Be warned, this article will feature spoilers.
With the countless number of Stephen King adaptations every year, the IT side of this universe has a new addition with the new show, It: Welcome to Derry, on HBO Max.
The show takes place 27 years before the 2017 movie It. Set in 1962, following the previous cycle of the creature as it feeds on fear in the town of Derry, Maine. It also serves as an origin story for It, flashing back to both 1908 and 1935 throughout the show. It primarily follows a group of children as they are haunted and hunted by the creature and try to stop it.
It also follows Air Force personnel, Leroy Hanlon, and Richard “Dick” Hallorann, as they work to find pillars that keep the creature contained in Derry. Early on in the show, Hanlon’s superior, Francis Shaw, tells him that they are trying to capture the creature and use it to fight against the Soviets in the Cold War. Unsurprisingly, they turn out to be evil, wanting to destroy these pillars and unleash It on the entire United States, hoping to shock the country into unity.
The season ends with the creature back in its slumber, waiting to wake back up in 1989 for the events of “It”.
One of the most interesting things the show does is in the pilot episode. A group of kids is formed with Lily, Teddy, Ronnie, and Phil as they work to try to find their friend Matty, who went missing a couple of months ago. By the end of the episode, this is completely flipped on its head, with two of the four kids being killed by the creature. The show then adds Will, Mike’s son, Richie, and Marge to the group.
I was not ready for Welcome to Derry to openly kill what I thought was a main character in the first episode, let alone multiple. It definitely showed how this show would not pull any punches and how different it would be from other horror projects.
In preparation for this show, I watched It (2017) and It: Chapter Two (2019). While not being a big horror movie fan, I was surprisingly not too scared by these movies. They both had their moments, but overall, I was okay watching them both. With It: Welcome to Derry, I actually felt scared a lot more. I think this was due to the numerous forms that the creature took throughout the show and the unsettling moments they created.
One of these moments was a vision that the creature gave to Marge in episode four. In this vision, her eyes stretched out of her head, and to try and stop it, she goes to the woodshop and cuts one of them off. While on a significantly smaller scale, this scene reminded me of Terrifier, and I could barely watch it myself.
The connections to the broader franchise were one of my favorite things that Welcome to Derry did. Many of the characters are related to kids from the 2017 movie, with Will being the father of Mike Hanlon, Marge being the mother of Richie Tozier, and Teddy being the uncle of Stanley Uris. The character of Beverly Marsh even makes a minor cameo.
Welcome to Derry also takes place in the same universe as King’s other stories. Hallorann connects It to The Shining, where he is the chef in the Overlook Hotel. The Shawshank Prison is also named numerous times.
I thought the acting was pretty good overall, with my standouts being Chris Chalk as “Dick” Hallorann, Arian Cartaya as “Richie” Santos, and Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise.
I think this show was a great addition to the It franchise, offering deep lore for both the It creature and the town of Derry. With all of this in mind, I give season one of It: Welcome to Derry a 7/10.
It is not yet confirmed whether there will be more seasons, but the creators have said that more have been planned. These would take place in 1935 and 1908, respectively, and follow the creature’s previous cycles. Season one’s final episode offers a hint of how season two’s story may go, revealing that the creature is omnipresent. This means that the past, present, and future are all the same to It, and It can theoretically time-travel to the past to try and prevent future events.
Watch all episodes of It: Welcome to Derry on HBO Max now. Let me know what you thought of the show down below, or contact me on Instagram @zachfornalmedia
