennywise backs off from the shard. Most intriguing of all though, Charlotte sees a bestial, grinning cop who can only be Pennywise. Which means either he’s getting bolder or the family trait is stronger than previously thought.

Verdict: Horror, character, history and incident collide in this excellent episode. What an opening for the season’s final act. 9/10

Alasdair Stuart