‘It’ series turns Derry into a microcosm of America: ‘We deal with relevant themes’
Three and a half years separate the moment when Andy and your sister Barbara Muschietti announced a prequel series of It: The Thing from the moment when It: Welcome to Derry the world finally conquers, this Sunday, 26th, in HBO Max. The long journey between production and release even included a strike by actors and screenwriters, which interrupted filming in 2023, and other natural challenges of any project, from developing the premise to casting.
But anyone who watches the series will come across confident, solid episodes that aren’t afraid of the horror that captured the film’s fans and delve deep into the mythology of Stephen King. Set in the same Derry immortalized in the pages of literary work It: The Thingthe series takes place in 1962, exactly 27 years before the events of the 2017 film.
Actor Bill Skarsgård returns to play the clown Pennywise in ‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
The work follows the previous awakening of Pennywise, an entity that wakes up every 27-year cycle to feed on the fear of the city’s residents, especially children, before returning to deep sleep.
In the plot, the fire at the Black Spot, a black community nightclub, leaves dozens of people dead under mysterious circumstances and forever marks the city’s history. During the same period, Derry became the scene of a wave of child disappearances, which were never solved.
“You want to do something that lives up to the high standard that Andy and Barbara set and that Stephen King set in motion with his brilliant book,” confesses the screenwriter and showrunner Jason Fuchs about the risks of the series, in an interview with the participation of Estadão. For him, the biggest challenge was to create something that honored these original materials while maintaining the high standard previously established.
Brad Caleb Kaneco-showrunner, adds: “The biggest creative risk for me was to show the audience right away that no one is safe”, he declares, adding what kind of expectations fans should maintain during the eight episodes of the first season. “And also delve deeper into the mythology of Pennywise. There’s a risk in demystifying something that’s simply mystical.”
Jack Molloy Legault, Hunter Storm Baker, Matilda Legault and Mikkal Karim Fidler in a scene from ‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
Pennywise in his various forms
The appearance of the shape-shifting cosmic entity that terrorizes Derry is one of the main points of the season, which features the return of Bill Skarsgård to the character that propelled him to stardom. But don’t expect to see the dancing clown in the first few episodes.
Although his origins are explored in a little more depth, that doesn’t mean he’ll be present all the time in the season. At least not as expected.
“Pennywise is in a good part of the series. It takes a while for him to appear in this incarnation that we know, but it doesn’t take us long to show that he is an entity”, explains Caleb Kane. According to the screenwriter, the It — evil itself — is already active and haunting the characters from an early age, even if this is not necessarily obvious.
“We have a lot of scares, but we wanted to build a world. We wanted to build characters. We want the audience to be taken on a journey through a story with characters that people want to see from episode to episode,” he adds.
Pennywise the clown has mythology revealed in series ‘It: Welcome to Derry’ Photo: HBO/Disclosure
But Fuchs promises the wait will be worth it. “We wanted to play with the audience’s expectations and build up that tension around it. Andy found a brilliant way, visually and thematically, to finally present our version of Pennywise, our version of Bill as Pennywise in the context of the series. We had the opportunity to play with that anticipation.”
Preparation and the King multiverse
It: Welcome to Derry is planned for three seasons, in regressive temporal progression: the second will be set in 1935 and the third in 1908. The inspiration for the stories is always in the interludes of King’s original book, in order to expand the understanding of the evil that haunts Derry and its origins.
When it comes to this adaptation, the duo explains that the main work was to identify elements that were not used in the films and that could still be expanded into a series. The second year, for example, will cover the Bradley gang massacre and the third, the explosion at the Kitchener Ironworks.
Fuchs already says that the first season provides clues as to what the public will see in the future, but reinforces that the focus is to develop each one individually.
“There’s a very specific plan for three seasons that we talked about with Andy and Barbara, but when you’re dealing with eight hours of television, you want to execute it at a high level and focus on it, while also laying the groundwork for where years two and three can take you,” he clarifies.
Derry movie theater operator Hank (Stephen Rider) and daughter Ronnie (Amanda Christine); he is accused by the community after the mysterious disappearance of a child Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
The only certainty that Fuchs and Kane guarantee is that there is enough material for fans to explore and find several references to other works by Stephen King. Unlike the films, which didn’t have time to explore this, the series — with eight hours of narrative — was able to delve deeper into the connections between It and the rest of the King universe.
“We are very aware of the connections between It and the characters, stories and entities in Stephen King’s expanded universe, and we will access very interesting places in the mythology of this macroverse”, says Jason Fuchs. “I don’t want to give spoilers about where the series goes, but we are taking advantage of these opportunities. There are little clues even in the pilot episode that Stephen King nerds like Brad and I will notice.”
According to the author, one of the main references is the establishment of a connection with In Torre Negra. “I don’t know how much people know about (the books), but they might hear a ‘thankee sai’ here and there.” In the literary series, which has eight books, some characters use a fictional language called Superior Language. The term “thankee sai” means “thank you”.
In ‘It: Welcome to Derry’, soldier Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo) moves to Derry with his wife (Taylour Paige) and son (Ryan Grant Little), and the family is the target of prejudice in the community Photo: Brooke Palmer/HBO
1962, more current than ever
The plot of the first season of Welcome to Derry brings an element that Fuchs and Kane consider essential for telling this story to make sense in 2025.
According to them, when approaching a narrative that takes place in the United States in the 1960s, and which unfolds after a black American Air Force major moves to the city with his family, some elements, such as social and racial tensions, create a strong connection with the present.
“We are telling a story of Itwhich is basically about an entity that feeds on children’s fears to divide and conquer,” Kane points out. “And we’re telling this story in 1962 America, so a lot of things become obvious.”
He elaborates: “Derry is essentially a microcosm of America. We’re dealing with themes that are relevant today, which are the exploitation and instrumentalization of fear to divide, conquer and control. I realized that the deeper we go into these themes, the more interesting the show is for me, and I hope for the audience as well. Of course we need to create very personal and visceral scares and fears. But the setting of the show allowed us to take the that is inherent to the entity in the book and make those elements super-relevant.”
Hi! I’m Renato Lopes, an electric vehicle enthusiast and the creator of this blog dedicated to the future of clean, smart, and sustainable mobility. My mission is to share accurate information, honest reviews, and practical tips about electric cars—from new EV releases and battery innovations to charging solutions and green driving habits. Whether you’re an EV owner, a curious reader, or someone planning to make the switch, this space was made for you.
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