Pennywise will be back in HBO’s new series IT: Welcome To Derry and the series got off to a pretty shocking start. Warning: The following contains heavy spoilers for IT: Welcome To Derry episode 1. Pennywise is back! Well, he will be, at least. The first episode of HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry has just ... IT: Welcome To Derry | The shocking ending of episode 1 promises a merciless season
Pennywise will be back in HBO’s new series IT: Welcome To Derry and the series got off to a pretty shocking start.
Warning: The following contains heavy spoilers for IT: Welcome To Derry episode 1.
Pennywise is back! Well, he will be, at least. The first episode of HBO’s IT: Welcome To Derry has just premiered and the series certainly got off to a good, surprising start.
The series is a prequel to the events of the IT movies and was teased to be including Pennywise’s origin story. We already know the supernatural entity, who simply took on the form of a clown in the films, has been terrorizing the town of Derry for a while, appearing every 27 years to eat some kids.
This is your last warning for spoilers as we dive into all the bloody action of the premiere of Welcome To Derry.
Let’s do the quick recap.
The episode begins with a little boy, Matty (Miles Ekhardt), trying to leave Derry for reasons unknown. A family offers him a ride to Portland, and if at this point you’re getting suspicious why anyone would offer such a young child a ride out of state, you’d be right to have your doubts.
It turns out that poor Matty is in fact about to be the victim of It and that car ride gets real uncomfortable real quick. After some light terrorizing, the pregnant mother goes into labour and we watch as a mutated baby falls out of her vagina. That’s the real miracle of life right there.
The camera pans away as the violence in the car intensifies and the baby lunging at the boy all but confirms that Matty is no more. More on that in a bit.
The sequence is quite similar to poor Georgie’s death in the movies and the team seems to be following the rules of any IT adaptation here. It’s perhaps a tad more crude and ruthless than what we’ve seen in the films, but nothing too shocking.
Later on in the episode though, we meet a bunch of Matty’s friends who are still reeling from his death. They’re set up as another version of the Losers Club, a group of kids that don’t really belong, are bullied and overall just a little shy and nerdy. One night, Lily (Clara Stack) hears Matty’s voice coming from the pipes as she runs a bath and soon, they all begin to experience some terrifying visions. So far, so generic.
Behind the camera, then, Welcome To Derry brings back Andy and Barbara Muschietti as well as Jason Fuchs and Brad Kane from the recent IT films. Those films were generally well received, with much praise also going towards Bill Skarsgard’s performance as Pennywise. The first episode of Welcome To Derry doesn’t feature Skarsgard’s Pennywise quite yet, but that’s not to say things don’t get shocking without the dancing clown.
The kids figure out that the song also coming from the pipes is from a film Matty was watching shortly before getting in that car. As the kids watch the film in an empty cinema, thanks to Ronnie (Amanda Christine), whose father owns the cinema, they spot Matty inside the film. Again, this isn’t anything particularly new but up until now, the whole episode has a familiar sheen and feel.
It’s in the final minutes that things get really interesting as the mutated baby makes a return, breaking out from the cinema screen before going on to massacre all but two of the kids.
At this point, my jaw was on the floor. Did they just kill a bunch of kids in the first episode?! How did they get away with this? If this is how it starts, what can we expect from the rest of the season?
“In this world, no one will be safe. So, technically, that was the intention,” Andy Muschietti told The Hollywood Reporter, explaining that the plan was always to do something that shocking so the audience would know that “nothing is sacred.”
Still, killing three kids, one of whom can’t be more than 7 years of age, in your opening episode is a hell of a way to kick off any series. Of course, child murder is pretty common in IT – it’s kind of the whole basis of the story – but to kill most of the characters you’ve just introduced to your audience, set them up as your protagonists?
We don’t actually see the deaths. It’s hard to see if it’s because that’s simply one step too far or if there’s something else going on. We do see the little girl’s arm, ripped off but still clinging on to Lily, at the very end, but is there a possibility that the kids are somehow just stuck somewhere with It?
We’ll have to wait to find out, but Welcome To Derry certainly has this writer’s attention after such a shocking start.
IT: Welcome To Derry premieres new episodes on Mondays on Sky/NOW.
