Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 3.
Through three episodes so far, IT: Welcome to Derry has had a lot of terrifying twists and turns, whether it be the killing off of much of the young cast in the premiere, the U.S. government wanting to turn the entity into a weapon in Episode 2, or the scary chase through a cemetery this week. Still, as creepy and gory as Welcome to Derry has been, it’s also rather heartbreaking. Not only do we see the death of three children and a Black man framed for it, but one of the show’s leads, Lilly (Clara Stack), is a broken girl long before a monster shows up. Her life has been one of tragedy, and now she’s been sent back to the Juniper Hill psychiatric hospital. For Stephen King fans, this isn’t the first time they’ve heard that name.
Chiefs Bowers Sends Lilly Back to Juniper Hill in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Episode 3
All of the kids are going through it in some form on IT: Welcome to Derry. For Ronnie (Amanda Christine), she has to witness her father, Hank (Stephen Rider), being arrested even though he wasn’t involved in the gruesome events at the theater. Will Hanlon (Blake Cameron James) has just moved to Derry, and his new friend, Rich (Arian S. Cartaya), a hopeless romantic already, finds himself head over heels with Marge (Matilda Lawler). But no one is going through the absolute hell that Lilly is. A year earlier, her father was killed in an accident at a pickle factory when he was ripped apart by the machinery. To make matters even worse, Lilly blames herself because her dad had been off that day, and he only went to work to retrieve a toy she had left behind. The trauma of that intense loss and guilt led to her being sent to the Juniper Hill psychiatric hospital, and now all the kids at school whisper behind her back and look at her like she’s crazy.
Maybe Lilly could recover and grow stronger, but then comes the events of Welcome to Derry‘s first episode, where, right in front of her eyes, she watches three of her friends being killed in gruesome fashion by a flying demon baby creature at the movie theater. She wants to tell the adults what really happened, but she’s afraid of being sent back to that horrific hospital if she’s honest. Still, she can tell a version of the truth by insisting that Hank Grogan wasn’t at the theater, but Derry’s police chief, Clint Bowers (Peter Outerbridge), won’t accept that answer. He needs someone to be held responsible with his own job on the line, so he manipulates Lilly when he questions her again at the station, telling her that because of what she went through with her dad, and having already spent time at Juniper Hill, people will look at her as a suspect.
Lilly’s uncertainty under pressure is all Chief Bowers needs to arrest Hank. Lilly is spared briefly, but it all comes crashing down at the grocery store when the entity appears, chasing her in the form of her dead dad, now put back together as some nightmarish pickle octopus. Her meltdown results in her being sent back to Juniper Hill anyway, where creepy-looking men in white uniforms wait. Among the wails of cries and laughter from the patients, Lilly does reunite with a housekeeper (Madeleine Stowe) who genuinely cares about her, but that’s not enough to make the hospital tolerable.
Juniper Hill Previously Showed Up in Stephen King’s ‘Castle Rock’ TV Series
With Stephen King having written so many novels and stories, and so many having occurred in and around Derry, Maine, Easter eggs are inevitable. The U.S. military wanting to make a weapon out of the underground entity in IT: Welcome to Derry, for instance, is similar to the government accidentally releasing monsters from another dimension in The Mist. If you’ve ever read Stephen King or seen adaptations of his work, this isn’t the only time you’ve heard of Juniper Hill.
On TV, Juniper Hill is most famously part of the Castle Rock TV series that aired on Hulu from 2018 to 2019. The series is adapted from events that occur in King’s work in the town of Castle Rock, Maine, which is close to Derry. The first time we see Juniper Hill in Castle Rock is in the sixth episode of the first season, “Filter,” where Bill Skarsgård (who will certainly appear in Welcome to Derry as Pennywise the clown very soon) plays “The Kid,” a prisoner at Shawshank who was abandoned at the prison and rescued by Henry Deaver (André Holland). In Episode 6, Henry takes The Kid to Juniper Hill, only for him to set a fire and escape. Although Castle Rock premiered seven years before Welcome to Derry, that wasn’t the first time Juniper Hill appeared in a Stephen King story, either.
Many Stephen King Stories Have Mentioned Juniper Hill
Juniper Hill has actually appeared in ten Stephen King novels and stories, which shouldn’t be a total surprise. With King conjuring up so many complex and troubled characters, you can expect that many of them will have spent time in a psychiatric hospital. In IT, Juniper Hill is where Henry Bowers, a descendant of Welcome to Derry‘s Chief Bowers, is sent to after his showdown with Pennywise as a teenager. Nettie Cobb from Needful Things was a patient at the asylum, too, having been sent there after she had a breakdown and killed her husband, only to later be paroled. In Gerald’s Game, it’s where the terrifying serial killer known as “Space Cowboy,” Raymond Andrew Joubert, is sent. In Insomnia, Juniper Hill was the home for Charlie Pickering for half a year after he tried to burn down a women’s shelter.
Thankfully, Lilly is released from Juniper Hill to return to school and be around her friends. As the events of Episode 3 of IT: Welcome to Derry show, however, she might have been safer there, because when she and her friends go looking for the town’s killer entity, they find It. The last scenes reveal Lilly and the rest being chased by the gnarled ghosts of their dead friend, but even though they manage to get photographic proof, showing their evidence to the adults may not be a great idea. It’s possible that Lilly could be sent right back to Juniper Hill — and this time, her new friends might be right there with her.
