“Welcome to Derry” explores the beginnings of the creature known as It, or Pennywise the Dancing Clown, with some differences from Stephen King’s original book and the recent movies. This HBO series is a prequel to the 2017 and 2019 films, continuing their updated timeline (which moved the story of the Losers Club’s childhood to the 1980s) and revealing more about Pennywise’s past in Derry, Maine. Please be aware that the following contains spoilers for Season 1, Episode 4 of “Welcome to Derry.”
The latest episode of the series builds anticipation for Bill Skarsgård’s appearance as Pennywise, showing brief, unsettling images of the clown and scattered red balloons. The episode also reveals the origins of the creature before it became Pennywise, exploring how it first came to Derry. This backstory is shared through Taniel, Rose’s nephew – Rose owns the town’s second-hand shop – and a member of the Shokopiwah tribe.
This being arrived on Earth millions of years ago within a fallen star, and immediately began attacking the first humans. This origin story matches the core premise of both Stephen King’s book and the film adaptations, but the details diverge from there.
It’s Origin Story In Welcome To Derry Makes Some Major Changes To IT
According to the story in IT: Welcome to Derry, the meteor that brought It to Earth also acted as its prison. Though the crash released It, pieces of the meteor could actually be used against it – a previously unknown weakness. It turns out It first targeted the Shokopiwah tribe, but they discovered it couldn’t leave the western woods. They learned to coexist with the creature, which they called the “Galloo,” by staying safely beyond its territory… until new settlers came to the area.
The early settlers who came to what would become Derry disregarded the warnings of the native Shokopiwah tribe while hunting on their land, and suffered attacks as a result. This allowed the entity known as ‘It’ to grow in power and spread beyond the forest. Later, members of the tribe gathered fragments of a fallen star and used them to create pillars, effectively containing ‘It’ within a specific area. These pillars can now be reached through the Well House on Neibolt Street, as Taniel explains in the final moments of Welcome to Derry Episode 4 – it’s the same house featured in both the IT book and films.
The TV series expands significantly on Stephen King’s original novel, adding details and storylines that weren’t present in the book. The novel offers less explanation of the creature’s origins and doesn’t include the indigenous population’s perspective. The series also presents a slightly different description of the creature: the Shokopiwah people see it as an evil spirit (referred to as the Galloo), while the book portrays it as an alien being. However, these differences in description don’t necessarily mean they’re different entities – it’s more a matter of how each group understood and described the creature based on their own beliefs and the context of their initial encounter.
How Welcome To Derry’s Pennywise Origin Changes (& Improves) The IT Movies
This backstory wasn’t in Stephen King’s novel, but it appeared in the movie IT: Chapter Two. In the film, Mike Hanlon discovers the origins of It from the Shokopiwah tribe. The movie shares some similarities with the book – like the idea of a star falling to Earth – but also has key differences. Mike obtains a tribal artifact that reveals It’s beginnings, its first attacks, and how to defeat it. Through this artifact, he learns about the Ritual of Chüd, a vision showing the tribe members trapping It inside the object.
The new series, ‘Welcome to Derry,’ differs from the original ‘IT’ in a significant way: it omits the ‘Ritual of Chüd.’ While the pillars the characters set up could have been part of this ritual, the show doesn’t state that directly. Notably, the movies never showed those pillar shards being used to fight or contain It. Additionally, the series connects It’s growing power to the arrival of settlers in Derry, something the movies didn’t explore by suggesting a previous balance between It and the original inhabitants.
The new version is definitely better, especially in how it portrays the Shokopiwah tribe. In the original films, they were largely anonymous figures, simply serving as a source of the story and a key object for the main character. He was the one who controlled the narrative. However, in Welcome to Derry, the story rightfully belongs to the Shokopiwah, who are developed as fully realized characters. Kimberly Norris-Guerrero, the actress who plays Rose, previously discussed the significance of this change with Polygon, stating:
This is a great chance to build on Stephen King’s stories, because the settings are so important. The land itself feels like a character – places like Derry, the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, and even Shawshank Prison have deep, rich histories, and those histories connect to our own.
It’s Origin Explains Why Pennywise Stays In Derry (But Leaves Other Questions Unanswered For Now)
The backstory revealed for It finally explains why Pennywise is stuck in Derry. The pillars, created from the remains of the star that brought It to Earth, act as a kind of border, leading to its underground lair and preventing it from leaving town. While this origin story doesn’t yet explain the 27-year gap between attacks, or why It chose the form of Pennywise – details explored in the original book – the upcoming series Welcome to Derry seems poised to address those questions.
New episodes of IT: Welcome to Derry release on HBO and HBO Max at 9pm ET on HBO and HBO Max.
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2025-11-17 06:11