SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the first two episodes of IT: Welcome To Derry. If you have not yet watched, you should take advantage of your HBO Max subscription to do so – or otherwise, proceed at your own risk!
When it comes to long-running franchises, one of my biggest pet peeves regards character stagnation. If it’s felt by studios/filmmakers that audiences have a very specific vision of who a hero or villain is, there will be an effort to resist any significant change (even if decades pass between appearances). Nobody is the exact same person they were after 20 years of being molded by life experience – which is why I am very happy about the approach that IT: Welcome To Derry is taking with Dick Hallorann, played by Chris Chalk.
Hallorann is best known to Stephen King fans from The Shining and Doctor Sleep – books and movies that feature the character as the head chef at the Overlook Hotel and a mentor figure to young Danny Torrance. But The Shining is set in the late 1970s, while IT: Welcome To Derry is very specifically set in 1962, and showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane made a point of presenting him differently than expected. When I spoke with the filmmakers last month during a virtual press day, Fuchs explained that Hallorann was an ‘organic fit for the series because of his cameo in Stephen King’s IT, but they had to also establish room for growth:
There's obviously a reference to him being at the Black Spot in one of Mike Hanlon’s interludes. So that was, again, one of the earliest choices I think I made in writing the pilot, was including Dick Hallorann. And it felt really exciting to see Dick at an earlier moment in his evolution.
Hallorann gets a proper introduction in IT: Welcome To Derry’s second episode, and we learn that he is a part of a very special operation on the Air Force base. More than just being an asset leading teams in the search of something powerful in the titular Maine town, he is guiding them with the use of his psychic abilities, a.k.a. his Shine.
Continuing, Fuchs added that the man is definitely the same character with which audiences are familiar, but it’s a prequel that puts him on a path. The filmmaker added,
He's a very different version of the character than we meet in Doctor Sleep or in The Shining. And so part of this season really is a… it's many things, but one of them is certainly a Dick Hallorann origin story. It's understanding how he started to become the man we're eventually going to meet later in Stephen King canon.
Adding his thoughts to the subject, Brad Caleb Kane clarified what we can expect from Dick Hallorann in at least the early episodes of the new Stephen King series. As previously portrayed by Scatman Crothers and Carl Lumbly, he is a genial man who acts with genuine compassion. But that’s not who he is in 1962.
Before he makes his way west and gets a job at the most haunted hotel in Colorado’s Rocky Mountains, Hallorann is a much more selfish individual who has a dedicated interest in his own fate alone. Kane explained,
He's been in service in many ways of Danny Torrance and his story in The Overlook Hotel. Here, Dick Hallorann is in service of nobody but Dick Hallorann. He doesn't care about kids, he doesn't care about anyone but himself and getting through the mission – spoiler alert – that he's been put on. But over the course of the season, he does come to care about people despite himself and despite where he's been in his life, which we come to understand. And he goes on a complete journey to become the Dick Hallorann we come to know.
The next stage of his journey is now just days away. Titled "Now You See It," the third episode of IT: Welcome To Derry is set to premiere this Sunday, November 9 at 10pm on HBO, and it will be made available to stream simultaneously on HBO Max. It will be tough to beat the extreme terror that was featured in Episode 2, but an effort will be made, and you can expect plenty more coverage and analysis here on CinemaBlend.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
