How That Brutal Twist in the IT: Welcome to Derry Premiere Ups the Stakes of the HBO Prequel Series

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While the Losers Club seemingly defeated Pennywise in the 2019 film IT Chapter Two, Andy Muschietti’s new HBO series, IT: Welcome to Derry, revisits the past. The show explores a time before the events of the films, when Pennywise – and all of his terrifying forms – were actively preying on the children of Derry.

Following the huge success of the 2017 horror film IT and its sequel, a new series called Welcome to Derry is in development. It’s based on extra chapters from Stephen King’s 1986 novel and will unfold over three seasons, taking place in 1962, 1935, and 1908. Developed by Andy and Barbara Muschietti, along with Jason Fuchs, the show will reveal the history of Pennywise (played again by Bill Skarsgard) by going back in time. Each season will focus on a different period when Pennywise was active and terrorizing children in Derry, Maine. Importantly, the series follows the timeline established in the IT movies – the Losers Club first faces It in 1989, and their final showdown happens in 2016 – rather than the dates in Stephen King’s original book.

Director Andy Muschietti recently explained the purpose of the interlude chapters in the Spanish-language Radio TU interview, as reported by Bloody Disgusting. These chapters, taken from the diary of Mike Hanlon – the only Losers Club member who stayed in Derry – show his 27-year effort to understand ‘It.’ Hanlon researches the creature’s history, trying to discover what it is, how it operates, who has seen it, and more. Muschietti emphasized that each time Pennywise awakens from hibernation, a major disaster occurs.

The premiere of HBO’s Welcome to Derry, which aired on Sunday, began with a disturbing scene: the disappearance of young Matty Clements (played by Miles Ekhardt). It was unsettling to see him still using a pacifier at his age. The story then jumped forward four months to April 1962, where a group of Matty’s friends – Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), and Lilly (Clara Stack) – started to suspect something far more dangerous than a simple disappearance had happened to him.

When Lilly heard Matty singing “Ya Got Trouble” from The Music Man through her bathtub drain and saw his injured fingers, it started a series of events. This led Lilly, Matty, Phil, Phil’s sister Susie, and Ronnie (the projectionist’s daughter) back to the movie theater to find out what happened when Matty disappeared. While watching The Music Man on the projector, they were shocked to see Matty on screen holding a baby wrapped in a blanket. Suddenly, Matty appeared with a disturbing, maniacal grin and threw the bundle through the screen, revealing the winged demon baby that a woman in a car had given birth to earlier in the story. But now, the creature had grown much larger and more dangerous.

Honestly, the whole episode had me thinking we’d finally met the new Losers Club – this really sweet group of kids teaming up to find Matty. I was getting hopeful! But then, wow, things took a dark turn. That demon baby just… brutally killed Teddy, Phil, and Susie. It was shocking, and left only Lilly and Ronnie still standing when the episode ended. I definitely didn’t see that coming!

The episode’s chilling finale, directed by Muschietti, was truly disturbing and unexpected. It strongly suggests the creators of Welcome to Derry are deliberately avoiding repeating storylines from the IT movies, and want to keep audiences guessing about what will happen in the remaining episodes.

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2025-10-27 06:06