The creators of IT: Welcome to Derry are pulling back the curtain on the series, revealing a deep dive into the one question that has haunted Stephen King fans for decades: Why a clown? The new HBO series, which debuted on October 26, 2025, aims to explore the untold origins of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, promising a fresh look at the cosmic entity’s enduring obsession with its most famous form.
The Central Mystery of the Clown
In developing the prequel series, showrunners Jason Fuchs and Brad Caleb Kane said their central mission was to investigate the creature’s fundamental nature. They are lifelong Stephen King fans who wanted to honor the source material while satisfying their own curiosity.
Jason Fuchs explained the key question driving the series: “Why IT, a being that can shapeshift and turn into anything it wants to, keeps coming back to this particular manifestation as Pennywise the Dancing Clown? What is it about this clown that IT is so obsessed with?” This mystery is the foundation of the new show, pushing the narrative to explore how the entity first encountered the idea of the clown and the man named Bob Gray it sometimes claims to be.
Brad Caleb Kane added that this fresh perspective was also essential for luring actor Bill Skarsgård back to the role. Having already delivered a iconic performance in the two films, Skarsgård needed new aspects of the character to explore. The longer format of a television series allows the show to develop the characters more deeply, making the supernatural horrors they face feel more personal and impactful.
A Deeper Look at Fear and Division
IT: Welcome to Derry is set in 1962, a period the showrunners selected for its unique atmosphere of dread. The series uses the era’s Cold War panic and nuclear anxiety as a backdrop, showing how Pennywise studies and weaponizes the specific fears of the time.
The show also tackles the very real-world horrors of bigotry and racism, themes that are central to Stephen King’s original novel. Fuchs stated that these elements are inherent to the story, as Derry acts as a microcosm of America.
“You can’t tell the story of a microcosm of America without that element front and center in a lot of ways,” Fuchs said. “The themes of Stephen King’s book IT are fear and division, and racism plays a big part of it.”
This is reflected in the cast of characters, which includes Major Leroy Hanlon and his wife Charlotte, who experience the rot hiding beneath Derry’s surface. The series also incorporates the history of Dick Hallorann, a character from King’s “The Shining,” who appears as a younger man with psychic abilities aiding a military search in the Derry woods.
Expanding the Lore from the Page to the Screen
The series draws heavily from the “Interludes” in King’s novel—historical flashbacks that detail Pennywise’s influence over Derry’s gruesome past. The first season focuses on the event known as “The Black Spot,” a juke joint firebombing that targeted Black service members.
Andy and Barbara Muschietti, who developed the series and directed the films, initially conceived of the project as a third movie before expanding it into a series. Barbara Muschietti recalled that Andy’s idea was to build entire seasons around these historical events, each set 27 years apart. Stephen King loved the concept, which gave the creators the green light to proceed.
A significant new addition to the lore in the series is the exploration of the Shokopiwah tribe, the Native American community that has guarded the secrets of the entity for centuries. The show reveals their name for the creature, the “Galloo,” and their ancient history with it. According to their legend, the entity arrived trapped inside a meteorite millions of years ago. The Shokopiwah learned to avoid its woods and even forged weapons from fragments of the meteorite to keep it contained.
This origin story introduces new questions, as it shows that Pennywise was once an active predator that fed on adults, suggesting its later 27-year hibernation cycle and preference for hunting children were behaviors it adopted later for reasons the series has yet to explain.
Keeping the Audience Off Balance
A key goal for the showrunners is to maintain a sense of constant unease and surprise. Kane warned that viewers should not trust every character they meet, especially in the first half of the season.
“The fun of a show like this is not just the scares… it’s also in the spirit of keeping the audience off balance,” Kane said. “Make of that what you will… nothing is as it seems in Derry.”
Fuchs emphasized this point by discussing the shocking movie theater scene, designed to signal to the audience that no one is safe. The series honors King’s tradition of putting children in harm’s way to explore the theme of lost innocence, a central thread running through the entire story of IT.
Stephen King himself has endorsed the series, calling the first episode “amazing” and “terrifying” in a social media post. The series continues to release new episodes, digging deeper into the shadows to ask the question that has defined Pennywise for generations: What is it about this clown?
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