Who is Pennywise? Everything to know about the character’s arrival and history in the IT: Welcome to Derry season 1

HBO’s IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 revisits one of Stephen King’s most haunting corners of horror mythology, a small town where evil doesn’t just visit, it hibernates. The series, developed by Andy and Barbara Muschietti alongside Jason Fuchs, acts as a chilling prequel to the IT films, returning audiences to the 1960s version of Derry, Maine, long before the Losers’ Club faced Pennywise.

Bill Skarsgård’s return as the demonic clown brings an eerie continuity to the universe, a grotesque bridge between the films and this new iteration. But beyond the makeup and the manic grin lies something more ancient. IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 isn’t just about jump scares; it’s an excavation of the monster’s history, asking what Pennywise really is, and why the town seems cursed to repeat its nightmares every generation.

Pennywise’s arrival and origins in IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1

Before he became a pop culture symbol of pure fear, Pennywise existed as something beyond human comprehension. In Stephen King’s universe, “It” isn’t merely a clown — it’s an interdimensional entity, older than humanity itself, that crash-landed on Earth millions of years ago. Taking many forms, It chooses Pennywise the Dancing Clown as its preferred disguise because laughter and innocence make the perfect bait for children — the most delicious form of fear.

IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 takes place in 1962, during one of Pennywise’s cyclical resurgences, a feeding period that occurs every 27 years. For the first time, the series attempts to ground this cosmic mythology in a human context. Andy Muschietti has described the show as a way to “explore Derry as a living organism — a place that hides something ancient beneath its streets.” The series implies that Pennywise’s presence has infected the town’s collective psyche for generations, feeding not just on fear but on guilt, prejudice, and denial.

What makes Pennywise such a fascinating villain is that he’s never simply there; he’s reflected. He becomes what the people of Derry already fear most, whether that’s a clown, a monster, or their own dark past. In this way, Welcome to Derry expands the thematic core of King’s novel — that the true horror isn’t just an alien creature but the human capacity to ignore evil when it’s convenient. The Muschiettis have even teased the show’s long-term ambitions: three seasons that each explore a different era of Pennywise’s reign — 1962, 1935, and 1908. Andy Muschietti told Variety: 

“There are a lot of Easter eggs, and over the course of these three seasons, we’re going to get closer to the meaning of the turtle, how it affects the behavior of our characters, and the mythological backstory.”

That turtle, Maturin, represents the cosmic balance to Pennywise’s chaos. In King’s metaphysical mythology, the turtle and It are ancient enemies, embodiments of creation and destruction. While the first IT films touched on that cosmic struggle subtly, Welcome to Derry hints that this prequel may dive deeper into the metaphysical forces shaping the town’s fate.

But even without the cosmic subtext, the first season’s depiction of Pennywise seems more intimate, less about a supernatural being and more about a parasite of the human condition. By setting the story during the Cold War era, when paranoia and repression thrived under a sheen of normalcy, the show connects Pennywise’s evil to a very real historical darkness. Derry in 1962 looks picture-perfect, until you realize the monster doesn’t just lurk in sewers, but in the everyday cruelty of its people.

Skarsgård’s portrayal of Pennywise remains the glue that binds these layers of horror together. His clown isn’t merely a predator but a performance, grotesque and gleeful, switching from innocence to terror in a single breath. IT: Welcome to Derry Season 1 doesn’t reinvent Pennywise so much as it resurrects him, giving the audience the unsettling sense that this thing has always been here, waiting beneath our feet.

How the premiere episode reintroduces Pennywise’s terror in Derry

The premiere episode of IT: Welcome to Derry, Season 1 wastes no time reminding viewers that Derry, Maine, is not a place for happy endings. Directed by Andy Muschietti, “The Pilot” opens with a chilling sequence — a young boy, Matty (Miles Eckhardt), attempting to run away from home, only to fall into the grasp of something monstrous. It’s a striking, brutal return to the tone of the IT films, blending Americana nostalgia with visceral horror.

Much of the episode follows Matty’s classmates, Lilly (Clara Stack), Teddy (Mikkal Karim-Fidler), Phil (Jack Molloy Legault), Susie (Matilda Lawler), and Ronnie (Amanda Christine), who begin to suspect that Matty’s disappearance isn’t what it seems. When Lilly starts hearing his voice echoing through her bathroom pipes, their search leads them to the local movie theater, where a screening of The Music Man becomes the stage for Pennywise’s rebirth.

In a stunningly choreographed sequence, the children watch as Matty appears onscreen, transformed into something unrecognizable. When Pennywise’s illusion finally collapses, the theater erupts into chaos — walls drenched in blood, screams filling the aisles. By the time the lights flicker back on, three of the children are dead, leaving only Lilly and Ronnie alive. It’s a sequence that feels like a mission statement: Welcome to Derry isn’t interested in playing it safe.

Meanwhile, a parallel storyline follows Major Leroy Hanlon (Jovan Adepo), a Korean War veteran stationed at a Derry military base. Hanlon’s encounters with racism and fear mirror the supernatural horror unfolding in the town, hinting that Pennywise’s evil is both literal and symbolic, an embodiment of every form of hate that festers unchallenged. By the episode’s end, Derry feels like a haunted organism, and Pennywise its pulse. Muschietti reintroduces the clown not through spectacle, but through atmosphere — lingering dread, fractured innocence, and the uneasy sense that history is repeating itself.

If the premiere is any indication, this isn’t just another retelling of It — it’s a descent into the origins of fear itself. And as the red balloons rise once more over Derry, one thing is certain: Pennywise isn’t coming. He’s already here.