🔗 Share this article

Pennywise's impact on the young residents of the Derry series shapes them long into adulthood, twisting them into the very adults who keep the town's cycle of animosity ongoing. It finds easy targets on kids from fractured households — children who frequently mature to repeat the same patterns as their guardians. However, the Hanlon family stands apart as a rare example of a households that remains intact, which could clarify why Mike Hanlon, even after choosing to stay in the town, remains the sole member who doesn't completely succumb under the clown's influence.

The Hanlon Family's Distinctive Resilience

In the fourth installment of Welcome to Derry, Leroy at last grows more aware of the supernatural forces surrounding the community, particularly when the entity begins tormenting his child, Will Hanlon, during their angling excursion. The Hanlon family consists of some of the few adults who are cognizant that things are not right with the town, notably Leroy, who was revealed to be receptive to the Shining when he was able to detect a fellow psychic's employment of it in the third episode. Subsequently, he spots one of the clown's trademark inflated orbs outside his house. This gift, alongside his failure to feel fear, combined with the base of his household, may be why he's able to see Pennywise's hauntings. However, consider if that psychic sensitivity is generational, and one of the reasons Mike is among the few individuals in Derry who resisted succumbing to the town's malevolence?

Will is part of the collective of children at his school being tormented by the clown. All his school friends come from broken homes, with caregivers who don't believe they're being haunted. The cause he is being haunted is because of the cruelty of the town, paired with his potential sensitivity to psychic abilities, which makes him susceptible. This family are fundamentally outsiders in Derry during the early sixties, which lends itself towards the household sensing something is off about the locality from the onset. They also have a good foundation that isn't fractured, unlike the folks who come from the area, with relationships that have decayed internally.

Backstory Connections

Drawing from the original book, we know the young Will will end up at the infamous nightclub, where Hallorann will rescue him from a fire that the town bigots of the community will cause. In the 2017 film, we see that Will has a son named Mike and that Will eventually perishes in a fire, with Leroy surviving his own son and adopting his grandchild. The official story in the motion picture is that the parents were on drugs, but now that we see him in the series, that's difficult to accept. Maybe the shy youth, once he became an adult, turned to alcohol to free himself of the hauntings, or perhaps the corrupt town got to him first, with the KKK ultimately finishing the task it started long before. Whether through the terror of the entity or via the cruelty of the community, seeded by It, It eventually gets the final victory on Will.

Leroy's Transformation

These occurrences would clarify how the elder Hanlon changes so radically from what we witness in the first film and the prequel. In his older age, he appears resentful and much stricter with his parenting. Since he survived his own son, it's comprehensible to see such a profound shift. Nonetheless, his statements carry more weight since we are aware he's seen Pennywise's hauntings and the impacts they had on his child. In the initial sequence of It, we observe the boy pause to use a stunning device on a sheep at Leroy's farm. Leroy reprimands him for delaying and offers an analogy that results in a survival-of-the-fittest scenario.

“You have two options you can be in this world. You can be out here like we are, or you can be in there,” he says as he gestures to the sheep. “You dawdle indecisive, and another is going to decide for you. But you will be unaware it until you experience that projectile in your head.”

Looking back, this could be a bit of prediction, a lesson he regrets not imparting to his own son. Perhaps he desires he had done something in his youth, but for certain factors, he was unable to avoid the sickening attraction of the town.