Expanding on any story of Stephen King‘s is going to get my attention, but a prequel to the 2017 It reboot was a must-watch and the first episode was a banger. Right off the bat in IT: Welcome to Derry we are given an episode that lays a strong foundation with excellent creep and horror elements, giving us strong hope that the series will live up to the feature film.
In 1962, a young boy, Matt Clements, asks a family to get him out of Derry, and the trip progressively becomes stranger with the family becoming strained; the woman gives birth to a mutant baby who attacks Matt. Four months later, commander Leroy Hanlon arrives at the Derry military base and faces a racist. Lilly Bainbridge suffers a horrific vision of Matt singing a song and sees his bloody fingers from her bathtub; Lilly recounts the vision to her friend Marge and to Teddy Uris and Phil Malkin, but no one believes her.
Teddy later has a horrible vision of Matt as a lampshade. Lilly, Teddy and Phil search for information about Matt’s disappearance; they reach Ronnie Grogan, who shares that she has also heard children’s voices coming from the sewers outside the movie theater, singing the same song as Matt. Hanlon is ambushed by masked men and is saved by his friend and partner Pauly Russo. The group goes to the movies in search of answers, and in the movie they see Matt, who blames them before releasing the mutant baby, which kills everyone except Lilly, who is rescued by Ronnie.
The expansion of any tale that is given a prequel gets me excited and given the fact that IT: Welcome to Derry features involvement of the original filmmakers and Bill Skarsgård returning as Pennywise made for an even higher expectation heading into the premiere. While the original story crafted by King in 1986’s It is truly fantastic, what Andy Muschietti, Jason Fuchs, and team have done with these adaptions is truly fantastic. Paying homage to the classic, while also carving a path of their own.
As for the premiere episode, Fuchs and Muschietti pulled no punches. The opening and closing sequences are truly brutal, which gives us a foundation on where they will build the terrifying moments of this series, if this is how far they will push the premiere. They seem to mean business. The series’ version of Derry, Maine, the mood, and design evoke the horror-legacy crafted by King all those years ago. Giving a truly authentic feeling to not only the story itself, but the history of the source material.
While I wanted to comment on the characters, including the abundance of them, but I will hold out comments to the series completes. It’s hard to really find full dimensions of a character within the first 50 or so minutes of what will be an almost eight-hour series.
The premiere episode of IT: Welcome to Derry delivers on horrifying atmosphere, bold and brilliant shocking moments, and a true sense of nostalgia for us fans of King’s world. The creative team doesn’t hold back on and gives us truly frightening moments to kick things off. This first episode firmly plants its flag in the ground by laying a strong foundation for the rest of the series.
IT: Welcome To Derry debuted on October 26, 2025 on HBO the first season continues every Sunday night for eight episodes through December 14.
