There’s not a lot about the Stephen King’s It sequel It: Chapter Two that works, but Bill Hader’s pitch-perfect take on adult Richie Tozier deserves to be spotlighted despite the adaptation’s broader failings. Like any Stephen King adaptation, 2019's It: Chapter Two can blame some of its shortcomings on its source material. Turning the author’s infamous doorstopper into a mainstream commercial movie was always going to be a tricky proposition, both because of the book’s Lovecraftian elements of cosmic horror and its shocking content.

However, while the source material is also imperfect, unlike 2017’s It, It: Chapter Two had a lot of problems that were not inherited from the original novel. For one thing, the sequel was painfully overlong, running almost three hours. For another, It: Chapter Two lacked focus, with the creators both eliding important story details and inexplicably choosing to focus on some less important elements of the plot, such as the pointless misadventures of Henry Bowers.

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Like a similarly overlong Stephen King adaptation, 2020’s The Stand, the primary problem with It: Chapter Two was the sequel’s inability to balance several intersecting stories and turn the tale into a cohesive whole. Where the 2017 movie made the teenage travails of Bev, Bill, Stanley, Mike, Eddie, and Richie into a compelling standalone story, 2019’s sequel bounced between flashbacks to their teen years and a reunion whose stakes, tone, and purpose was never fully clear. With so many problems inherent in its approach to storytelling, it is fair to say that It: Chapter Two set its impressive cast up for failure. However, actor Bill Hader’s soulful portrayal of Richie Tozier almost managed to salvage It: Chapter Two despite the sequel’s myriad structural issues.

What Went Wrong With It: Chapter 2

IT Chapter Two (2) - Bill Hader as Richie

Above all else, It: Chapter Two fails profoundly in finding a consistent tone and in recreating the feel of the earlier movie. The movie’s sequel bounced between being far too dark (It: Chapter 2’s opening murder of Adrian Mellon belongs in a much more mature and serious movie) and far too light (Eddie’s gross-out "Angel of the Morning" scene). In contrast, 2017’s It managed to balance coming-of-age comedy with fun, scary horror without ever allowing one to completely overtake the other. Terrifying, bleak scenes like Henry killing his father didn’t jar with cute moments like the Losers Club triumphing in a rock war with Henry and his goons, whereas It: Chapter Two cut away from the opening scene’s explicitly depicted hate crime to a goofy montage of Richie vomiting and Eddie crashing his car upon hearing of Pennywise's return.

What Bill Hader’s Richie Got Right

Finn Wolfhard and Bill Hader as Richie in IT

The actor’s take on the tortured standup comedian doesn’t lean too hard into the “tortured” element, with Hader’s Richie first and foremost reminding viewers how he used his wit to get out of Derry. Like Stranger Things breakout star Finn Wolfhard, who made the first movie’s Richie a hilarious screen presence even during It's most oppressively bleak scenes, Hader’s take on Tozier grounds his cynical humor in the reality that he has used jokes to cope through his entire life. Even as the movie’s tone veers wildly, Hader’s Richie stays darkly funny throughout and nails the “Big Chill meets Evil Dead 2” tone that the rest of It: Chapter Two is scrambling to find.

What It: Chapter Two Gets Wrong

It Chapter 2 Richie Eddie

The rest of the sequel’s primary adult cast seem unsure of how serious the sequel’s tone is, with James Ransome is starring in a light horror-comedy, while Jessica Chastain is seemingly acting in a bleak domestic drama. In contrast, the fact that Richie is supposed to be funny even in times of crisis lets Hader find laughs in even the movie’s darkest scenes. Moments like Pennywise’s bizarre sort-of backstory fall flat not just because of their over-reliance on CGI, but also because Chastain’s Bev seems to be in mortal danger when she encounters the clown, whereas Eddie’s encounter with the monster in leper form is played for gross-out comedy. It is only Hader’s Richie who Pennywise threatens with concrete, real-world horror (exposing his “little secret” and leaving him open to homophobic attacks) that gels well with the more fantastic, over-the-top image of a killer advertising display trying to murder the character.

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Why It: Chapter 2 Needed Hader’s Richie

In theory, It: Chapter Two’s adult characters have plenty of soap-operatic drama without ever touching on the secret sexuality of Hader’s character or Eddie and Richie’s implied LGBTQ+ relationship. In practice, however, the sequel needed Hader’s performance, which balances quiet melancholy with outward bravado, since the love triangle between Bev, Ben, and Bill goes nowhere. Making Bill the sequel’s leading man only to pair Bev off with Ben leaves Jay Ryan’s adult Ben without much to do, and reigniting the trio’s melodramatic decades-old romantic drama makes it seem like they’re not grasping the gravity of the “monstrous killer clown” situation. For Ritchie, however, hiding his sexuality has been a life-or-death matter since his teens, so bringing up his formative crush on Eddie is contextually appropriate.

Why It: Chapter 2's Eddie/Richie Twist Worked

It Chapter 2 Richie and eddie relationship

When the Stephen King adaptation reminds viewers that Richie had a crush on Eddie during his Losers Club years, the twist serves to illustrate that he has been hiding his orientation beneath a veneer of humor since adolescence. It’s a devastating twist that adds an undercurrent of sadness and desperation to Hader’s stream of one-liners without making the comic relief any less effective. In contrast, when It: Chapter Two reveals to Bev that it was Ben and not Bill that wrote her a poem in their teens, the storyline seems entirely superfluous and pretty tonally jarring, given how much more important defeating Pennywise is than their romantic rivalry.

The question of who the heroine ends up with romantically doesn’t tie into her traumatic past the way Richie’s twist does and, as such, becomes an ancillary plot thread in a movie already overburdened with them. Although the earlier Stephen King's It miniseries suffered similar issues, this problem causes the tone of It: Chapter Two to feel more uneven in the plots of Bill, Bev, and Ben. Thus it is all the more important that Bill Hader’s Richie Tozier and the character’s storyline are effectively realized, improving It: Chapter Two and ensuring that It's sequel is far from a failure despite some major issues.

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