'IT: Welcome to Derry' slips a major finale hint into Marge's glasses as episode 4 delivers a big twist
'IT: Welcome to Derry' has proven that in Stephen King's universe, no fear is too small for Pennywise to weaponize. And creator Andy Muschietti promises viewers haven't seen the last of Marge's terrifying phobia. Following the release of episode 4, both Muschietti and actress Matilda Lawler (who plays Marge Truman) are shedding new light on the character's unsettling fear of her glasses and teasing how it connects to something much bigger waiting in the season finale. From the opening moments of the series, Marge's insecurities have been quietly woven into the story.
In the premiere episode, she expresses embarrassment over her new glasses, insisting they make her eyes look unnaturally large. What starts as a relatable teenage worry soon spirals into one of the show's most disturbing moments. Episode 4 pushes Marge's anxiety to a horrifying extreme when Pennywise seizes on it. After her class watches a documentary on parasitic flatworms, Marge begins to suffer a gruesome hallucination, as per ScreenRant. Her eyes appear to balloon outward, distorting grotesquely as she becomes convinced something is writhing inside them.
Overcome with panic, she tries to claw at her own eyes. The only thing preventing disaster is her friend Lilly (Clara Stack), who intervenes just in time. Even with Lilly's help, Marge still injures one of her eyes. Speaking with TV Insider, Lawler broke down the emotional roots of Marge's fear. She noted that Marge is caught between who she is and who she thinks she's supposed to be. "She’s deeply insecure about so many things, but one of the main things being her glasses. And so it was very fun, especially as a teen girl, being able to kind of scream about it and scream about the insecurities, because It preys on Marge's insecurities," Lawler said.
According to her, the eye-centered hallucination serves an important plot purpose. "The scare scene with the eyes does have a centering effect on Marge and kind of causes her to reflect on her relationships and see the truth in a way and see that she belongs with her friend Lilly and with the 'Losers', and it's OK for her to find herself elsewhere, not in the group that you know everyone thinks she should be in," Lawler explained. But Muschietti has revealed that Marge's fear goes far beyond insecurity. In fact, he says the glasses hide a mystery that won't be fully explained until the very last episode of the season.
"There's a specific reason that's not going to be revealed until the very last episode for which she is wearing the Coke bottle glasses," Muschietti said. "And so we decided that [her fear] was about the eyes." Whether the reveal is tied to Pennywise's methods, Marge's future, or the larger mythology of Derry remains a mystery. But with the show's habit of embedding meaning into its smallest details, viewers can expect her storyline to play a key role in the season's closing moments.