After weeks of anticipation, iconic horror villain Pennywise the Clown finally made his ghoulishly grinning debut in IT: Welcome to Derry by emerging from the shadows near the end of the fifth episode, with Bill Skarsgård reprising his role from the two IT movies. But as the show’s creators explained to TV Guide, a lot of thought went into figuring out the timing for when we’d see the most famous form of the murderous supernatural entity known as IT.
Said executive producer and co-showrunner Jason Fuchs, about deciding when to directly bring Pennywise in, “There was a tremendous amount of discussion… We were intrigued by how to explore the mysteries of Pennywise, but also we wanted to slowly ratchet up that tension, and we wanted to use the space that long form storytelling provides to sort of see some of the other manifestations of IT. IT can become literally anything, so why not take advantage of that? Stephen King certainly does in the book.”
Executive producer and frequent series director Andy Muschietti said, “I think there was an anticipation and a desire to delay [Pennywise], considering that IT’s a shape shifter, and we can feel IT’s presence in other incarnations throughout the first episodes, and build that need to see the clown. That was also an exciting game to play with the audience.” Barbara Muschietti, Andy’s sister and fellow executive producer, put it, “We can’t allow the audience to get comfortable with Pennywise. He has to be unpredictable. He’s our shark. You don’t want to see him [too much].”
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Co-showrunner Brad Caleb Kane said that by holding off on Pennywise, but seeing IT in other forms in the meantime, the thought was “Let’s find out what our would-be heroes are really afraid of, the generational trauma that they’re all feeling, and then twist the knife.” Which certainly has factored in when you think about the forms of IT seen by characters like Lilly (Clara Stack) and Ronnie (Amanda Christine), which includes horrific versions of the parents that they’ve lost. Said Fuchs, “In the space of eight hours of storytelling real estate, you get to really go there. I think that IT, in characteristically despicable form, throws some absolutely horrible things at our cast.”
But now that Skarsgård has made his debut in Welcome to Derry, don’t worry that he’ll stay offscreen for another extended period. Promised Fuchs, “Expect a lot of Pennywise! Once Pennywise makes his debut…” with Kane continuing, “He’s in! He’s another character.”
Fuchs noted that the early conversations about what became Welcome to Derry began as a potential third IT feature film that would have delved into the origins of Pennywise, which would also have an exploration about “Bob Gray” — a seemingly human identity tied to Pennywise that Stephen King includes some mentions of in the IT novel but which is never fully explained.
Bob Gray will be incorporated into Welcome to Derry, with Fuchs explaining that as the series continues, they’ll also explore what IT’s affinity for the Pennywise form is and why IT returns to it so much. “Certainly, when we talk about the mysteries we’re excited to discover, we’re excited to understand why the shape shifter has chosen to return, time and again, to the form of Pennywise. And what was that first encounter with Bob Gray? What did that look like? Who is Bob Gray? We have a lot of whys we want answers to, and the story of Bob Gray and the story of Pennwise are certainly in that bucket. So without spoiling anything in those final episodes, you’re going to see that mystery looked into in a really serious way.”
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A big and somewhat surprising part of Welcome to Derry has been the plotline about General Shaw (James Remar), his knowledge of IT’s history in Derry, and his seeming intention to use the military to capture and hone IT as a weapon of some sort. However, when TV Guide brought up the idea of Shaw trying to capture this ancient being, and how we know that’s destined to fail given this is a prequel, Kane replied, “You don’t know that. That’s just something he said. But is that the truth? We don’t know yet. Remember, expect the unexpected. We set you up in the pilot, putting you off your game, shaking you up, showing you that anything can happen. Don’t believe what General Shaw is saying is necessarily the truth.”
Shaw’s history with IT goes back to his own childhood, and Kane added, “I don’t think you can have had any sort of encounter with IT and live to tell the tale and think that anyone could ever capture that creature. And General Shaw is not a stupid man, so maybe there’s a little something else going on.”
IT: Welcome to Derry airs Sunday nights at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max.
