The IT: Welcome To Derry's Strangest Moment Pays Homage To A Classic Movie Villain

This article contains spoilers for the season 1 finale of "It: Welcome to Derry."

The "It: Welcome to Derry" season 1 finale opens with Pennywise the Clown (Bill Skarsgård) singing a catchy tune to some school children — a classic jingle about wanting to eat their faces. Afterward, Pennywise uses his powers to lure the kids out of the school and into his cart for the real nightmare to begin. It's a strange, horrifying, and downright creepy sequence — and it might make viewers think of a certain villain from one of the best musicals of all time.

In Ken Hughes' "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang," children are tormented by the evil Child Catcher (Sir Robert Helpmann), who lures them into his cart with candy and rides away. Just like Pennywise, Child Catcher is also known for scaring his victims with his words, using lines like "The Baroness will have your teeth for a necklace and your eyeballs for earrings" to exude pure menace.

Pennywise's methods are more violent than Child Catcher's, sure, but there are enough similarities between the pair for this homage to make sense. What's more, the nod to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" actually ties into some of the more controversial aspects of "It: Welcome to Derry."

While he is acknowledged as an impactful villain, the legacy of Child Catcher is quite controversial and complicated. Critics of the character argue that he is an offensive caricature of Jewish stereotypes because of his fashion sense and physical appearance. On the flip side, his storyline in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" sees him round up outlaw children on behalf of an authoritarian regime, which can be interpreted as a commentary on Nazi Germany.

"It: Welcome to Derry" examines the horrors of racism and antisemitism, with Pennywise often using his abilities to manifest evil that exists in the hearts of human beings. The infamous lampshade scene in episode 1, in which a young Jewish child is tormented, is a reference to the Nazis' making ornaments from concentration camp prisoners' skin in World War II. Meanwhile, the major character death in "It: Welcome to Derry" episode 7 was the result of a coordinated attack by a white mob on a group of Black people. It's disturbing to watch.

Both Pennywise and Child Catcher are villains whose allegorical qualities are plain to see, which adds more weight to the "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" homage in the "It: Welcome to Derry" season 1 finale. Still, this might have been coincidental. At the end of the day, a simple story about children being dragged away in carts is horrifying without taking the dark real-world connotations into account — but it is there to be interpreted.