Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 1 of IT: Welcome to Derry.
The Losers Club may have finally figured out how to defeat Pennywise once and for all in 2019’s IT Chapter 2, but in Andy Muschietti’s new HBO prequel series IT: Welcome to Derry, the director of the two-part IT film adaptation takes us back in time to an era when the dancing clown—along with all of It’s other iterations—were alive, well, and hungry for children.
In the wake of the groundbreaking success of 2017’s IT, the highest-grossing horror movie of all time, and its subsequent sequel, Welcome to Derry is based on the five interlude chapters from Stephen King’s iconic 1986 novel and is intended to play out over the course of three seasons, set in 1962, 1935, and 1908, respectively. The project, which was developed by Muschietti alongside his sister, Barbara Muschietti, and co-showrunner Jason Fuchs, will explore the origins of Pennywise (with Bill Skarsgard reprising the role) by turning back the clock in 27-year intervals to historical periods that coincide with the cycles in which It was awake and actively preying on the children of Derry, Maine. The series sticks with the timeline of Muschietti’s movies rather than King’s book, meaning the original Losers Club encounter with It takes place in 1989 rather than 1958, and the final battle in 2016 rather than 1985.
In a Spanish-language interview with Radio TU translated by Bloody Disgusting, Muschietti explained why the interlude chapters—which are drawn from the diary of Mike Hanlon, the only member of the Losers Club who remains in Derry after they send It back into an early hibernation as kids—are significant. “The interludes are basically chapters that reflect Mike Hanlon’s research. They’re fragments of his research. For 27 years, it’s the guy trying to figure out what it is, what did it, who did it, who saw it, and all that stuff,” he said. “Every time [Pennywise] comes out of hibernation, there is a catastrophic…
