Editor’s note: The below contains spoilers for IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2.

It’s understandable if you were worried about whether IT: Welcome to Derry would be able to live up to the shocking sights and gore Andy Muschietti delivered in the IT films, but after the bloody twist of an ending in the premiere episode, it’s safe to say that the TV series isn’t holding back. Episode 2, “The Thing in the Dark,” not only deals with the aftermath of the movie theater attack but reintroduces viewers to a popular name from the world of Stephen King: Dick Hallorann (Chris Chalk).

Dick Hallorann is one of the heroes of The Shining, a man who has an ability referred to as “the shine” and attempts to save Danny Torrance from the horrors of the Overlook Hotel. With Hallorann now a part of Welcome to Derry, you might expect some Easter eggs from The Shining, but instead, with the reveal that the military wants to turn the buried entity into a weapon with Hallorann’s help in finding it, what we’re getting is a storyline that shares surprising parallels with Stephen King’s The Mist.

The Military Wants to Turn the Entity Into a Weapon in ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’

When IT: Welcome to Derry Episode 2 reintroduces Dick Hallorann after his brief appearance in the premiere, he’s joking with his Black military friends that he’s part of a secret mission he can’t talk about. Although the remark gets a laugh, he’s actually very serious. The next time we see him, with angry Indigenous residents of Derry looking on, Hallorann is physically ill at a dig site as his commanding officer criticizes him for not finding anything yet.

At the same time, Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) is new to Derry Air Force Base. On one of his first nights, he’s beaten in what’s thought to be a racist attack, only for General Shaw (James Remar) to admit that he was the one who orchestrated the whole thing. He sees something great in Hanlon and wanted to test him. With Hanlon admittedly upset, General Shaw clues him into what’s going on. There is a force buried underground somewhere in Derry that emits fear, and with the Soviets and Cubans working together to develop a missile that could hit the United States, the Air Force wants to find the hidden entity and turn it into a weapon. Not knowing where it is exactly, they’re presumably using Hallorann’s gifts to find it — and when they do, General Shaw wants Hanlon’s help.

The Arrowhead Project Resulted in Monsters Being Unleashed in Stephen King’s ‘The Mist’

Even for a fantastical horror franchise where so much is possible, this reveal, in which the United States military wants to turn Pennywise into a Cold War weapon to use against the Communists, might feel over-the-top to some viewers, but it shouldn’t — because a similar plotline has been used before in the Stephen King universe.

King’s novella The Mist was first published in 1980 before becoming part of Skeleton Crew in 1985. In the book, a thick mist falls over the town of Bridgton, Maine, with impossible monsters hidden inside. These creatures, both small and the size of skyscrapers, kill everyone until a few people remain. In 2007, Frank Darabont directed a popular feature film adaptation of The Mist, with it most famously giving us one of the darkest endings in horror history, but although the military is around, it’s never exactly explained where the monsters came from.

In the novella, the military is working on an experiment in the nearby town of Shaymore called the Arrowhead Project, which is an attempt to look into other dimensions. King never says whether this is exactly what caused the monsters in The Mist, but fans have long held the theory that this is where they came from. The film never explicitly clarifies their origin either, but the original version of Frank Darabont’s script does, as the movie would have originally opened with a scene that started in a lab at a military base as all hell broke loose from the catastrophic breakdown of the Arrowhead Project.

Will ‘IT: Welcome to Derry’ Have the Same Outcome if Pennywise Is Unleashed?

Image Via HBO

The first pages of Frank Darabont’s original version of The Mist have glass in the base lab breaking as military officers scream and cry out to Jesus, before something slithers out of “a huge eruption of otherworldly mist.” This makes clear exactly where the monsters come from: the military wanted to see into other worlds, but like Icarus flying too close to the sun and getting burned, humans messed with something that should have been left alone and regretted it.

Is this what’s about to happen in IT: Welcome to Derry? The local military is getting too consumed with power, having detected something incomprehensible under the ground, and now they want to find it, to turn the unknown into a weapon that can destroy the enemy by using their fears against them. Like Chekhov’s gun, the idea can’t be brought up without being used. When they go down in the sewers with their guns, ready to hunt down something that can’t be contained, will they all die because, by trying to win one war, they will have started another that is impossible to win? No matter what happens in IT: Welcome to Derry‘s remaining episode, you can bet that Hallorann will be able to see it coming long before it occurs.